China
Africa
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The Earliest Builders
Published in Ervan Garrison, A History of Engineering and Technology Artful Methods, 2018
By 7000 b.p., they were building large dwellings or, “longhouses,” that reached up to 30 meters in length.9 From the Danube to the Netherlands, these structures demonstrated an almost standardized form of building. With widths of 5 to 8 meters, these rectangular buildings were built on five rows of posts of which the inner three held up the roof, while the outer two rows supported walls made of interwoven branches packed with clay. The interior surfaces of the walls were smoothed and whitewashed. Oriented northwest-southeast or north-south, the northern end was reinforced with closely spaced (1.5 m as compared to up to 3.5 m) posts sunk in trenches. The houses were divided into three sections — a central living area, a southern storage area, and a northern stable for livestock.
Experimental Study on the Seismic Response of Longhouses Using Scale Models
Published in Structural Engineering International, 2020
Huzaifa Hashim, Zainah Ibrahim, Ahmad Azim Shukri, Siti Nurhanis Yasmin Hastamam, Sai Hin Lai
The Sarawak region is a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo commonly known for the dense rainforest of its interior, highland plateaux which record early human settlement, and historical sites which consist of buildings and monuments. Longhouses are the most outstanding type of indigenous architecture; they are mainly constructed using timber material and generally located parallel to rivers and streams. Although there are many longhouse variants in Borneo, their structural pattern is along similar lines in terms of plan, section and view. Figure 1 presents a photograph of Bario Asal Lambaa’ longhouse, taken in 1962. In general, the longhouses are constructed together in a row consisting of a series of individual raised pile houses. The longhouse is usually divided into three main sections, comprising a gallery section, a bedroom in the middle section and an open kitchen at the back of the structure. A covered gallery for communal use runs parallel to the rows of houses and is of the same total length. The whole building is constructed under a gabled roof, and the attic is sometimes utilized as storage and bedroom space. People occupy the first floor, while the ground floor is used for storage and shelter for domestic animals. Other types of longhouse feature an unroofed balcony which runs parallel to the covered gallery, as shown in Fig. 2.