Native American Architecture

By Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton

Book Overview

For many people, Native American architecture calls to mind the wigwam, tipi, iglu, and pueblo. Yet the richly diverse building traditions of Native Americans encompass much more, including specific structures for sleeping, working, worshipping, meditating, playing, dancing, lounging, giving
birth, decision-making, cleansing, storing and preparing food, caring for animals, and honoring the dead. In effect, the architecture covers all facets of Indian life.

The collaboration between an architect and an anthropologist, Native American Architecture presents the first book-length, fully illustrated exploration of North American Indian architecture to appear in over a century. Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton together examine the building traditions of the
major tribes in nine regional areas of the continent from the huge plank-house villages of the Northwest Coast to the moundbuilder towns and temples of the Southeast, to the Navajo hogans and adobe pueblos of the Southwest. Going beyond a traditional survey of buildings, the book offers a broad,
clear view into the Native American world, revealing a new perspective on the interaction between their buildings and culture. Looking at Native American architecture as more than buildings, villages, and camps, Nabokov and Easton also focus on their use of space, their environment, their social
mores, and their religious beliefs.

Each chapter concludes with an account of traditional Indian building practices undergoing a revival or in danger today. The volume also includes a wealth of historical photographs and drawings (including sixteen pages of color illustrations), architectural renderings, and specially prepared
interpretive diagrams which decode the sacred cosmology of the principal house types.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195066650
• ISBN13: 9780195066654
• Release Date: October 1990
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 431 Pages
• Weight: 3.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.4" x 11.1"

Customer Reviews

The Pagan Pope and 'Native American Architecture'

I recently found this book, a gem, in a used book store. The extensive research by the authors is an affirmation of an archetypal architecture or divine blueprint, that all cultures tap into. The authors without realizing their real accomplishment, have now given us a well researched document, a blueprint with which to compare the architectural archetypes. [...] Wow, 'Native American Architecture' is without a doubt long overdue, it is in fact a document now on record, that helps us remove the veils and see how EAST and WEST are profoundly similar, and without realizing it, this book can be used to build bridges too. namaste Rafa

Complete guide to North American shelters

This book is well written, and finely illustrated. Historical photos and accurate descriptions of the structures illustrate not only how Native Americans lived, but how they built their homes, shelters and camps. This book is valuable for the historian, survivalist and primitive technologist among others. Well worth the cost!

Elegant Survival Solutions

More than a testament to Native American artistic vision and ingenuity, this book is a delightful resource for survivalists as well as historians - and for those who would just like to find ideas for less technological ways of building simple dwellings. Well illustrated with diagrams, photos and how-to drawings for constructing shelters in many different climates and with various resource limitations. Excellent, fun to read and full of eye openning ideas.

Native Homes as Sacred Spaces

This book is an excellent bioregional overview of Native American structures. What I appreciate most is the way the authors have actually shown HOW the structures were made, sometimes in actual step-by-step procedures, which would allow someone to actually build in that style and using many of the same natural materials today. Another thing I love about the book is that the authors have sincerely tried to understand my Native American relationships to all the materials and the sacredness of the spaces we created. The authors treat that understanding with respect and honor. In this day when material resources are dwindling at alarming rates and the Earth is being devastated by the mindless rape of resources, it is a reminder to us all that we can choose alternatives to conventional wood-frame homes and return to more sustainable and natural housing for our respective bioregions. This book, though maybe not necessarily intended as such, is a hands-on, how-to book for us all. It reminds us that Native Americans lived in harmony and balance with our lands and our local plant and animal family for tens of thousands of years without destroying the places in which we lived. The photographs are instructive and beautiful and the architectural-type drawings are a delight. They make the actual building of these structures possible. I use parts of this book as required reading for all my students, especially my graduate students, and have taught actual classes using this book as the text, though it is not written in a "textbook" style. It is a very readable book and most useful for these times. I recommend it highly to all.