+ ORIGINS OF SOUTHWEST ARCHITECTURE + 

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GOAL
CLIENT
CONCEPTS
MATERIALS
VOCABULARY
HISTORY
PROGRAM
PRESENTATION
EVALUATION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
 

Taos Pueblo
Taos Pueblo

GOAL

The students may conduct research on one of the following forms of Native American shelters: 

pit house

residential pueblo

hogan

The students may collect data on:

  • form and function
  • building materials
  • techniques of construction
  • relationships to other buildings

The students will then use this information to write an imaginative story centered on the building and illustrate the story with plan, elevation and section drawings (Refer to the Before you Begin section).

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CLIENT

Hogan
Views of Navajo Hogan
A New York author wants to publish a children's book about the birth of architecture in the U.S.A.  She is collecting stories written and illustrated by children from your state for the chapter titled "Origins of American Architecture -- The Southwest."   As residents of the Southwest, your class has been chosen to write one of the stories.

The client wants stories about the Basket Maker's pit house, an Anasazi pueblo, and a Navajo hogan.  She wants each story to contain information about each building's:

  • description (color, texture, shape, space)
  • location in the natural environment
  • relationship to other buildings
  • construction materials
  • furnishings
  • inhabitants and their activities

CONCEPTS

  • anthropology
  • change
  • culture
  • geography
  • history
  • materials
  • religion
  • shelter
    back to top

MATERIALS

  • lined writing paper
  • black felt tip pens
  • large colored markers
  • colored pencils
  • 20" X 24" poster board
  • white construction paper
  • research materials

VOCABULARY 

ADOBE:

from Arabic at-tub, "brick," brick made of sun-dried mud, clay and straw.

ANASAZI:

from Navajo, "enemy," but commonly translated, "Ancient Ones."  The ancestors of the Pueblo people.

BASKET-
MAKERS:

archaeological time-period from AD 1-750; named after the earliest Anasazi who were noted for their outstanding skill in weaving baskets.

CLIFF DWELLERS :

prehistoric Amerindian people of the southwest who built their homes on rock ledges or in the natural recesses of canyon walls and cliffs.

HOGAN:

six- or eight-sided, one room shelter of the Navajo.

JACAL:

type of wall construction in which upright poles are chinked or plastered with adobe.

KIVA:

Pueblo structure used for ceremonies and men's meetings.  It may be entirely or partially underground, and may be circular or rectangular in shape.

LATILLA:

stripped saplings laid in either perpendicular or herringbone pattern between the vigas of a roof.

MASONRY:

construction of regularly laid stones or bricks.

NAVAJO:

Athbascan peoples who migrated to the Colorado Plateau and inhabit the states of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.

PIT HOUSE:

semi-subterranean structure with roof built-up of wooden cribbing plastered with mud.  It was entered through an opening in the roof.

PLAZA:

open space between the house clusters where public dances and ceremonies take place.

PUEBLO:

from Spanish, "village;" refers both to the communal sandstone and adobe structures of Southwestern Indians, and to the people who inhabit them.

SIPAPU:

opening in the kiva floor; place of emergence into this world of the original Pueblo peoples.

VIGA:

horizontal wooden beams used for roofing.

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HISTORY

In about 1 A.D., more than a thousand years before Christopher Columbus set foot on the New World, the Anasazi Basket Makers were excavating pit houses in the Southwest.  The Anasazi  ("the ancient ones") were the ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona.  When Viking explorer Leif Ericson sailed for America around 1000 A.D., the Anasazi architects at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico had already built much of Pueblo Bonito, a spectacular multi-storied structure.  Today, in modern Taos, Pueblo Indians dry chilies beside the same doors as their ancestors did long before the founding of the Jamestown Colony in 1607.

Early pit houses were saucer-shaped, made of sticks, smeared with mud, and built partially underground.  Later pit houses had a framework of posts and cross-beams covered with brush to form the roof.  A hole in the floor, the Sipapu, symbolized the place where the first Anasazi emerged into this world.  Kivas, normally round stone structures used by later Pueblo Indians for religious ceremonies, are thought to be patterned after the early pit houses.

