Native American Architecture Review

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(More customer reviews)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.

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For many people, Native American architecture calls to mind the wigwam, tipi, iglu, and pueblo. Yet the richly diverse building traditions of Native Americans encompass much more, including specific structures for sleeping, working, worshipping, meditating, playing, dancing, lounging, giving birth, decision-making, cleansing, storing and preparing food, caring for animals, and honoring the dead.In effect, the architecture covers all facets of Indian life.The collaboration between an architect and an anthropologist, Native American Architecture presents the first book-length, fully illustrated exploration of North American Indian architecture to appear in over a century. Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton together examine the building traditions of the major tribes in nine regional areas of the continent from the huge plank-house villages of the Northwest Coast to the moundbuilder towns and temples of the Southeast, to the Navajo hogans and adobe pueblos of the Southwest.Going beyond a traditional survey of buildings, the book offers a broad, clear view into the Native American world, revealing a new perspective on the interaction between their buildings and culture.Looking at Native American architecture as more than buildings, villages, and camps, Nabokov and Easton also focus on their use of space, their environment, their social mores, and their religious beliefs.Each chapter concludes with an account of traditional Indian building practices undergoing a revival or in danger today. The volume also includes a wealth of historical photographs and drawings (including sixteen pages of color illustrations), architectural renderings, and specially prepared interpretive diagrams which decode the sacred cosmology of the principal house types.

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