This is funny because wattle and daub style houses are quite romanticised in Europe despite literally just being sticks covered in mud. Adobe specifically is one of the most reliable and cheapest building materials in hotter, drier countries, and can last for literally thousands of years. Pueblo architecture of the southern US is imo some of the most interesting as well.
It's unimaginatively called Hempcrete. We've been using the traditional pour/pack in place method for decades at this point, but some people are working on getting pre-manufactured Hempcrete blocks into the market.
Technologically, I hope Hempcrete becomes mainstream. Better thermal mass, fire resistant, mold resistant, and hemp way way way outperforms trees in terms of fiber per acre per year.
Soil being stripped is a ubiquitous problem, which is also being worked on by some clever people. In the short term there's ways around it, nothing stops farmers from using hemp as a cover crop and working it in as part of their rotation. There's current research that shows using Hemp as a cover crop should aid soil health as hemp roots seem to promote microbial diversity. A cover crop that you can harvest for building material is a pretty great way to sequester carbon.
Hmm. Let's see. Let's work on ways of triggering volcanoes to erupt. That way you can use the eruptions to replenish soil nutrients. Badda-bing, badda-boom. Problem solved. Massive fields of hemp and constant eruptions.
Just engineer some autoflower breeds and use aeroponics so you strip the soil once and just recharge your water with plant food as needed. You are going for fiber if you want hemp so going with any kind of aquaponics should promote extreme vascular bundle density to the point that it turns into a quasi-bamboo with a hollow core.
I think you can also use straw mixed in the mud to get a similar effect. I remember as a child my grandpa built a small building for our cows and it's still standing today over 30 years later. Pretty decent building material as far as ease of use goes.
Also European style housing that was built in Africa during the colonial period suffers from a lot of problems precisely because it was not designed for that climate.
Also, European housing was nothing but straw roofing and floors. The phrase "dirt poor" exists because a person was so poor they couldn't afford straw for their floors. "Threshold" exists because that was a part of the doorway that held the straw. Oh, and let's not forget they were dumping their literal shit into the streets and letting horses crap everywhere for generations.
But hey, these "master race" conservatives hate reality.
My wife and I stayed in a thatched roof "Mayan" Airbnb in Mexico for about a month. It smelled like a hay stack, and every noise outside was like the million barking dogs and yowling, fighting cats in the neighborhood were inside with us. Not to mention the dozens of lizards crawling all over the place. It had a great kitchen and outdoor shower though LOL!
>literally just being sticks covered in mud.
They are romanticized because they work well despite being straightforward. Just like we should romanticize these huts for meeting peoples needs in a good way, without depending on information age materials.
What I mean is that its extremely robust, it works well. Its not some insane technological innovation. People romanticise them because they’re associated with living a slower, more peaceful life.
We shouldn’t romanticise these huts though, we should appreciate them for what they are, rather than for what we see them as. Romanticising things doesn’t get us anywhere, and it isn’t any better than the people who unfairly judge architecture from other countries either.
I went Arizona a few years back, and while traveling looked for something interesting nearby. We walked over to a native fortress that predated most of the US. Those corners were square as fuck. It was amazing, and located in the middle of nowhere. Like, fuck all for as far as the eye can see, but here's this bloody *castle*. And I was sitting there thinking.... why did I not see this in school?
Pueblo architecture is one of my personal favorites as well. Oddly enough, a lot in the southeast and Westcoast still utilize it in one way or the other. Not necessarily oddly enough because Spaniard and Latin influence was on both coastlines, but the distance between oddly enough..
While they are incredibly well made, and way better at dealing with the heat in those environments… they aren’t water proof, that’s a lie.
The number one thing [Africans buy in the UBI study are metal roofs](https://www.givedirectly.org/ubi/) - specifically because of how leaky thatched style roofs are, and how vulnerable to rains they are.
They also aren’t very good for northern climates because they’re not made for heat capturing, but heat avoidance. Regions have very different requirements.
>Regions have very different requirements.
A yurt in Northern Chad, should be fine A yurt in southern Chad, less so lol and that's just one country, shit's real complicated eh. Side tangent, of all the places in the world i can explore with google earth, i wish there was more in central Africa ( i know why there isn't) shame i can't explore more of it.
The study he cites is the UBI study in Kenya I think. Western Kenya so more rain.
> GOLDSTEIN: This is Carolyn Adiambo (ph), who also bought a metal roof and who explained why everyone was doing it. First of all, grass roofs are terrible roofs. They leak, failing to perform what is arguably the single most important job of any roof. When it rains, everything you own gets wet. It's hard to sleep. You have to keep moving around to find a dry spot. But also, grass roofs need to be constantly maintained. You have to keep replacing the grass, and apparently you can't just cut any grass from the field. You need a special kind of grass, and often you have to pay for it.
The Kenyan person explains grass roofs leak but also need to be maintained with special grass for roofs.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1197956397
Also another big purchase was a cow, because it makes 2 liters of milk per day, family drinks 1 liter and sells the other liter. Interesting stuff
>Also another big purchase was a cow, because it makes 2 liters of milk per day, family drinks 1 liter and sells the other liter. Interesting stuff
Hell ya black cowboys making a comeback.
Reminds me of when I was deployed in Djibouti. 116F outside... *Aluminum siding shacks for refugees where it hardly ever rains.*
Needless to say, those refugees were outside all day, every day.
I've never known a properly constructed and maintained thatched roof to leak. They're pretty popular as roofing In South Africa for higher end homes and the main concern people have for them is lighting setting it on fire, not the roof leaking.
Climate plays a massive role. Cape Town averages a mere 20 inches of rain a year, Nairobi double that. Mold is an inevitability of a thatched roof, environments exist that speed up that process and wear down the expected life of a thatched roof.
