The Culture of Building

by Howard Davis

The Culture of Building describes how the built world, including the vast number of buildings that are the settings for people's everyday lives, is the product of building cultures--complex systems of people, relationships, building types, techniques, and habits in which design and building
are anchored. These cultures include builders, bankers, architects, developers, clients, contractors, craftspeople, building inspectors, planners, and many others. The product of these cultures, which operate building after building, is the built world of cities and settlements. In this book, Howard
Davis uses historical, contemporary, and cross-cultural examples to describe the nature and influence of these cultures. He shows how building cultures reflect the general cultures in which they exist, how they have changed over history, how they affect the form of buildings and cities, and how
present building cultures, which are responsible for the contemporary everyday environments, may be improved. Following the development of the idea of building cultures using several historical examples, the book lays out a framework that puts such topics as craft and professionalism, the vernacular
and nonvernacular, and design and construction in common frameworks. Although the book ranges widely over different cultures and historical periods, it emphasizes the transformations that took place in architecture and building practice from the late eighteenth century to the present. Finally, the
book uses a series of contemporary examples that demonstrate the building culture as a living concept. These examples, which include built work as well as innovative processes that go beyond the work of architects alone, are described as the seeds that can help the emergence of a better build world.
This beautiful book features over 260 color and black-and-white illustrations, most from the author's extensive collection of slides, and includes photographs, prints, and drawings from historical archives and contemporary architectural offices.

Genres: Architecture, Philosophy

385 pages, Paperback

First published January 6, 2000

About the author

Howard Davis is an American writer and professor of architecture at the University of Oregon in Eugene. A native of New York City, he studied physics at Cooper Union and at Northwestern University and received a master's degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked with Christopher Alexander. He has worked on projects in the Pacific Northwest, India, England, Mexico, and Israel.

He is known for his research into vernacular architecture and building history, published in the book The Culture of Building (1999, reprinted in paperback 2006). He also collaborated with Christopher Alexander on The Production of Houses (1985), an account of an innovative housing project in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico. His current research is concerned with urban buildings that combine commercial and residential uses; museums and memorials to war; housing; and American architectural education. His latest book is Living Over the Store: Architecture and Local Urban Life. Davis was the founding co-editor of Buildings & Landscapes, the journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture honored Davis with the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award in 2009.
-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Barbara Hahijary · Rating 3 out of 5]

THE CULTURE OF BUILDING
HOWARD DAVIS

Reviewed by Barbara (0806460244) for Ethno-Architecture class (Thought by Professor Gunawan Tjahjono)


Our daily activities happen in building. That is why we go to one place to another from time to time. But there are about two billion buildings on earth nowadays, and every geographical point has its identity of building. Even though in some places we could find the similar buildings, that is what I guess the global way of thinking does, every places has its own history that brings their own ethnology.
The Culture of Building describes how the built world, including the vast number of buildings that are the settings for people’s everyday lives, is the product of the building cultures, complex systems of people, relationships, building types, techniques, and habits in which design and building are anchored.
The book tells that the culture of building is the coordinated system of knowledge, rules, procedures, and habits that surrounds the building process. The building culture is responsible for the character and formation of the collection of everyday buildings.
The author mentioned Christopher Alexander more than once. He agreed about how the built world may be understood as a continuous structure that includes buildings of different sizes and types, and how this structure that includes buildings of different sizes and types, and how this structure is connected to human purposes. By this sentences and some theory from Leon and Rob Krier, Aldo Rossi, to Henry Glassie, Davis tells the building that has been built nowadays is the product of the culture that growth from time to time, so that we could trace the formation from one building generation to the ones before.
The book tells about how is the building process, from the making the decision to build in the first place, choosing and developing appropriate building sites, regulating the character and placement of building on these sites, financing the construction, designing the building, producing and supplying materials, constructing the building, regulating the building’s construction, to occupying, using, and modifying the building.
Making the decision to build in the first place is different from one place to another. For example, in traditional Chinese, the site was chosen through the principles of feng shui (geomancy), and in Javanese culture, the site was chosen by the place where banana trees grow first.
The culture support the life of its members, as the culture is consciously made to this purpose. There are relationships from this statement. It is just like what the social science tells, that human makes rule for themselves and it sets a culture for them and to be socially recognized, the human should make themselves follow the culture. In terms of human make culture and culture humanize human. As a part of the culture, how people build a place to live, is what so called ethno-architecture makes building as cultural products.
Villages in different cultures may have entirely different religious and social structures, different economies and agricultural systems, different relationships to cities and towns, and people with different worldview. The size of villages often depends on the productivity of the agricultural land that surrounds them and the consequent ability of a certain number of people to work an amount of land that is reasonably close to the village. Building both fulfills direct need and affirms the cosmic order connected to daily annual cycles of life. The form of village is itself often a representation of the cosmic order as seen by the culture. Materials are taken directly from the earth of from the by-products of agriculture and being constructed by limited known shared knowledge. There is also explicitly understood difference between the pragmatic, and the functional, symbolic, or aesthetic aspects of building form.
In this book of thirteen chapters, the author used historical, contemporary, and cross cultural examples to describe the nature and influence of these cultures. He shows how building cultures reflect the general cultures in which they exist, how they have changed over history, how they affect the form of buildings and cities. The author explained the relationship between the building culture and the culture of the site in which the building exists where the building represents the autonomy of the larger culture. The architectural form that buildings take is related to the organizational form that the building culture itself takes. The building culture takes its forms of organization from the culture at large and adds some functions that the building needs.
The description of how the flow of money related control and the distribution of value in the environment. The author show the complexity of builders from early-nineteenth century to these days constructor and also their level of conducting the building.
As nowadays we have the regulation of building and building codes, the ethnic ones also have it. The difference, according to the book, is we could read the regulation now but they have the regulation unwritten but been told from one to another. It includes decision to place a house in a particular location, decision about rough size and approximate layout of courtyard, placement of entrance, layout of rooms around courtyard, construction of house, and also later addition and rebuild possibilities.
The book used examples that demonstrate the building culture as a living concept. These examples are described as the seeds that can help the emergences of a better built world.
This beautiful book features photos and illustrations and completely explains the culture of building from late eighteenth century to the present.

[Alex Djordjevic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Howard Davis does a spectacular job at showing readers the background and backstage of building and architecture in particular. The Culture Of Building not only shows how the world around us is build, why its built, and the process it takes to build, but also gives great incites on how the buildings affect our lives as well. Davis really dives into the culture behind everything, and takes you across the world showing and explaining the different types of building cultures exist in the world today. This is an amazing book for anyone that is going into architecture, or simply interested in learning more about the building process! It has some tougher language in it so it might take a bit to get into, but trust me when you do, the information it provides surpasses all else.