Customer Reviews

House Form and Culture

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This book ties together many ideas from the fields of anthropology and architecture. Rapoport methodically builds an argument for his hypothesis that "The different forms taken by dwellings are a complex phenomenon for which no single explanation will suffice." He supports his arguments with hundreds of examples drawn from the literature, as in the style of a review article. I was struck by parallelism between Rapoport's evidence that houses can vary tremendously, even given similar environmental or cultural factors, and the old structural linguistics adage that languages can vary in innumerable ways. Some of Rapoport's terminology is now outdated (e.g. "primitive societies,"), but these terms were standard at the time when the book was written so he shouldn't be singled out for using them. The ideas presented in the book are well worth studying and the book includes numerous reference citations for further investigation.

The book -House Form and Culture - is a precious source of information on the cross cultural aspects of the house form. It is an exploration into the virtually unknown in the field of housing. The author was extremely successful (nothing new considering Amos Rapoport) in editing the availabe scattered sources to weave them into one extensive work that is priceless. The anthropologist, environmental behavior researcher, and the architect are only some of the ones who will appreciate this book. Especially interesting is the effect of the deteriminant of the house on shaping the house form. Rapoports own interpretation of the determinants of house form just brings it all together. The book is well written and very interesting even to the novice as it sheds light on the cultural diversities of the most insignificant tribe and the city dwellers.