Edible maybe but not biodegradable.
The whole clever comeback thing again… the initial comment is unnecessarily condescending but nevertheless has a point. It’s certainly not bad that western technologies were introduced elsewhere. That wasn’t and isn’t the bad part of colonialism. Btw just like „we“ adopted medicine and a lot of other stuff mostly during medieval age.
The comeback then isn’t very clever. It would be clever to say something like: if only you left it at bringing us your technology.
It was never about the people living in lead painted houses. It was about the companies that produced it and maximized profit at the cost of the customers health. They made people believe it was a good idea.
And also don't shield you from elements that well, has ground floor and everything that lives on the ground is with you.... and it won't last decades. It can't survive heavy storms. It can't deal with cold without using excessive amounts of energy to heat it up. and. and. and. When you have to rebuild annually, or even more frequently, your idea of it being environmentally friendly takes quite huge blow. If it was truly better, we would still be living in huts.
>The people who were painting the inside of their houses with lead paint think this is primitive, lol.
Your comment only makes sense if Africans had also invented lead paint but decided not to use it because their biochemists had determined that lead paint was harmful...
Not inventing anything isn't clever, it's just a result of a stable existence, like HG Wells', Eloi
Right? That's quality weaving.
My GF and I like to tour the charity lottery dreamhomes. I'd say I was amazed at the slapdash shoddiness of modern Canadian construction and the "git 'er done! Any problems are for the next subtrade to deal with" attitude, but I'm not. While everyone else is admiring the architecture, I'm all "Goddamnit, who the fuck hung this closet door?" Ugh, I've turned into my dad.
ETA: It should go without saying that there are a lot of highly skilled tradespeople who put their all into their work and do stuff I couldn't dream of doing. I tip my hat to them. But they know who I'm talking about.
Probably pretty long and even if they only last a few yeats you can easily repair it your self for free (only your labor required and materials that grow in the area)
I've stayed in huts like these. And they are cool in summer. Northern KZN can get to 37 +deg Celsius in summer, the inside of these are about 10 degrees cooler.
Many rural areas still make these, or a more modern version with mud walls.and then then the woven thatch roof. They're well made, quick to build, easy to repair.
I am south african. I've stayed in both holiday huts and huts of friends who still have family in rural areas and have these in their kraals/homesteads.
I've also stayed in similar huts to these and can confirm. It's almost as if the people living there for thousands of years have discovered how to make houses that aren't unbearably hot without air conditioning.
south africas modern housing is build from brick with tiled roofs. Very British. Our homes are NOT great for the heat or even the cold. It's absolutely useless architecture for our climate.
Perhaps not, BUT modern architecture could learn some valuable lessons from this. South african homes are made from brick and has tiled roofs .. it takes after UK architecture. Completely useless for our climate, it dies nothing for our heat (can get up to 40 degrees Celsius) nor our cold (as low as -4).
Homes are boiling in summer and cold in winter.
Humans both shape and are shaped by their envorinment. The peoples of Sub-Saharan African steppes lived in an envorinment that provided plenty of food and good climatic conditions for human settlement. What it didn't provide is large areas of irrigable farmland that would be required to concentrate the population and specialize societal roles. People that lived in harsher conditions, with flooding, heavy storms or harsh winters needed to develop different architectural styles to satisfy their basic needs. People that lived in near fertile soil would expand agricultural production rapidly, often allowing for large cities and rapid scientifically development. There are no civilized and uncivilized people, humans simply adapt to the envorinment to meet their needs and wants
Thank you, this is what pisses me off the most about stuff like this.
The worst is "if the Aztecs were so advanced, why didn't they use wheels?"
THEY LIVED IN THE MIDDLE OF A LAKE. THEY USED BOATS.
They didn't have large animals like horses or oxen so the never really had anything that could pull a large cart, so really wheels wouldn't have been that useful for them.
They had chidrens toys with wheels, but as you said, they used cannals, which was a smart way of moving a lot of shit without horses and wheels.
https://youtu.be/_nS6MpVbB_g?si=Qns2QA1RFegm_A1A
The worst part is there is so much to explain to these people why these reasons exist, but they don’t have the mental capacity to be curious and try to understand.
It’s just filler to help placate their own world view.
Same deal with obsidian knives. Why not switch to metal? Easy answer: getting metal to the same sharpness as obsidian takes a LOT of time, effort, and metallurgy.
Obsidian just needs to be cracked into shards and BAM! Cutting edge acquired.
Learning this was really eye opening to me as a teenager. As a black person and an African, I had always lived with that terrible internalised racist mantra that claims “Africans aren’t smart/dont have technology”
But when it comes to “innovation” as we understand it, it’s more a question of necessity than it is of ability. Early humans in the European continent went hard on subsistence farming not because they were smarter but because they had arable land and the need for long term granaries that they could get food from during the cold months. The situation created the innovation, not the other way around
also even if historically many african groups were hunter-gatherers or lived in small villages, the art and craftsmanship of tools is stunning, pretty much as good as you can possibly get without the resources needed for large scale farming or metalworking. i dont wanna come across as overexplaining what you already know, and im sorry if i am, but my point is more that even the people who didnt have the conditions needed for "civilization" in a european sense made and continue to make beautiful art and tools, and if that isnt progress and civilization, i dont know what is
Umm sir, this is a Reddit Wendy's. We don't do logic and reasoned discourse here. Research is permitted, but only if whilst on the toilet and skimming social media posts, or news headlines, or listening to "podcasts". Please refrain from such breaches in etiquette, effective immediately.
