ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

The Desnăţuilui Valley houses. Traditional materials and building techniques 205called pirg 16 (the image1 b). This technique is similar with the technique ofcasting the concrete into the modern constructions 17 .The adobe (the earth-made block) was used for the construction of thehouses in many rural settlements and it is maintained until nowadays. Theadobes are pasted together with mortar made from loess and chaff. The walls arebuilt on a concrete foundation and plastered on the inside and on the outside (theimage 1 a). Because the houses made from adobe are not very resistant, the burntand the industrial brick came to replace them, helping at the construction of thehouses of the wealthy families from the end of the 19 th century. Towards the endof the 20 th century (after 1970), the blocks of autoclaved cellular concretereplaced the brick. The use of these new materials led to the disappearance ofmany traditional materials and techniques, to the appearance of some new typesof houses, and, through their shape and through the functionality of the rooms, tothe modernization of the Romanian village.The roof is the third register or volume of the rural house and was builtfrom different materials and distinct techniques.The roof of the traditional houses was made from two parts, on thehouses made into the ground and also on the surface-built ones, or from fourparts only in the case of the houses built on the ground’s surface, with an veryinclined slope, in order to assure a rapid draining of the large quantity of waterresulted from precipitations. For the “covering” of the houses were used, in thepast, the straws disposed in successive structures, the maize stalks, the sunflowerstalks or the reed.When building the roof, around the exterior walls of the house wasplaced the so-called cosoroabă – joined beams on which was placed a thicktimber beam called meşter-grindă. Over these two elements of the roof wereplaced the transversal “beams” which, usually, were covered with boards, in thisway forming the attic of the house. At the ends of each beam were fixed “therafters”, connected with the ridge with timber, and over them were placed thestraws or other materials used for the roof.The roof was modified along the time, many traditional elements fromits structure disappearing partially or totally. As a matter of fact, for covering ahouse are now used new materials: the tile (the most frequent), the tin, asbestoscementboards, tar paper.No matter the used materials and building techniques, the Romanianpeasant wanted to satisfy the material need and, also, to create an agreeableaspect of the house. The beautiful aspect from the popular architecture is in tightconnection first with the natural framing within the surrounding environment ofthe different component of the household, with the establishing of certain size16 Tache Papahagi, Images d’ethnographie roumaine. Banat şi Oltenia, tome troisième,Bucureşti, MCMXXXIV, p. 91.17 Ştefan Enache, Teodor Pleşa, Zona etnografică Dolj, Bucureşti, The Sport-TurismPublishing House, 1982, p. 75.