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
| Dimension | Value | Class | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.70 mIf 20% out: 2.16 m | Interpolated | Length of one bay. Also the length of one bundle of wall boards, because the house is taken apart along its bay lines: the plan module and the load module are the same figure. | |
| 3.40 mIf 20% out: 1.36 m | Interpolated | Half-width of the body. | |
| 1.70 mIf 20% out: 0.34 m | Interpolated | Height of the floor above the pad stones. The space beneath is used for work and storage, and stays behind when the house is carried away. | |
| 0.18 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Section of a post. | |
| 0.30 mIf 20% out: 0.06 m | Interpolated | Height of a pad stone. The stones stay when the house goes: they belong to the site rather than to the building — the only part here that does not travel. | |
| 0.42 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Width of that pad stone. | |
| 0.20 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Depth of a bearer. | |
| 0.12 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Width of a bearer. | |
| 0.05 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Thickness of a floor board. | |
| 2.50 mIf 20% out: 0.50 m | Interpolated | Height of the wall from the floor to the post heads. | |
| 0.04 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Thickness of a board wall panel. | |
| 7.20 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | The longest member allowed in this house: as long as a few people can lift and a road can take. It is the only figure in this project that is not about the building, not about the people in it and not about the place — it is about the journey it will make. This house is limited by the size of a thing that has to travel. | |
| 2.40 mIf 20% out: 0.48 m | Interpolated | Rise of the ridge above the post heads. | |
| 0.85 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Depth of the overhang. | |
| 0.09 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Section of a rafter. | |
| 0.14 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Section of the head plate. It is cut at every bay line, because one plate the length of the house would not go on the road. | |
| 0.19 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Exposed depth of one course of shingles. | |
| 0.03 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | How far a course stands proud of the one below. | |
| 0.50Moves no measurement | Interpolated | The share of a course the course above laps. | |
| 0.03 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Clearance between the frame and the first course. | |
| 2.10 mIf 20% out: 0.42 m | Interpolated | Depth of the front veranda. Two stairs bracket it, so it is a passage across the front of the house rather than a landing at the top of one flight. | |
| 1.20 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Width of one stair. | |
| 0.28 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Depth of one tread. | |
| 0.70 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | How far in from the end of the veranda a stair stands. | |
| 0.30Moves no measurement | Interpolated | Depth of the tested joint engagement, as a share of the smaller member. | |
| 1Moves no measurement | Canon | Minahasa timber houses are made to be dismantled, carried and re-erected somewhere else; around Woloan and Tomohon that is a trade — houses are sold whole and leave by road. The other sixteen buildings in this project are raised where they will stand and stay there; taking one down means destroying it. This one is not like that. | |
| 1Moves no measurement | Canon | The joints are pegged, and pegged only. Not a shortage of joinery but the entire argument: a peg is a joint that can be taken out again. Nothing is glued, nailed, or notched so that undoing it breaks it. | |
| 1Moves no measurement | Canon | No member is longer than what can be carried. The frame is a set of pieces sized to travel rather than a frame sized to the building — and its junctions fall on the bay lines so the pieces can be counted and numbered. | |
| 2Moves no measurement | Canon | Two stairs at the front, one at each end of the veranda. The veranda becomes a passage rather than a landing, and the house has two equal ways in — neither of which is the main door. | |
| 1Moves no measurement | Canon | The pad stones stay. They belong to the site rather than to the building, and when the house leaves what is left behind is a plan drawn in stone. |
Bibliography
depdikbud-sulut · reference
Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, Arsitektur Tradisional Daerah Sulawesi Utara (Proyek Inventarisasi dan Dokumentasi Kebudayaan Daerah, Jakarta).
schouten-1998 · ethnography
Schouten, M. J. C., Leadership and Social Mobility in a Southeast Asian Society: Minahasa, 1677–1983 (KITLV Press, Leiden, 1998).
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.
- 2.16 m
- 1.36 m
- 0.50 m
- 0.48 m
- 0.42 m
- 0.34 m
- 0.06 m
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.
- passBilateral symmetry about Symmetric about the long mid-plane, z = 0
1072 points; largest mirror deviation 0.00 mm.
- passEvery tenon contained in its mortise
20 pasak, takik and tumpu joints; every one engaged.
- passNo joint spans more than one stage
Every joint engages two parts from the same stage or from consecutive ones.
- passStage ordering, and nothing below ground
108 parts, every one bearing on something already standing or on the ground.
- passMesh integrity: indices, triangles, normals
208 triangles; indices in range, none degenerate, every normal unit length.
- passThe sequence runs backwards: nothing is removed while something rests on it
108 parts come off one at a time from the last one placed, and not one of them is still carrying anything when its turn arrives. The other sixteen buildings in this project are only required to go up; this one is required to come down as well.
- passNo member longer than what can be carried
The longest member is 6.80 m against the 7.20 m the road allows. The frame is a set of pieces sized to travel rather than a frame sized to the building.
- passEvery joint is a peg, and a peg comes out again
20 joints, every one a peg. The only pack in this project with a single joint kind for a reason that is not a shortfall: undoing a joint here may not break it.
- passThe stairs at the front: two equal ones, or one in the middle
Two stairs, one at each end of the veranda, and the pair is equal. The veranda becomes a passage across the front, and neither stair is the main way in.
- passShingle courses lap with no bare band
26 courses from eave to ridge. The shingles are the part least likely to travel: what is sold is the frame.
- passEvery part declares the dimensions it came from
108 parts, every one tagged. By least-sourced input: 0 measured, 0 canon, 108 interpolated.
- skippedChecked 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.
Widen the house and by every ordinary measure it improves: more room, the same frame, the same joints, the same roof. The only thing that stops being true is that its bearers fit on a lorry — and a woloan house that cannot be carried away is a woloan house that has stopped being one. Seventeen buildings, seventeen rules that cannot be carried out, and only this one fails at its ability to leave.
The house as built
Rear prow raised to 3.74 m
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.