The book "House Form and Culture" by Amos Rapaport examines the relationship between house forms and culture from primitive to modern times. It presents numerous cultural examples from around the world to illustrate how factors like needs, materials, economics, defense, geography, and religion have shaped different house forms. While house forms list basic needs, deeper understanding requires recognizing the sociocultural insights and processes that influence them. Rapaport concludes by noting how modern times have substituted new mythologies for the old and stressing change, while traditional cultural patterns remain important influences on house forms.

1. Book review
The book “House Form and Culture” was originally
written in 1969 by Amos Rapaport and published as one
of seven books in the “Foundations of Cultural Geography
Series” edited by Philip Wagner. This series considered the
underlying theoretical constructs that have shaped, and
continue to shape, the built environment, including
religion, beliefs, customs and socio-cultural forces at large.
Rapoport presented neatly distilled correlates of culture
and house form with a large volume of cultural
illustrations from across the globe.
As the name on the book cover is also a presentation of
cross-disciplinary studies of dwellings, buildings and
settlements from architecture, planning and cultural
geography. An interesting aspect of Rapaport’s book is its
balanced view. The studies for the book have been carried
out consciously studying the designs without the
interference of artistically self-conscious designers and
only observing the architecture forming naturally from the
comfort of people, them believes, phycology and culture.
BOOK REVIEW : HOUSE FORM AND CUTURE
Published by : Chicago, Ill. : 15TH February 1969
150 pages | 70 halftones, 8 maps 2002.
Price : 4726 Rs.
The author believes enlisting the different form does not really tell us about the insight of
the process rather than needs deeper understanding. The list is formed based on factors like need
for shelter, materials and technology used whereas different house forms are formed based on
topics like economics, defense, geographical conditions and religion Rapaport concluded the book
with what he called “a look at the present “.
In this way, the book presented the relationship between house form and culture from
the“primitive” to the vernacular and 1960s modern period. Our different view of time, involving a
strong sense of its historicity, replaces the more cyclic time concepts of primitive man. The book
states that as a result modern man, particularly in the US, stresses change novelty as being of the
essence- a very different situation from the prevailing under the condition discussed in the book
earlier.

2. According to Rapoport, “modern man has lost the mythological and
cosmological orientation which was so important to primitive man, or has
substituted new mythologies in place of the old.” He also demonstrated his
balanced sense of judgment when he maintained that both
“primitive and modern” times have myths that may be different but are commonly
motivated by being by being “primarily socio- cultural,” however still claiming that the
“neglect of traditional cultural patterns may have serious
results.” My basic conclusion, that is the house form is not simply the result of the physical
forces or any single casual factor, but is the consequence of a whole range of social and
cultural aspects and geographical factors seen in their broadest terms