Name: Eric Strauss
School: Principal, The High School of Art and Design, New York
Title: Tibetan Architecture

Local Houses

• wood imported and used for housing
• horizontal timber beams provide roof support, supported by wooden columns
• skillful carpentry, floors and ceiling wood
• increasing use of cement in modern times
  
  
• most common local residence style-white stone tower
  
• built like military fortifications
  
• perimeters built in the shape of trapezoid, increased strength
  
• heavy at the bottom, (stone foundations) and light at the top, battered walls
  
• usually two stories made of stone and wood
  
• lower floor livestock
  
• upper floor living rooms for the family, storerooms and a shrine room
  
• flat roofs for removing snow easier, parapets
  
• detailed decoration of doors, windows and parapets
  
• painted black frames around doors and windows, complex wooden overhang decoration
  
• organic design-buildings appear to grow out of the landscape
• single story houses in Tibet
  
  
• tents in the pastures of Northern Tibet, elaborately designed and were used as shrines
  
• forested eastern Tibet-wooden houses
  
• remote Nwari and other regions, caves and earthen houses are built
  
  
• great variation in climate and geography, elevation in Tibet causes people to use different materials and styles
  
• some light structure, pure wood, some mixed structure of wood and earth and some are heavy structure with thick walls, some are movable tents with different styles
  
• northern Tibet-high sea level, construction material is limited, herders-a nomadic life