Abstract:
Traditional buildings display features from which certain deductions may be made
throughout the design process, from the whole to the details or from the details to
the whole. When traditional architecture is referred to, houses, which are the most
commonly used buildings and which make up the living spaces of the people come
to mind.
A defining feature of indigenous rural houses around the world is that they are
nonengineered structures, product of the traditional knowledge systems. These
indigenous and traditional construction practices evolved in the context of local
culture, environmental constraints and empirical knowledge. Over several
centuries of human settlement in the Himalayas, indigenous housing throughout
the region has a variety of adaptations and reinforcements. The landscape and
topography of the region of Jammu, J&K, in the western Himalayas has resulted in
settlement, house forms and construction techniques that are of an isolated kind.
A particular way of life and building develops from this isolation and maximizes the
use of local resources. Along with various benefits of traditional construction
practices and styles, traditional houses have some crucial issues and concerns
like, need for regular maintenance, low strength of materials and/or building
components, unavailability of skilled craftsmen who can work with traditional
materials, shortage of traditional materials. Therefore, the repair of these buildings
becomes an immensely difficult job.
The focus of the thesis is to identify the traditional construction systems in the
region in an effort to understand and compare the different construction techniques
used in the region in terms of available local materials and to give repair guidelines
for the same. The process involves systematic research and analysis to prepare a
database of the traditional construction systems found in Jammu region which
further helps in developing region based guidelines for the repair of the traditional
houses of Jammu.