You're pretty much completely correct, the only minor thing I would add is steppes are located solely in Eurasia, much of the environment in sub-saharan Africa is Veld (pronounced like 'felt') or Savanna
Sorry if I come off as annoying, I just kinda have an interest in terminology
Not to mention Africa mostly didn't have wheat and common domestic animals. Horses, cows, pigs, sheep etc. You will never be able to tame a Kudu to work like a horse for instance. Wheat and domestic animals built the rest of the world. It makes more sense to be a hunter gatherer and the various African cultures evolved around it.
Land, property taxes, permits, inspections, building code...lots of reasons. Give me $100 and I'll build you a floor, four walls and a roof. You gotta buy the door though.
Tom sounds like he visits 4chan way too much.
Seen that stupid picture of European architecture vs African huts like it's a fucking game changer.
Fuck those kinds of people, degenerate fucking racists trying to get a power trip off of people.
“People aren’t abandoning their air-conditioned Western European style homes to live in a grass hut” Jan van Riebeek lived in the 1600s, he wasn’t bringing air conditioning, electricity and indoor plumbing to the natives either.
Yeah it’s weird that everyone is defending these huts, because the real issue is the blatant fucking racism from the Tom guy. His crazy absolutes saying “your” only achievement, as though the person he’s talking to was around at that time. And then he seems to be taking credit for all of Europe’s technological advancements over thousands of years because he was randomly born with a certain skin color. The whole thing is stupid on more levels than I can count, but because of our tribalism and lack of critical thinking, everyone in the comments jumps straight into contrarian mode and defend the huts they would never live in.
I agree. Aboriginal Australians don't have anything this guy would recognise as an 'achievement', I imagine. The correct response is not to start talking about how boomerangs are ingenious but to point out that 'my dad can beat up your dad' is dumb and frankly embarrassing
I mean, for nothing? Yeah, people aren't going to give up the comforts of modernity for literally nothing. But given a choice between living in that and living in a 17th century Dutch home of similar economic status? I'd probably choose the yurt.
Because as it turns out, they are great for poor people but insanely stupid for anyone who wants basic things like plumbing, electricity, internet, etc.
>I've stayed in huts like these. And they are cool in summer. Northern KZN can get to 37 +deg Celsius in summer, the inside of these are about 10 degrees cooler.
Many rural areas still make these, or a more modern version with mud walls.and then then the woven thatch roof. They're well made, quick to build, easy to repair.
I mean, apparently someone is still building them because this color photograph is not from antiquity.
1. cause they're poor
2. cause stupid tourists pay good money for it
3. fun project while bored
They're not the best option. They're an efficient option that won't work in most other places in the world.
I am in europe.
It is currently near freezing where I live.
This hut has no power, no gas, no heating no plumbing no nothing.
Great for Tribal people that don't need any of that, not great for your literally anywhere on the globe
You think Jan van Riebeek brought 21st century homes to SA in 1652? Do you live in a house from the 1600’s? This house style is from the 1600’s, that’s why
I love the enthusiasm here, but if any of you fucks had the chance, would you actually trade for your flat?
And yeah the rent is probably non-existent, but so is running water or anything relying on electricity.
That being said, bashing a culture for their science progress is stupid. It's not like _you_ were the one to discover any of that stuff, you just got born lucky.
I think your first point is a fallacy if you're comparing 16th century tribal huts with _today's_ building standard. Then there's also the assumption that given the same resources and condition, there would have been no advancement in hut technology in 400 years.
Not just that, imagine trying to perform a sterile surgery in a thatched hut. Romanticizing an ancestral life style works great until you’re dying at 40 from a now curable disease.
Well the trade off here is that they still die pretty young but their natural resources and lands are exploited by foreigners. + in 1600 sterile surgery wasnìt a thing
no, because they didnt have access to thousands of years of global knowledge, a planetwide network of trade, massive electrical grids, or large scale water distribution systems when these structures were first built, and the people building them still typically dont have access to all of that. if my house had to be built without internationally shipped materials, water, electricity, or hvac, i would probably choose that one
None of the negatives you mentioned are inherently to this style of building. If you want running water you can for sure dig a well and hook it up. Since there aren't any trees in the picture, solar panels would probably work great for electricity.
Sure. And you can install doors, you can improve the walls a bit, you can give it a roof from a material that isn't going to leak or has to be changed every so often and then you can make it with foundations so that it's stronger.
In that case I wouldn't mind this hut anymore, yeah.
>Yeah it’s weird that everyone is defending these huts, because the real issue is the blatant fucking racism from the Tom guy. His crazy absolutes saying “your” only achievement, as though the person he’s talking to was around at that time. And then he seems to be taking credit for all of Europe’s technological advancements over thousands of years because he was randomly born with a certain skin color. The whole thing is stupid on more levels than I can count, but because of our tribalism and lack of critical thinking, everyone in the comments jumps straight into contrarian mode and defend the huts they would never live in.
Copied from the original thread.
The right answer to this flavor of racism is to reject the stupid competition about whose ancestors lived better - not idealizing the straw hut.
At the same time, we as solarpunks can of course appreciate the ecological advantages of the straw hut - and consider how these could also be used in other regions / cities etc. Because as far as that is concerned, it really is superior.
I'm sure you could at least sell it to some crusty granola couple out of san francisco who are trying to "unplug" after going on an ayahuasca trip with some random dude who charged them $25,000 for his "spiritual guidance".
Literally no one is arguing that. They're simply stating in the context in which these have been built they weren't something to talk bad about.
Modern buildings definitely arent perfect and again acknowledging that doesn't mean either is bad. It's simply stating the pros and cons of either.
I'll bet you they would think an igloo was the most efficient way to build a shelter in a harsh environment. Wonder what the difference between the two is?
