Atoine Archie ARET-222 April 8, 2010
The Contemporary Pit House
How to incorporate traditional first-nation pit house design and structure into a contemporary single-family dwelling unit that is both cost efficient and has minimal environmental impact?
The Contemporary Pit House designation will be on the land of Kamloops Indian Band of Shuswap First Nations in BC, Canada. The Pit House of the Thompsons Region found and recorded by James Teit will be researched and be the model for the traditional Pit House. The Traditional Pit House is a semi-sub terrainean dwelling found in the late 1800’s at the BC Interior Plateau created by the Shuswap First Nations to escape the extreme Winter conditions. The significance of the Traditional Pit House is how advanced the First Nations building technology was before contact with non-first nations. The Post and Beam structure used in the Pit House is still widely used today, and the Green Roof has a growing reputation around the world. More key features are that all the materials were natural and gathered from near surroundings, and the whole community took part in construction which took less than 2 days. The Traditional Pit House has an opening at the centre of the roof to allow smoke to escape from the open fire directly below, and the floor was left as original ground. The First Nations had a very strong connection with Mother Earth spiritually and physically. The First Nations have the up most respect for the Mother Earth, anything taken from the earth something else was returned, and waste was kept to a minimum.
The major design aspects incorporated from the Traditional Pit House will be the Green Roof, semi-subterranean/underground construction, interior exposure of post and beam construction. Due to Building Code Issues the centre of the roof will have to be modified with a closed roofing system, wall and floor assemblies will also be required. The Walls are (ICF) Insulated Concrete Forms using the 45 degree angled forms to replicate the roundness of the traditional pit house. A number of Case Studies of construction details for Green Roofs will be examined to create a unique assembly that will be suitable for the site and adaptable for the post and beam structure. The flooring system is concrete slab-on-grade, which is most common and readily available, additional layering beneath consists of rigid insulation. To reduce the environmental impact of processing the cement for the concrete, “fly ash” will be used as a substitute for the cement.
The research will be critical to creating the unique and innovative contemporary design. Investigation of all the construction methods and several case studies will be used to determine the most cost effective and which methods and materials have the least environmental impact.
A conceptual drawing has been created and will be used as a reference to give an idea of what the building will look like on the inside.
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Hey Atoine,
ReplyDeleteI am not really familiar with a traditional first nations pit house, so I was wondering if it was similar to that of a Yurt and similar in it's size and shape? From your picture it definalty looks that way. Neat idea.
Although grammatically this abstract could use more work, you have a strong thesis question and a clear application of the research. The key is to look carefully at the historic structures and determine why they were built this way and then ask the question of what aspects of the traditional structures should be applied to contemporary construction? I am quite interested to see the results.
ReplyDeleteRemember not use point form for the abstract.