Amos Rapoport. 1969. House Form and Culture (Foundations of Cultural Geography Series). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. 150 pp. ISBN: 978-0133956733.
Reviewed by J.A. Adedeji, Department of Architecture, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (Nigeria) and S.A. Amole, Department of Architecture, Obafemi Awolowo University (Nigeria)
The book “House Form and Culture” was originally written in 1969 by Amos Rapoport and published as one of seven books in the “Foundations of Cultural Geography Series” edited by Philip Wagner. This series considered the underlying theoretical constructs that have shaped, and continue to shape, the built environment, including religion, beliefs, customs and socio-cultural forces at large. Rapoport presented neatly distilled correlates of culture and house form with a large volume of cultural illustrations from across the globe. The book is also a presentation of cross-disciplinary studies of dwellings, buildings and settlements from architecture, planning and cultural geography.
An interesting aspect of Rapoport’s book is its balanced view. After giving substantial evidence against factors other than culture as house form determinants, he went on to present his basic hypothesis that “house form is not simply the result of physical forces or any single causal factors, but is the consequence of a whole range of socio-cultural factors seen in their broadest terms.” In view of the logical arrangement of Rapoport’s argument, the book naturally divides into two parts: chapters 1-3 are for the defence of the primacy of culture, and chapters 4-6 explain the modifying influence of other factors. As expected, the later part is relatively thin compared to the former, which is the real bone of the argument that Rapoport grinds into powder.
Rapoport’s book is the direct opposite of traditional patterns of study in architectural theory and history where efforts have always been on monuments and “high style” buildings of various civilizations. The foundation of the book was laid on the intellectual debate of the meaning and characteristics of folk, primitive, and vernacular buildings on one side, and modern buildings on the other–possibly even forming a continuum. Relying on the work of Gould and Kolb (1964), Redfield (1965) and Mumford (1961), among others, Rapoport argued that “primitive” buildings were produced by “primitive” societies which had a “diffuse knowledge of everything by all” with elementary technology.
The book linked behaviour and form, and theorized that built form has influence on behaviour, not in a causal manner but in the way of “coincidences.” Despite the firm grip of the book on the comparison between the vernacular and modern societies and their buildings, its loose grip on the varied meanings of culture leads to a conspicuously missing extraction of which set of meanings is crucial to the understanding of the study. Such deep and wide meanings of culture as later presented by Oyeneye et al (1985), Norberg-Schulz (1988), among many others, are denied the reader leaving a large vacuum of knowledge and intellectual dreariness that dates the book. Unfortunately, readers of the book are also left to find their own path through the contexts in which “form” has been used.
Nonetheless, Rapoport debunked the many “alternative theories of house form” by refuting the rather extreme explanation and weak foundation of architecture that “climate and the need for shelter” determine the form of dwellings. His balanced view on the impact of climate on house form is commendable; after giving enough evidence on the supremacy of culture over climate in determining house form, he submitted that “it is a characteristic of primitive and vernacular buildings that they typically respond to climate very well.”
Rapoport concluded the book with what he called “a look at the present.” In this way, the book presented the relationship between house form and culture from the “primitive” to the vernacular and 1960s modern period. He noted that in the past there were hierarchies in society which were legible on built forms but at the time of writing there was “the general loss of hierarchies within society,” resulting in the reality that “all buildings tend to have equal prominence.” According to Rapoport, “modern man has lost the mythological and cosmological orientation which was so important to primitive man, or has substituted new mythologies in place of the old.” Crowe (2000) had a similar view when he noted that the symbolic values of the built environment are being lost today and that is why “man was born in an hospital, lived in a building that might as well look as an hospital judging from its outlook and died in an hospital.” In this concluding chapter, Rapoport again demonstrated his balanced sense of judgment when he maintained that both “primitive” and “modern” times have myths that may be different but are commonly motivatedby being “primarily socio-cultural”–however still claiming that the “neglect of traditional cultural patterns may have serious results.”
Despite its shortcomings, Rapoport’s book remains convincing in its argument pattern, detailed in its presentation, and unparalleled in its academic ingenuity. The book should continue to be a great companion for all those who are advocates of a livable built environment.
Works Cited
Crowe, N. 2000. Nature and the Idea of a Man–made World: An Investigation into the Evolutionary Roots of Form and Order in the Built Environment. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Gould, J, and Kolb, W.L. (Eds.) 1964. A Dictionary of the Social Sciences. New York: The Free Press.
Munfora, L. 1961. The City in History. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
Norberg-Schulz, C. 1988. Architecture: Meaning and Place: Selected Essays. New York : Rizzoli.
Oyeneye, O. T. and Shoremi, M. O. 1995. Nigeria Life and Culture. Publication Committee, Department of Sociology. Ogun State University Press.
Redfield, R. 1965. Peasant Society and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.