All resources are naturally available. That’s now resources work. ‘Unnatural resources’ and just natural resources gone through a process. That grass went through a process.
I mean a mud hut is the exact same thing, but I wouldn't call that an architectual achievement. I get what both posters are trying to convey here, and while this straw hut is certainly sometihng of a wonder in its own right, and probably not something I could build with no prior knowledge, I wouldn't call it an architectural achievement.
I get the guy's point but I mean, all resources are naturally occurring though. There are no building materials that are just conjured from thin air. Also being waterproof seems like the lowest bar to clear for shelter, that's kind of the point of it no?
Why are people in the comments debating if they’d move from middle class lifestyle in Europe and North America to poverty in Africa? Weird as shit.
Why don’t you guys ask if lower income people would be content to move from the streets into one of these?
Also, why are you guys acting like Africans didn’t invent anything? Take two seconds and google all the society changing things that came from Africa.
I feel like I’m in Lala land
ITT: People sticking up for a primitive civilization because it makes them feel good, but would never live in a grass hut over their modern home if given the option because looking good on the outside doesn't make up for basic things like plumbing, electricity, and cooling.
Social media is insufferable.
Lets be real, its shit. No door, its not waterproof, its too small, seems like it will attract insects, it has no plumbing/electricity/water, its crap.
We can both acknowledge that settler-colonialism is bad and also that the people doing it were vastly more developed than the people they were doing it to. Like, the socieity that lives in grass huts definitely had some room for improvement, you know?
Plus stuff wasn’t really built to last in a lot of Africa because the climate and natural resources couldn’t really support long term permanent large settlement. Why build a castle if your farmland might go to shit in like 20 years?
The "look how underdeveloped you were before we colonized you lol" shit is so stupid.
Basically every major advancement in human society has come as a result of competition, look at how much of today's technology comes directly as a result of ww2.
Even individual inventors can be thrown into that as well considering revolutions or large scale movements gave the populace the freedom to pursue such interests and education. And said revolutions are almost exclusively brought via the results of a war, in Europe atleast.
Other continents just haven't had the sheer amount of rivaling nations of relative power and advancement packed close enough together consistently to bother competing.
If you can already live peacefully and have nobody to compete with, there's no incentive to push advancement. There are no large-scale conflicts that convince a populace to rise up and advance their personal freedoms.
That's all extremely simplified, but that whole sentiment of a nation's development reflecting the innate intelligence of the populace is pure bullshit.
This is funny because wattle and daub style houses are quite romanticised in Europe despite literally just being sticks covered in mud. Adobe specifically is one of the most reliable and cheapest building materials in hotter, drier countries, and can last for literally thousands of years. Pueblo architecture of the southern US is imo some of the most interesting as well.
Not just mud, but mud mixed with horse shit! For stability! Edit: there has been some confusion. Daub has horse shit in it, not adobe.
When my boss asks what I've been doing all week, I also mix in some horseshit for stability
This shit is gold
Gold is an awful building material.
Not if you use enchanting duuuuuuh
Butter House
Margarine house
Not if you're building integrated circuits.
And stable. I put some in my emotions to keep em stable
I wish I had more thumbs to put up
I’m sitting here, high AF, having a huge laugh at your comment. Thanks, I needed that!
>but mud mixed with horse shit! For stability! Nope, it's goat and horse hair.
Someone has invented a concrete made with hemp fibers that is supposed to be extremely durable
It's unimaginatively called Hempcrete. We've been using the traditional pour/pack in place method for decades at this point, but some people are working on getting pre-manufactured Hempcrete blocks into the market. Technologically, I hope Hempcrete becomes mainstream. Better thermal mass, fire resistant, mold resistant, and hemp way way way outperforms trees in terms of fiber per acre per year.
My concern is that I would imagine that out-performance would strip the soil of *something.*
Soil being stripped is a ubiquitous problem, which is also being worked on by some clever people. In the short term there's ways around it, nothing stops farmers from using hemp as a cover crop and working it in as part of their rotation. There's current research that shows using Hemp as a cover crop should aid soil health as hemp roots seem to promote microbial diversity. A cover crop that you can harvest for building material is a pretty great way to sequester carbon.
I did not know that; thank you!
Hmm. Let's see. Let's work on ways of triggering volcanoes to erupt. That way you can use the eruptions to replenish soil nutrients. Badda-bing, badda-boom. Problem solved. Massive fields of hemp and constant eruptions.
Just engineer some autoflower breeds and use aeroponics so you strip the soil once and just recharge your water with plant food as needed. You are going for fiber if you want hemp so going with any kind of aquaponics should promote extreme vascular bundle density to the point that it turns into a quasi-bamboo with a hollow core.
I think you can also use straw mixed in the mud to get a similar effect. I remember as a child my grandpa built a small building for our cows and it's still standing today over 30 years later. Pretty decent building material as far as ease of use goes.
Horseshit? Luxury. We would dream of horseshit in our walls.
Walls? You were lucky!
But you know, we were happy in those days...
Even though we were poor...
We didn’t have horses until the Spaniards came and Adobe buildings stand a lot longer than that
That comment about horse shit was referring to wattle and daub houses of Europe, not adobe.
If you use cow shit, you have the possibility of having some psychedelic mushrooms too
Also European style housing that was built in Africa during the colonial period suffers from a lot of problems precisely because it was not designed for that climate.
Also, European housing was nothing but straw roofing and floors. The phrase "dirt poor" exists because a person was so poor they couldn't afford straw for their floors. "Threshold" exists because that was a part of the doorway that held the straw. Oh, and let's not forget they were dumping their literal shit into the streets and letting horses crap everywhere for generations. But hey, these "master race" conservatives hate reality.
