Architectural Anthropology
The stone shelters are the most modest architecture man ever made. The main purposes are: taking off the stone from the field, protection for the man, livestock and the food as well as the tools. Constructional principle is corbelling; drywalling system. The stone shelter is a small, simple construction, but brilliant architecture, close to the man and his needs, and the point is: it is the pure culture, indeed.
Borut Juvanec, Professor on Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Girna (plural: giren) is the stone shelter in Malta. It is used as the shelter for live stock, food, tools as well as for the workers, protecting them from the sun and the heat. Giren are located on the fields: in the middle as well as at the border, incorporated to the stone fence, with the entrance, faced to the field. The ground plan of girna is circle or square inside; it is possible that girna has circular inner part, but outside is rather circular or square shaped. There is not only one or typical proportional system: the shelters use equilateral triangle, which defines the height of construction; height is sum of radius of ground plan plus width of the wall; as well as square, square root of two, and golden section. The girna is so sophisticated shaped that it seems to be a part of nature itself.
Another interesting site about stone shelters by Borut Juvanec.
So the study of the phenomenon of the stone shelter from an anthropological perspective leads us to the outlines of architectural anthroplogy created by Nold Egenter. The following is an introduction to his research:
One of the main difficulties of ethno-architectural research arises from the complexity of the material. Constructive, spatial and social conditions are involved. Though the descriptive parts of studies generally provide fairly objective findings, the interpretation of results regularly falls back on the historically established disciplines of th ehumanities. Thus there is a certain danger insofar as the culturally formative criteria of the architectural tradition are obscured by this practise.
However, the situation is quite different in the case of the architectural-anthropological method. This avoids interpretations derived from eurocentric disciplines inasmuch as it interprets the term architecture in anthropological terms. Thus the whole field of architecture is redefined in new ways. Roughly 4 classes can be described, which result from available anthropological sources:
1. sub-human architecture: nestbuilding behaviour of the higher apes.
2. semantic architecture: non domestic structures with the function of territorial, social and symbolic signs.
3. domestic architecture: structures which provide internal space ans protection.
4. settlement architecture: higher, specificialy conceived unit, combining several semantic and/or domestic elements.
Within the human sector this
classification is basically not meant in a diachronic
sense. As mentioned above, it reflects available
sources. In a secondary procedure these classes are
systematically analyses, e.g. in regard to durability
of the materials used. Or thy are studied with the
regard to particular classes of material or, further,
in terms of specific functions oreforms. In th elatter
context the semantic class develops an enourmous
richness. Phaseological relations can only be
clarified from these secondary categories. In general,
systematic reconstruction of a continuum should be
striven for, one which depict a constructive process
of homonisation.
...
Thus, architectural anthropology has two essentially different outlooks.
On the one hand it should be considered as a structural framework for a pragmatic theory of architecture which could gain new insights into the profound importance of architecture for man. Design theory could now develop new, globally valid and humane concepts which might gain in reliability because of no longer being based on aesthetics alone, but on anthroplogy. Architectural theory adapted to mankind! Here one of the most important insights is the following: since architecture and implied spatial concepts are now seen in athropological dimensions and closely related to the formation of human culture, the forms handed down by architecture itself can gain new importance beyond the art historians’ history of styles. Suddenly we might discover architeconic principles of global significance, e.g. as complementary pairs such as path and place, or formal dynamics related to static elements within the same form. In his impressive study of sacred architecture in Afro-Eurasian high cultures Dagobert Frey already in the fourties has shown similar complementary principles to be widespread over an enourmous multi-cultural area. The archtitect might be inspired by them as basic anthropological conditions and might give them new meanings by forming the corresponding tresholds, doors, portals, etc. traditional form concepts mightgain a new anthropological significance if their formative role were suddenly recognised in anthropological terms. Architectural composition might become a real value again. Doubtless it will also become obvious how barbarically the architect of today uses the social and spiritual complexity of architecture.
On the other hand, the fact that architecture never took the trouble to build up its own scientific research will now be seen as an unpardonable omission. It coul be THE anthropology the humanities were looking for.
...
In any case, the image of groups of higher apes, peacefully wandering around their well defined ranges, collecting food and - for each night - peacefully building their nests, suggests a quite different human proto-cultural beginning from the bloodthirsty projection of hunter and killer bands as reconstructed by arhaeologists and paleo-anthropologists, based on their widely speculative concept of an early tool- and weapon-making man. Maybe some ten or twenty years hence we shall laugh about the bloody pictures which we have dished up for our children in schoolbooks as a legitimation of progress and social-darwinism. Maybe the concept of a constructive early man will then contribute to a more constructive and more humane society.
Nold Egenter: The present Relevance of the Primitive in Architecture. Architectural Anthropology - Research Series vol. 1: 216 p. Illustr. Paperback. Three languages (English, German, French) p151-167