Domestic Architecture And The Use Of Space

Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space investigates the relationship between the built environment and the organisation of space. The contributors are classical and prehistoric archaeologists, anthropologists and architects, who from their different backgrounds are able to provide some important and original insights into this relationship.

This volume is the first text to focus specifically on the archaeology of domestic architecture. Covering major theoretical and methodological developments over recent decades in areas like social institutions, settlement types, gender, status, and power, this book addresses the developing understanding of where and how people in the past created and used domestic space. It will be a useful synthesis for scholars and an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in archaeology and architecture. The book-covers the relationship of architectural decisions of ancient peoples with our understanding of social and cultural institutions;-includes cases from every continent and all time periods-- from the Paleolithic of Europe to present-day African villages;-is ideal for the growing number of courses on household archaeology, social archaeology, and historical and vernacular architecture.

Space has emerged in recent years as a radical category in a range of related disciplines across the humanities. Of the many possible applications of this new interest, some of the most exciting and challenging have addressed the issue of domestic architecture and its function as a space for both the dramatisation and the negotiation of a cluster of highly salient issues concerning, amongst other things, belonging and exclusion, fear and desire, identity and difference. Our House is a cross-disciplinary collection of essays taking as its focus both the prospect and the possibility of 'the house'. This latter term is taken in its broadest possible resonance, encompassing everything from the great houses so beloved of nineteenth-century English novelists to the caravans and mobile homes of the latterday travelling community, and all points in between. The essays are written by a combination of established and emerging scholars, working in a variety of scholarly disciplines, including literary criticism, sociology, cultural studies, history, popular music, and architecture. No specific school or theory predominates, although the work of two key figures - Gaston Bachelard and Martin Heidegger - is engaged throughout. This collection engages with a number of key issues raised by the increasingly troubled relationship between the cultural (built) and natural environments in the contemporary world.

Etruscan architecture underwent various changes between the later Iron Age and the Archaic period. This book reconsiders these changes by focusing on the building materials and techniques used in the construction of domestic structures.

The design of a building is a complex process in which the architect develops spaces which are defined by a number of different parameters. The most important of these are space requirements, distances, furniture and fittings, and movement zones. From the dimensions of the human body it is possible to derive guide values for these reference sizes that make spaces comfortable to be in and to use. Spaces in Architecture is a useful reference work for students and designers for quickly looking up detailed information on space scenarios that occur in many different types of buildings. For example, the book lists all important dimensions for entrance areas, doors, staircases, ramps, and elevators. On the basis of this fundamental information it is possible to design buildings in terms of function and type.