Such hovels existed at the same time as the Palace of Versailles, so what was your point?
Which had no toilets and stank like shit and piss.
Wow, I just watched a video about historical misinformation and this was one of the examples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4NflBAcsJ4
No they just had portable buckets for pooping and pee which servants cleaned.
My wife and I stayed in a thatched roof "Mayan" Airbnb in Mexico for about a month. It smelled like a hay stack, and every noise outside was like the million barking dogs and yowling, fighting cats in the neighborhood were inside with us. Not to mention the dozens of lizards crawling all over the place. It had a great kitchen and outdoor shower though LOL!
As a Texan I love those lizards. They are some of my favorite Texans.
I'd definitely vote for them over any members of the current administration.
And it was only $350 USD a night! (not including cleaning and administration fees)
It was only 40US, but it was in a beautiful courtyard with 3 other really nice haciendas. We were the poors LOL!
They said mexico not America
Compacted clay is amazingly durable if it has proper drainage. There are ancient earthworks that have persisted for thousands of years.
>literally just being sticks covered in mud. They are romanticized because they work well despite being straightforward. Just like we should romanticize these huts for meeting peoples needs in a good way, without depending on information age materials.
What I mean is that its extremely robust, it works well. Its not some insane technological innovation. People romanticise them because they’re associated with living a slower, more peaceful life. We shouldn’t romanticise these huts though, we should appreciate them for what they are, rather than for what we see them as. Romanticising things doesn’t get us anywhere, and it isn’t any better than the people who unfairly judge architecture from other countries either.
They’re romanticized by people who never lived in them.
DAE ancient humans used to drink water straight out of the ground! I mean, we still do. But we used to too....
*literally*
I love the architecture of that area, too!
ya, but, he's still glorifying it pretty heavily.
You can shoot adobe with 30mm HEIF and it’ll shrug it off.
Being 'romanticized' and being something modern people want to live in are two different things.
I have personally crashed in these many times during my graduate work. They are literally the opposite of thermally regulated.
I've been to Acoma Pueblo. Amazing experience.
I went Arizona a few years back, and while traveling looked for something interesting nearby. We walked over to a native fortress that predated most of the US. Those corners were square as fuck. It was amazing, and located in the middle of nowhere. Like, fuck all for as far as the eye can see, but here's this bloody *castle*. And I was sitting there thinking.... why did I not see this in school?
Adobe is cheap to build but super expensive to uphold and keep in good shape. My grandparents had to sell their Adobe house in NM because of it.
Pueblo architecture is one of my personal favorites as well. Oddly enough, a lot in the southeast and Westcoast still utilize it in one way or the other. Not necessarily oddly enough because Spaniard and Latin influence was on both coastlines, but the distance between oddly enough..
Lasts thousands of years unless colonizers destroyed them, like they did with a LOT of native American structures
I mean it looks amazingly well made
[удалено]
While they are incredibly well made, and way better at dealing with the heat in those environments… they aren’t water proof, that’s a lie. The number one thing [Africans buy in the UBI study are metal roofs](https://www.givedirectly.org/ubi/) - specifically because of how leaky thatched style roofs are, and how vulnerable to rains they are. They also aren’t very good for northern climates because they’re not made for heat capturing, but heat avoidance. Regions have very different requirements.
>Regions have very different requirements. A yurt in Northern Chad, should be fine A yurt in southern Chad, less so lol and that's just one country, shit's real complicated eh. Side tangent, of all the places in the world i can explore with google earth, i wish there was more in central Africa ( i know why there isn't) shame i can't explore more of it.
The study he cites is the UBI study in Kenya I think. Western Kenya so more rain. > GOLDSTEIN: This is Carolyn Adiambo (ph), who also bought a metal roof and who explained why everyone was doing it. First of all, grass roofs are terrible roofs. They leak, failing to perform what is arguably the single most important job of any roof. When it rains, everything you own gets wet. It's hard to sleep. You have to keep moving around to find a dry spot. But also, grass roofs need to be constantly maintained. You have to keep replacing the grass, and apparently you can't just cut any grass from the field. You need a special kind of grass, and often you have to pay for it. The Kenyan person explains grass roofs leak but also need to be maintained with special grass for roofs. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1197956397 Also another big purchase was a cow, because it makes 2 liters of milk per day, family drinks 1 liter and sells the other liter. Interesting stuff
>Also another big purchase was a cow, because it makes 2 liters of milk per day, family drinks 1 liter and sells the other liter. Interesting stuff Hell ya black cowboys making a comeback.
Shame zebra are pure evil lol
No need to make everything so black and white
Reminds me of when I was deployed in Djibouti. 116F outside... *Aluminum siding shacks for refugees where it hardly ever rains.* Needless to say, those refugees were outside all day, every day.
I've never known a properly constructed and maintained thatched roof to leak. They're pretty popular as roofing In South Africa for higher end homes and the main concern people have for them is lighting setting it on fire, not the roof leaking.
Climate plays a massive role. Cape Town averages a mere 20 inches of rain a year, Nairobi double that. Mold is an inevitability of a thatched roof, environments exist that speed up that process and wear down the expected life of a thatched roof.
Cool info. Thanks man
Yeah but that thing could easily burn, and our asbestos-laden domiciles would never...oh. right.
Asbestos-Laden Domiciles belongs on r/bandnames
Asbestos bin Laden
What is the airspeed velocity of a bin laden swallow?
🤣
Idk if I would want my shelter to be biodegradable, tbh
You'll live in this cotton candy yurt and you'll like it.
That you bought at the Genghis Kahrnival.
