Form: Foundation
The impact of climates of the site also play an important role on the foundation construction and design. As most of the countries in Southeast Asia have to face the monsoon climate, the house has to be built on the stilts to solve the problems from the climatic factors and live with nature peacefully. The first example that proves the effect of climate impacts is the Indonesian House. Indonesian House or Karo House sits on the wooden stilts on the stone base to prevent the termites. Moreover, the elevated house will be safe from dangerous animals, thieves, splashing of water and flood during the rainy season as the Karo tribe mainly occupied the land near the river. The house has stairs on both the front and back of the house for easy access and exit. The ground space is lower than the human height due to short wooden stilts, making it difficult to do activities that need lots of space. Another example of primitive solutions to live with nature is the Malaysian house. Malaysian houses are also built on the stilts to prevent the dangerous animals, thieves and add ventilation to the house. The stilts will elevate the house and protect the house from the flood surface. Furthermore, as Muslim men and women have to stay separately, Muslim women has to enter the house by the back stair to the kitchen while men will enter the house from the front stair. After seeing the examples of neighboring country houses, it is clear that all houses are elevated to prevent the floods that commonly occur in their sites. Last example that can show the foundation style to the vernacular house is Southern Thai-Muslim House. If we look at this house, we can see that the house sits on the wooden stilts on the cement base to prevent termites and help add ventilation to the house especially for houses situated on the hot areas. These stilts that elevated the house also created more spaces. However, the stilts are shorter than the average height of a person making the ground area very low, unable to do some activities that require much space, so, people usually use it for storage. The house has one stair in front, one more stair at the back for women to enter which are built according a Muslim rule of separation between male and female.
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