Customer Reviews

Native American Architecture

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This book is an excellent bioregional overview of Native American structures. What I appreciate most is the way the authors have actually shown HOW the structures were made, sometimes in actual step-by-step procedures, which would allow someone to actually build in that style and using many of the same natural materials today. Another thing I love about the book is that the authors have sincerely tried to understand my Native American relationships to all the materials and the sacredness of the spaces we created. The authors treat that understanding with respect and honor. In this day when material resources are dwindling at alarming rates and the Earth is being devastated by the mindless rape of resources, it is a reminder to us all that we can choose alternatives to conventional wood-frame homes and return to more sustainable and natural housing for our respective bioregions. This book, though maybe not necessarily intended as such, is a hands-on, how-to book for us all. It reminds us that Native Americans lived in harmony and balance with our lands and our local plant and animal family for tens of thousands of years without destroying the places in which we lived. The photographs are instructive and beautiful and the architectural-type drawings are a delight. They make the actual building of these structures possible. I use parts of this book as required reading for all my students, especially my graduate students, and have taught actual classes using this book as the text, though it is not written in a "textbook" style. It is a very readable book and most useful for these times. I recommend it highly to all.

More than a testament to Native American artistic vision and ingenuity, this book is a delightful resource for survivalists as well as historians - and for those who would just like to find ideas for less technological ways of building simple dwellings. Well illustrated with diagrams, photos and how-to drawings for constructing shelters in many different climates and with various resource limitations. Excellent, fun to read and full of eye openning ideas.

This book is well written, and finely illustrated. Historical photos and accurate descriptions of the structures illustrate not only how Native Americans lived, but how they built their homes, shelters and camps. This book is valuable for the historian, survivalist and primitive technologist among others. Well worth the cost!

I recently found this book, a gem, in a used book store.
The extensive research by the authors is an affirmation of an archetypal architecture or divine blueprint, that all cultures tap into.

The authors without realizing their real accomplishment, have now given us a well researched document, a blueprint with which to compare the architectural archetypes.
[...]

Wow, 'Native American Architecture' is without a doubt long overdue, it is in fact a document now on record, that helps us remove the veils and see how EAST and WEST are profoundly similar, and without realizing it, this book can be used to build bridges too.

namaste

Rafa