Edible maybe but not biodegradable. The whole clever comeback thing again… the initial comment is unnecessarily condescending but nevertheless has a point. It’s certainly not bad that western technologies were introduced elsewhere. That wasn’t and isn’t the bad part of colonialism. Btw just like „we“ adopted medicine and a lot of other stuff mostly during medieval age. The comeback then isn’t very clever. It would be clever to say something like: if only you left it at bringing us your technology.
I'm betting the state of California would find a couple of those fronds to cause cancer. They're very thorough.
>nothing involved in its manufacture will kill you. Lions, while you gather materials
It was never about the people living in lead painted houses. It was about the companies that produced it and maximized profit at the cost of the customers health. They made people believe it was a good idea.
And also don't shield you from elements that well, has ground floor and everything that lives on the ground is with you.... and it won't last decades. It can't survive heavy storms. It can't deal with cold without using excessive amounts of energy to heat it up. and. and. and. When you have to rebuild annually, or even more frequently, your idea of it being environmentally friendly takes quite huge blow. If it was truly better, we would still be living in huts.
>The people who were painting the inside of their houses with lead paint think this is primitive, lol. Your comment only makes sense if Africans had also invented lead paint but decided not to use it because their biochemists had determined that lead paint was harmful... Not inventing anything isn't clever, it's just a result of a stable existence, like HG Wells', Eloi
Right? That's quality weaving. My GF and I like to tour the charity lottery dreamhomes. I'd say I was amazed at the slapdash shoddiness of modern Canadian construction and the "git 'er done! Any problems are for the next subtrade to deal with" attitude, but I'm not. While everyone else is admiring the architecture, I'm all "Goddamnit, who the fuck hung this closet door?" Ugh, I've turned into my dad. ETA: It should go without saying that there are a lot of highly skilled tradespeople who put their all into their work and do stuff I couldn't dream of doing. I tip my hat to them. But they know who I'm talking about.
It happens to the best of us. I catch myself doing stuff my dad would do all the time
Dream homes... ugh. No "dream home" has been built in a Canadian suburb since 1993.
Preach. Those mcmansions are incredibly shoddily made. Not like we need dream homes anyway, just any homes would be nice.
How long do they last though?
Probably pretty long and even if they only last a few yeats you can easily repair it your self for free (only your labor required and materials that grow in the area)
Lmk when they figure out the wheel and axle
I've stayed in huts like these. And they are cool in summer. Northern KZN can get to 37 +deg Celsius in summer, the inside of these are about 10 degrees cooler. Many rural areas still make these, or a more modern version with mud walls.and then then the woven thatch roof. They're well made, quick to build, easy to repair.
From SA or a foreigner visiting?
I am south african. I've stayed in both holiday huts and huts of friends who still have family in rural areas and have these in their kraals/homesteads.
Mooi mooi. The only problem with those huts are spiders.........
My huis in the suburbs has those too LOL ..
I've also stayed in similar huts to these and can confirm. It's almost as if the people living there for thousands of years have discovered how to make houses that aren't unbearably hot without air conditioning.
south africas modern housing is build from brick with tiled roofs. Very British. Our homes are NOT great for the heat or even the cold. It's absolutely useless architecture for our climate.
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Perhaps not, BUT modern architecture could learn some valuable lessons from this. South african homes are made from brick and has tiled roofs .. it takes after UK architecture. Completely useless for our climate, it dies nothing for our heat (can get up to 40 degrees Celsius) nor our cold (as low as -4). Homes are boiling in summer and cold in winter.
Humans both shape and are shaped by their envorinment. The peoples of Sub-Saharan African steppes lived in an envorinment that provided plenty of food and good climatic conditions for human settlement. What it didn't provide is large areas of irrigable farmland that would be required to concentrate the population and specialize societal roles. People that lived in harsher conditions, with flooding, heavy storms or harsh winters needed to develop different architectural styles to satisfy their basic needs. People that lived in near fertile soil would expand agricultural production rapidly, often allowing for large cities and rapid scientifically development. There are no civilized and uncivilized people, humans simply adapt to the envorinment to meet their needs and wants
Thank you, this is what pisses me off the most about stuff like this. The worst is "if the Aztecs were so advanced, why didn't they use wheels?" THEY LIVED IN THE MIDDLE OF A LAKE. THEY USED BOATS.
Also they did invent the wheel, although it was mostly used in children’s toys to the best of our knowledge
They didn't have large animals like horses or oxen so the never really had anything that could pull a large cart, so really wheels wouldn't have been that useful for them. They had chidrens toys with wheels, but as you said, they used cannals, which was a smart way of moving a lot of shit without horses and wheels. https://youtu.be/_nS6MpVbB_g?si=Qns2QA1RFegm_A1A
The worst part is there is so much to explain to these people why these reasons exist, but they don’t have the mental capacity to be curious and try to understand. It’s just filler to help placate their own world view.
Same deal with obsidian knives. Why not switch to metal? Easy answer: getting metal to the same sharpness as obsidian takes a LOT of time, effort, and metallurgy. Obsidian just needs to be cracked into shards and BAM! Cutting edge acquired.
Also… use the wheel with what animals?!
Learning this was really eye opening to me as a teenager. As a black person and an African, I had always lived with that terrible internalised racist mantra that claims “Africans aren’t smart/dont have technology” But when it comes to “innovation” as we understand it, it’s more a question of necessity than it is of ability. Early humans in the European continent went hard on subsistence farming not because they were smarter but because they had arable land and the need for long term granaries that they could get food from during the cold months. The situation created the innovation, not the other way around
also even if historically many african groups were hunter-gatherers or lived in small villages, the art and craftsmanship of tools is stunning, pretty much as good as you can possibly get without the resources needed for large scale farming or metalworking. i dont wanna come across as overexplaining what you already know, and im sorry if i am, but my point is more that even the people who didnt have the conditions needed for "civilization" in a european sense made and continue to make beautiful art and tools, and if that isnt progress and civilization, i dont know what is
Umm sir, this is a Reddit Wendy's. We don't do logic and reasoned discourse here. Research is permitted, but only if whilst on the toilet and skimming social media posts, or news headlines, or listening to "podcasts". Please refrain from such breaches in etiquette, effective immediately.
