Khaim

The Becking and Dairam headwaters, South Papua

A khaim is a Korowai house, standing high above the forest floor in the Becking and Dairam headwaters. What carries it is usually a living tree: a wanbon topped off at floor height, its roots still in the ground, its shoots still growing, and the house built around what is left. Three things make it worth building here. Part of its structure is alive — the only one in the collection, and the first real test of the assumption that a part, once placed, stays as placed. Its height is the point of the building rather than a consequence of something else, so the empty air under the floor is part of the house. And its hearths hang in openings so they can be cut loose and dropped, which requires the floor to be open under every fire. The sun in this model is computed for Yaniruma, 5.28° S and 139.66° E.

The most widely circulated figure about this building is the one to distrust. Houses of twenty-five to fifty metres are reported, and some genuinely exist, but an everyday Korowai house is far lower — a few metres to a dozen or so — and some of the tallest were built for a camera rather than to be lived in. The three heights here are the author’s reading of that range and not one of them comes from a measurement. Beyond that: the trunk is modelled as a square section; its taper and diameter are the author’s and in fact differ from tree to tree in the same settlement; carving and household equipment are not modelled; and the sources on this building are rich on how a house is used and thin on how it is dimensioned — so every metre in this pack is an interpretation, without exception.