Designing Ecological Habitats - Gaia Education

tHe 12 principles of traDitional builDing 57
courtyard. It would most likely be paved, with perhaps a few small beds or
pots for flowers near the dwelling.
7) Finishes Reflect the Use of the Rooms
Within the dwelling, if a richer household, one room would have better
construction and finishing than all the others, and its use would be restricted
to only special occasions. In simpler households, there would be only one
room, or only one main room. These principles even applied to hall houses:
the open frame would be constructed with the best face of each frame facing
the owner’s end of the hall, away from the entry door. The plan would be a
simple rectangle, or series of rectangles, with the only irregularities coming
from exigencies of the site or accidents of construction history. The most
important room would be the largest. Decoration will be graded throughout
the house, with the best mouldings and the finest finishes reserved for the
best rooms, and the best windows and the best window trimmings reserved
for the street front of the house.
8) Make 16-foot (5.5 metre) Rooms
By far, the majority of European traditional buildings are built to a system
based on 16 foot (5.5 metre) spans. This relates comfortably to a maximum
length of easily available timbers of around 20 feet (6 metres) – a standard
Barns in Bran,
Transylvania,
Romania.