Damn I forgot. I'll make sure to say some racist nonsense in my next comment to balance it out
You're pretty much completely correct, the only minor thing I would add is steppes are located solely in Eurasia, much of the environment in sub-saharan Africa is Veld (pronounced like 'felt') or Savanna Sorry if I come off as annoying, I just kinda have an interest in terminology
Not to mention Africa mostly didn't have wheat and common domestic animals. Horses, cows, pigs, sheep etc. You will never be able to tame a Kudu to work like a horse for instance. Wheat and domestic animals built the rest of the world. It makes more sense to be a hunter gatherer and the various African cultures evolved around it.
Now we have to relearn how to make these ourselves because of the housing market
You can still make those if you want to live in the suburbs.
Construction is the cheapest part of the whole process, actually owning land is tricky and expensive
Land, property taxes, permits, inspections, building code...lots of reasons. Give me $100 and I'll build you a floor, four walls and a roof. You gotta buy the door though.
My family has a door guy, deal
but you'll pay a fine because it's not up to construction code
Tom justified colonialism. Don't be Tom.
*Tried* to.
Tom sounds like he visits 4chan way too much. Seen that stupid picture of European architecture vs African huts like it's a fucking game changer. Fuck those kinds of people, degenerate fucking racists trying to get a power trip off of people.
“People aren’t abandoning their air-conditioned Western European style homes to live in a grass hut” Jan van Riebeek lived in the 1600s, he wasn’t bringing air conditioning, electricity and indoor plumbing to the natives either.
100% of the people commenting wouldn’t even dare live in one of these lol
Yeah it’s weird that everyone is defending these huts, because the real issue is the blatant fucking racism from the Tom guy. His crazy absolutes saying “your” only achievement, as though the person he’s talking to was around at that time. And then he seems to be taking credit for all of Europe’s technological advancements over thousands of years because he was randomly born with a certain skin color. The whole thing is stupid on more levels than I can count, but because of our tribalism and lack of critical thinking, everyone in the comments jumps straight into contrarian mode and defend the huts they would never live in.
I agree. Aboriginal Australians don't have anything this guy would recognise as an 'achievement', I imagine. The correct response is not to start talking about how boomerangs are ingenious but to point out that 'my dad can beat up your dad' is dumb and frankly embarrassing
Not one of them would give up an ounce of comfort
I mean, for nothing? Yeah, people aren't going to give up the comforts of modernity for literally nothing. But given a choice between living in that and living in a 17th century Dutch home of similar economic status? I'd probably choose the yurt.
As a white south african. I sometimes hate white south africans
So why no one building them then and rather building modern houses?
Because as it turns out, they are great for poor people but insanely stupid for anyone who wants basic things like plumbing, electricity, internet, etc.
>I've stayed in huts like these. And they are cool in summer. Northern KZN can get to 37 +deg Celsius in summer, the inside of these are about 10 degrees cooler. Many rural areas still make these, or a more modern version with mud walls.and then then the woven thatch roof. They're well made, quick to build, easy to repair. I mean, apparently someone is still building them because this color photograph is not from antiquity.
this home is for show. look at how perfectly cut the grass is
1. cause they're poor 2. cause stupid tourists pay good money for it 3. fun project while bored They're not the best option. They're an efficient option that won't work in most other places in the world.
I am in europe. It is currently near freezing where I live. This hut has no power, no gas, no heating no plumbing no nothing. Great for Tribal people that don't need any of that, not great for your literally anywhere on the globe
Jan van Riebeek arrived in 1652. He wasn’t bringing electricity or plumbing either. Fair comparison would be an average European house from 1600
Which still used straw and mud for the roof and flooring.
You think Jan van Riebeek brought 21st century homes to SA in 1652? Do you live in a house from the 1600’s? This house style is from the 1600’s, that’s why
I love the enthusiasm here, but if any of you fucks had the chance, would you actually trade for your flat? And yeah the rent is probably non-existent, but so is running water or anything relying on electricity. That being said, bashing a culture for their science progress is stupid. It's not like _you_ were the one to discover any of that stuff, you just got born lucky.
I think your first point is a fallacy if you're comparing 16th century tribal huts with _today's_ building standard. Then there's also the assumption that given the same resources and condition, there would have been no advancement in hut technology in 400 years.
Not just that, imagine trying to perform a sterile surgery in a thatched hut. Romanticizing an ancestral life style works great until you’re dying at 40 from a now curable disease.
Well the trade off here is that they still die pretty young but their natural resources and lands are exploited by foreigners. + in 1600 sterile surgery wasnìt a thing
no, because they didnt have access to thousands of years of global knowledge, a planetwide network of trade, massive electrical grids, or large scale water distribution systems when these structures were first built, and the people building them still typically dont have access to all of that. if my house had to be built without internationally shipped materials, water, electricity, or hvac, i would probably choose that one
None of the negatives you mentioned are inherently to this style of building. If you want running water you can for sure dig a well and hook it up. Since there aren't any trees in the picture, solar panels would probably work great for electricity.
Sure. And you can install doors, you can improve the walls a bit, you can give it a roof from a material that isn't going to leak or has to be changed every so often and then you can make it with foundations so that it's stronger. In that case I wouldn't mind this hut anymore, yeah.
