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

• singarimbun-1975 · ethnography

  Singarimbun, M., Kinship, Descent and Alliance among the Karo Batak (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1975).

• domenig-2014 · ethnography

  Domenig, G., Religion und Architektur im westlichen Indonesien (Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 2014).

• depdikbud-sumut · reference

  Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, Arsitektur Tradisional Daerah Sumatera Utara (Proyek Inventarisasi dan Dokumentasi Kebudayaan Daerah, Jakarta).

• 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. 1bayLength2.48 mlength of the room
2. 2halfWidth1.44 mwidth of the room
3. 3ridgeRise0.78 mheight of the ridge
4. 4floorHeight0.37 mheight of the floor
5. 5wallHeight0.31 mheight of the ridge
6. 6hearthRadius0.11 mgap from a hearth to the nearest wall
7. 7stoneHeight0.06 mheight of the floor

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 long mid-plane, z = 0 — and deliberately not along its length

  896 points; largest mirror deviation 0.00 mm.

• pass
  Every tenon contained in its mortise

  20 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

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

• pass
  Mesh integrity: indices, triangles, normals

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

• pass
  No partitions: one room for every household

  8 households in one room 12.4 × 7.2 m, and not one board stands between them. A rumah betang gives each household a room of its own; the difference between the two buildings is exactly the board that is not here.

• pass
  One hearth to every two households, one on each side of it

  4 hearths for 8 households. Cooking is a matter for two, and what arranges it is where the fire is.

• pass
  Every hearth stands clear of every post and wall

  The tightest gap is 1.05 m against the 0.85 m required. This check exists because there are no partitions: in a rumah betang each fire is inside its own bilik, here what keeps it off a post is distance.

• pass
  The senior place is at the root end of the timber, and the order runs from there

  8 places, ordered from Jabu bena kayu — the base-of-the-tree place at the root end to Jabu ujung kayu — the tip place at the tip. The order of standing in this house is oriented by the direction a tree grew.

• pass
  Ijuk courses lap with no bare band

  27 courses from eave to ridge, over a low body and leaning walls.

• pass
  Every part declares the dimensions it came from

  84 parts, every one tagged. By least-sourced input: 0 measured, 0 canon, 84 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.

Grow the hearth and nothing about the building changes: the room is still one room, the eight places are still in their places, the order still runs from the root end, the roof still laps. What happens is that an open fire reaches a timber post inside a building with no partition anywhere to stop it. Eighteen buildings, eighteen rules that cannot be carried out — and this one fails for exactly the reason it was worth building: with no partitions, the only safety left is distance.

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.