ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

THE DESNĂŢUILUI VALLEY HOUSES. TRADITIONALMATERIALS AND BUILDING TECHNIQUESANCA CEAUŞESCUThe dwelling place or the house constitutes an important element ofmaterial and spiritual culture of a nation. A permanent residence for the family,the house is the place where the people, the family spends most of the time, theplace where the tradition is best preserved, where are perpetuated andtransmitted the authentic popular creations. Because of its interior and exteriorappearance, the house reflects the social statute of the person who lives in andthe materials from which it is made mirrors the relationships that the family haswith the natural and social environment.If we take into consideration what P. P. Panaitescu said, that the specificof the Romanian culture is a result of material way of living 1 , the rustic housewas and still is an important documentary source for the examination of someproblems from the history of the Romanian people, especially those connectedwith their origin and continuity. “The popular civilization must be regarded as alevel of development, as reflecting the situation of the social, material andspiritual life of a formation or a social group, creator of a popular culture” 2 . Andmore than that, the popular architecture might unfold the hidden spatial ideals ofa nation or of a collectivity, where the tradition is preserved better than in theecclesiastical architecture and more liable to be influenced by the historicalcircumstances 3 .Situated in the west side of the Romanian Field, the Deasnăţui’s valleypresents, in point of the dwelling place, an unitary character, with smalldifferences, specially related with the details, referring to some complementaryplan elements. The circulation on the water courses, along which existed anintense economic and social life since the early times, facilitated the building ofhouses that reflected the level of culture and civilization of the respectivepopulation, their moral and spiritual ideals, the occupational system, thedevelopment tendencies, the influences they had etc.The rustic house evaluated in time and space, presenting a great varietyof shapes, caused by the changing of the used raw material, by the techniques ofbuilding, the changes in organizing the interior space, in decoration and,1 P.P. Panaitescu, Istoria culturii româneşti, Bucureşti, 1969, p. 14.2 Gheorghe Pătraşcu, Arhitectura şi tehnica populară, Bucureşti, The TechniquePublishing House, 1984, p. 15.3 Ibidem, p. 16.ARHIVELE OLTENIEI, Serie nouă, nr. 21, 2007, p. 199–206