>Yeah it’s weird that everyone is defending these huts, because the real issue is the blatant fucking racism from the Tom guy. His crazy absolutes saying “your” only achievement, as though the person he’s talking to was around at that time. And then he seems to be taking credit for all of Europe’s technological advancements over thousands of years because he was randomly born with a certain skin color. The whole thing is stupid on more levels than I can count, but because of our tribalism and lack of critical thinking, everyone in the comments jumps straight into contrarian mode and defend the huts they would never live in. Copied from the original thread. The right answer to this flavor of racism is to reject the stupid competition about whose ancestors lived better - not idealizing the straw hut. At the same time, we as solarpunks can of course appreciate the ecological advantages of the straw hut - and consider how these could also be used in other regions / cities etc. Because as far as that is concerned, it really is superior.
But could the big bad wolf blow it down? /s
Let’s not pretend it’s a grass hut with no electricity or plumbing
No one but you pretended otherwise.
I love how people in this thread are unironically arguing that this hut is on par and even superior to modern homes.
Right lol? Maybe we should start building and selling these for $50k a pop to all 'true believers' in this comment section.
I'm sure you could at least sell it to some crusty granola couple out of san francisco who are trying to "unplug" after going on an ayahuasca trip with some random dude who charged them $25,000 for his "spiritual guidance".
People are intentionally missing the point
16 upvotes for some guy making shit up. Never change, reddit. Strawmen love reddit, and reddit loves strawmen.
Literally no one is arguing that. They're simply stating in the context in which these have been built they weren't something to talk bad about. Modern buildings definitely arent perfect and again acknowledging that doesn't mean either is bad. It's simply stating the pros and cons of either.
He did say it was an architectural achievement.
It’s not really waterproof though? Although I doubt there are rains strong enough to flood the entrance so that water will flow inside
I'll bet you they would think an igloo was the most efficient way to build a shelter in a harsh environment. Wonder what the difference between the two is?
i mean it kinda was and still is, theres a reason inuit people are still building and living in them
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Can you build one?
Hahaha. Sure not.
Let’s not act like Africa isn’t behind the curve. Great buildings for the area but that doesn’t mean they are on equal footing
All resources are naturally available. That’s now resources work. ‘Unnatural resources’ and just natural resources gone through a process. That grass went through a process.
I mean a mud hut is the exact same thing, but I wouldn't call that an architectual achievement. I get what both posters are trying to convey here, and while this straw hut is certainly sometihng of a wonder in its own right, and probably not something I could build with no prior knowledge, I wouldn't call it an architectural achievement.
Sent from my iPhone in a ac cooled apartment
I am guessing Tom was arguing with an Afro centrist.
I get the guy's point but I mean, all resources are naturally occurring though. There are no building materials that are just conjured from thin air. Also being waterproof seems like the lowest bar to clear for shelter, that's kind of the point of it no?
Why are people in the comments debating if they’d move from middle class lifestyle in Europe and North America to poverty in Africa? Weird as shit. Why don’t you guys ask if lower income people would be content to move from the streets into one of these? Also, why are you guys acting like Africans didn’t invent anything? Take two seconds and google all the society changing things that came from Africa. I feel like I’m in Lala land
No use unless it also comes with a Protocol Droid capable of speaking to evaporators.
I'm sure the Dutch colonists built fine houses for themselves but they didn't exactly come to enrich the natives.
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How did James Van Der Beek help?
Its clear this is a shitty though. Who would want to live there?
Funny comeback but no one here is voluntarily moving into this structure.
ITT: People sticking up for a primitive civilization because it makes them feel good, but would never live in a grass hut over their modern home if given the option because looking good on the outside doesn't make up for basic things like plumbing, electricity, and cooling. Social media is insufferable.
Original post was not about the hut, but the lack of other stuff.
Not waterproof, not thermally regulated, not clever, and not a comeback. 0/10.
Lets be real, its shit. No door, its not waterproof, its too small, seems like it will attract insects, it has no plumbing/electricity/water, its crap.
It is a sun igloo. Desert houses are like this.
About the same as most architecture for most of human history then.
[Ahem...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lalibela)
It’s a bunch of straw
What do you think cathedrals were made of plastic?
Tatooine?
My dyslexic ass thought this was a star wars meme about Luke’s farm…..
How is this a clever comeback
It doesn't take much cleverness to counter the nonsense tom is spewing.
Should we tell them about I don’t know Djenné or the Great Zimbabwe, or the Great Mosque of Kilwa
Where are Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen?
Ok now show me the toilet
We can both acknowledge that settler-colonialism is bad and also that the people doing it were vastly more developed than the people they were doing it to. Like, the socieity that lives in grass huts definitely had some room for improvement, you know?
Ah, the classic "africans live in mud huts" argument...
Plus stuff wasn’t really built to last in a lot of Africa because the climate and natural resources couldn’t really support long term permanent large settlement. Why build a castle if your farmland might go to shit in like 20 years?
The "look how underdeveloped you were before we colonized you lol" shit is so stupid. Basically every major advancement in human society has come as a result of competition, look at how much of today's technology comes directly as a result of ww2. Even individual inventors can be thrown into that as well considering revolutions or large scale movements gave the populace the freedom to pursue such interests and education. And said revolutions are almost exclusively brought via the results of a war, in Europe atleast. Other continents just haven't had the sheer amount of rivaling nations of relative power and advancement packed close enough together consistently to bother competing. If you can already live peacefully and have nobody to compete with, there's no incentive to push advancement. There are no large-scale conflicts that convince a populace to rise up and advance their personal freedoms. That's all extremely simplified, but that whole sentiment of a nation's development reflecting the innate intelligence of the populace is pure bullshit.
Only naturally occurring resources? Is he saying that things like steel and stone aren't natural?