Dwellings: The House across the World, by Paul Oliver (Phaidon, 1987), examines the role of the house across cultures worldwide.
There is an essential relationship between people and their buildings which has its most intimate expression in the house. Every culture has some form of house – or, to be more accurate, some form of dwelling – and in the vast majority of cases the dwellings are built by the people who inhabit them. They are a clear response to a society’s physical, social and psychological needs, and are shaped as much by belief systems and concepts of status, territory and security, as by economy, material resources, technology, and climatic conditions.
Dwellings: The House across the World is the first book to examine in depth the principles that have shaped the world’s informal domestic architecture. Drawing largely on the author’s twenty-five years of fieldwork in five continents, it examines the indigenous skills and building wisdom that lie behind the enormous range of dwelling types that exist today. Numerous examples support the book’s theme, from the longhouses of Sarawak to the tower houses of the Yemen, and from the cave dwellings of China to the makeshift shelters of Calcutta and to the ‘Site and Services’ projects of Nairobi.
– Paul Oliver, Dwellings: The House across the World (Phaidon, 1987), excerpt from the book description
The text is in English. The book is illustrated with photographs, diagrams, and other visual material.
Our copy is in good condition. The pages are clean; no markings except for the author’s dedication on the first flyleaf. The binding is fine. The dust jacket shows some small signs of shelf wear.
