CAVE TO VILLA

Evening Star, Issue 22414, 11 August 1936, Page 2

CAVE TO VILLA

HOUSES THROUGH THE AGES MUD, STICKS, ICE, CLAY The origin of the house as a place of human habitation is older than history. Nature was the architect and man a crude decorator of her work in the Stone Age, when human beings, skin-clad, accepted the cold comfort of the caves of Europe and Asia. These, archeology tells the twentieth century, were the architectural ancestors of the villas of Toorak and of the gigantic tenements of New York nearly 400 ft in height. Perhaps, contemporaneous with the dwellers in natural caves, there were forest-dwelling peoples and primitive men in the tropics who were evolving some crude form of man-made habitation, probably by driving sticks into the soil, binding them together at the apex of the conical framework, and then covering the whole with the skins of animals or with bark, straw, or leaves. The wigwam of American tribes and the bark gunyah of the Australian aborigine are survivals of this form of housing. In such fashion began, probably, the conception of the wooden house. The igloo of icc blocks and of packed snow and the mud hut came later in the history of man’s progress toward the time when he ceased to be nomadic, and placed a far greater premium upon personal comfort. When the age of metals was yet an immeasurable space of years distant the craft of masonry was born. BEGINNING OF MASONRY.

It bad its beginning, it would appear, with the cave-dweller. The thousands of years that elapsed between the time when man habitually dwelt in caves, levelling the floor roughly, and sleeping on skins, and the time when he conceived the idea of walling the entrance with rocks for protection from the weather and from natural enemies can be only surmised. It is known, however, that his increasing expertness in this type of construction led to the development of what, in the light of so remote an age, were elaborate cave dwellings. Remarkable examples have been found on river banks in the United States of Ame-rl'-a. Viollet-le-Dnc, in bis ‘ Historic de I’Habitation Humainc,’ published in 1873, expresses the conviction that I"-,filiations that were a combination of iK'.iurnl cave and of masonry were o a* of the common primitive forms of A-.■van houses.

br.-r> chrmber sufficed until *a more co.v.plcx system of civilisation made subdivisi sn desirable. At first, it seems, that was achieved by building several hut units within a single enclosure. Remains of floors and of foundations of such groups of huts of unbabed brick, dating from Neolithic times, have been found throughout the /Egean world. Later came elliptical forms with subdividing partitions. Examples of these bare been found in Crete, and their age has been estimated to be about 4,000 years. The viliages of the late Stone."and Bronze Ages in Northern and Central Europe indicate another form of development. This is the lake dwelling, a rectangular house of two or more rooms, supported upon piles over the water of a lake. Survivals of this type of house exist in several parts of the world along rivers and coasts. In the European lake dwellings there was evidence not only of primitive frame construction, but also of the use of crossed logs overlapping at the corners—the forerunner of the log cabin. , HOUSES IN 2000 B.C. Four thousand years ago, in the already advanced culture of Egypt and Western Asia, two types of house plan possessing most of the essentials of modern architecture made their appearance. The first was the block bouse, with all of its rooms under one roof, the whole in a compact block. The second was the dwelling with a court, on to which the rooms opened. It might or might not have a colonnade or open corridor. Remains of Egyptian bouses dating back to the early empire show both types, but in Egypt the court was not developed as it was in Europe and in China. Stairs, too, arc at least 4,000 years old, and have been found in the remains of houses of 2,000 n.c., leading to a flat roof. There were large windows, columns, awnings, and a luxuriance of decoration, of which more details are continually being revealed. The material was mostly clay nr unburned brick reinforced with a framework of timber or of reeds.

In the past 20 years architecture in the civilised world has undergone extensive changes, but the early Mesopotamian houses remained constant in form for at least 2,000 years, perhaps longer. Throughout the Chaldean and Assyrian periods it was of three types. One was a development of the conical hut, constructed, it would appear, from Assyrian bas-reliefs, of unburut brick, and consisting of a tall, narrow domeform. Another form, also depicted in bas-relief, was a rectangular building with a flat roof, hattlemented parapets, arched doorways, and long, low windows close to the roof. There was a third type—the city house—which consisted of an assemblage of long, narrow rooms with walls of great thickness, arranged around one or more courts. EFFECTS OF INDUSTRY. In the Christian era the form of houses has changed more swiftly. Between the twelfth and. the nineteenth centuries there was a gradual development, but- the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century altered house design throughout the Western world, and' particularly in teams and cities. Cities grew swiftly, af.d with their growth came a rapid rise in the values of land. There was a congestion of population, hut a steadily rising standard of comfort. The adoption of the facilities of plumbing and of new forms of lighting also had an important bearing upon the trend of architecture, which is ever changing. Nor does it appear that ever again one form of architecture will establish itself and maintain a standard and style for even so short a period as half a century.