In time, the Anasazi built pit houses above ground with an entrance from a hole in the top.  By around 750 A.D., the Anasazi began building different types of dwellings built of adobe (a mud/clay mixture) or terrones (square blocks cut from mud) used like bricks.  When possible, a framework of slender upright poles plastered with mud (called jacal) was also used.

When sandstone was plentiful, dwellings were built of stone masonry, often around a central plaza.  Vigas  (wooden beams) formed the roof, small saplings (latillas) were laid between the vigas, followed by layers of twigs, reeds, mud, and finally topped with dry earth.  Anasazi Cliff Dwellers build multi-storied stone structures, reached by ladders, near or under overhanging cliffs at Mesa Verde and other sites.

Modern day Pueblo people inherited the architectural viewpoint of their Anasazi forefathers:

  • effective use of native materials
  • energy conservation in transporting materials
  • energy conservation in heating and cooling
  • harmony with the environment, conservation and stewardship
  • design with a broader world-view
  • All space is sacred; each house is a small example of the larger world.

Sharing the region with the Anasazi were the Navajo.  Navajo hogans have taken several forms, from the early "forked stick" hogans with interlocking poles to the circular, stone-walled dwellings with log roofs.  Later hogans were often flat roofed, earth-covered square structures of four poles or they were six- or even eight-sided with notched logs forming their circular shape.  All hogans have a smoke hole in the roof and the door always faces to the east.  A blessing rite, where sacred corn pollen is smeared along the hogan poles, is performed to insure that a new hogan will be a happy place.

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Pueblo Bonito
Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, A.D. 950-1150
 
PROGRAM

Native American architecture is a living architecture.  Like the materials from which they are built, the pueblo and the hogan have lives of their own.  To better understand this, the students can:

  • Study Native American architectural forms. (Research sources are listed in the bibliography below.)  Students living in the Southwest will benefit from visiting a modern Pueblo, one of many Anasazi archaeological monuments, or the hogans in the Navajo Nation.
  • Write an imaginative story to take place in and around the building.  The students may choose to put themselves in the stories.  The finished stories should be written carefully on notebook paper or typed on a typewriter or computer.
  • Execute plan, elevation, and section drawings to illustrate their stories.  Care should be taken to render these drawings as accurately as possible and label them clearly in all capital letters.

The students' stories and Illustrations could then be submitted to be included in our website.

PRESENTATION AND EVALUATION

Display your students' projects on 20" X 24" poster board.  The plan, elevation, and section drawings should be arranged on the top half of the board, and the written story should be attached to the bottom half.  Each of these oversized "pages" can then be taped together to form a free-standing, accordion-fold "book."   The "book" could then be exhibited along a wall of the classroom or freestanding on a table in the school library.

Have your students tell their stories to the class, to friends and to their parents. Each student should explain why he or she chose their building.  Did the students include the required information in their story?  Are the illustrations accurately drawn?

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

  1. * Buff, Mary and Conrad.  Hah-Nee of the Cliff Dwellers.  Houghton Mifflin Co.: Boston, 1956.
  2. * Bulla, Clyde Robert.  Eagle Feather.  Thomas Y. Crowell Co.: New York, 1953.
  3. * Elting, Mary and Michael Folsom.  The Secret Story of Pueblo Bonito.  Harvey House, Inc.: New York, 1963.
  4. * Garaway, Margaret Kahn.  The Old Hogan.  Mesa Verde Press: Cortez, CO, 1986.
  5. Judd, Neil M.  Architecture of Pueblo Bonito, Smithsonian Institution, Miscellaneous Collection, vol. 147, no.1: Washington, DC, 1964.
  6. Muench, David and Donald G. Pike.  Anasazi, Ancient People of the Rock.  American West Publishing Co.: Palo Alto, CA  1974.
  7. Nabakov, Peter.  Native American Architecture.  Oxford University Press: Oxford, England, 1988.
  8. Navajo Curriculum Center.  Navajo History, vol. 1.  Navajo Community College Press: Many Farms, AZ, 1971.
  9. Ortiz, Alfonso, ed. New Perspectives on the Pueblos.  University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque, NM  1972.
  10. * Yue, Charlotte and David.  The Pueblo.  Houghton Mifflin Co.: Boston, MA, 1986.

*  Suitable for Children

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For additional evaluation of your students' projects, see the  EVALUATION FORM AND RATING SCALE .

display a printable page

 

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