Sources

Sources

Every dimension the house is generated from is below, with its class and its citation. This is the project’s honesty layer, and it is given a room of its own because a smooth 3D render implies a precision the sources do not have.

The dimensions

Bibliography

• depdikbud-papua · reference

  Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, Arsitektur Tradisional Daerah Irian Jaya (Proyek Inventarisasi dan Dokumentasi Kebudayaan Daerah, Jakarta).

• mansoben-1995 · ethnography

  Mansoben, J. R., Sistem Politik Tradisional di Irian Jaya (LIPI–RUL, Jakarta, 1995).

• waterson-1990 · ethnography

  Waterson, R., The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia (Oxford University Press, Singapore, 1990).

Which of these matters most

Nearly every dimension on this page is the author’s own. What the provenance bar does not say is whether that matters. Each row below is computed by rebuilding the house: one dimension is pushed 20%, and the house is measured to see how far it follows. Nothing is estimated — the figures are the difference between two runs of the generator.

1. 1bayLength32.00 mnumber of legs
2. 2bodyWidth24.00 mnumber of legs
3. 3ridgeRise0.48 mridge height
4. 4wallHeight0.37 meave height
5. 5floorHeight0.31 mfloor height

If only one dimension could be surveyed, this is the one. This is sensitivity, not uncertainty: it shows what moves, not how likely the value is to be wrong. The 20% is itself the author’s choice.

Invariants

There is no measured drawing yet, so correctness rests on structural truth. These checks fail the build.

• pass
  Bilateral symmetry about Symmetric about the ridge plane, x = 0; the legs are not counted, because each pole leans its own way

  904 points (95 of 263 parts); largest mirror deviation 0.00 mm.

• pass
  Every tenon contained in its mortise

  212 pasak, takik and tumpu joints; every one engaged.

• pass
  No joint spans more than one stage

  Every joint engages two parts from the same stage or from consecutive ones.

• pass
  Stage ordering, and nothing below ground

  263 parts, every one bearing on something already standing or on the ground.

• pass
  Mesh integrity: indices, triangles, normals

  1488 triangles; indices in range, none degenerate, every normal unit length.

• pass
  Zero diagonals in the whole substructure: not one leg is tied to another

  168 legs, not one of them crossed or lashed to a neighbour. This is the exact opposite of the Nias omo, which triangulates every bay of its substructure because a rectangle racks. Two houses, one problem — a ground that moves — and two opposite answers: one refuses to sway, the other sways. Both stand.

• pass
  The legs stand on the ground and are not buried

  168 legs, every one standing on the surface. A pole set into the earth has to break before it can move; a pole merely standing may shift and settle back — the same reasoning as the absence of diagonals, stated at the other end.

• pass
  The legs are very many and very small

  168 legs of 90 mm. No other house in this project uses a post that thin — the load is spread until each pole can be carried by one person, and the house is named for how many there are rather than for how strong they are.

• pass
  Every leg leans, and almost no two lean alike

  166 distinct bearings across 168 legs. The lean is computed from each leg's own position rather than randomised: lib/ may not use randomness, and a house that came out a different shape every time it was drawn would be a screensaver rather than a model.

• pass
  A clan house divides lengthwise in two; a family house does not

  Two partitions with a 1.00 m passage between them. From outside this house is identical to a family house — what changes is inside.

• pass
  Every joint is a lashing: no pegs and no notches

  212 lashings, and no other kind. A lashing can work a little without breaking — the whole idea of this building, stated at one connection. It is the only house in this project with a single joint kind.

• pass
  Thatch courses lap with no bare band

  18 courses over 3.96 m of slope.

• pass
  Every part declares the dimensions it came from

  263 parts, every one tagged. By least-sourced input: 0 measured, 0 canon, 263 interpolated.

• skipped
  Checked against a measured drawing of a real house

  Skipped. No measured drawing has been wired in, so there is nothing to compare against. This check will not be made to pass by weakening it.

What a check is preventing

Ten green rows are not a reason to believe anything. So one check is run against a house built to break it, and what is printed below is that check’s own verdict rather than a description of it.

Thicken the legs and the house still stands, still unbraced, still on poles that are not buried, still swaying when the ground does. Every other check in the pack goes on passing. The only thing that stops being true is that the legs are small — and once a leg is a post, the reason for having hundreds of them is gone, and what is left is an ordinary raised house with an oddly crowded understorey. Eleven houses, eleven rules that cannot be carried out. This one fails the way a definition fails: nothing breaks, and the thing has stopped being what its name says it is.

The second house is never rendered. It is built during the build, failed, and thrown away.

This bar moves as real surveys are wired in. That movement is the project's progress metric.