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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.72 mIf 20% out: 0.34 m | Interpolated | Length of an adult lying down. Not from a source about the Orang Rimba — its own source key so that this shows. It is the first body figure in this project to set a plan rather than a height. | |
| 0.46 mIf 20% out: 0.37 m | Interpolated | Shoulder width of an adult. | |
| 0.12 mIf 20% out: 0.07 m | Interpolated | The gap between people lying side by side. | |
| 0.35 mIf 20% out: 0.14 m | Interpolated | Floor left over beyond the row of sleepers. | |
| 4.40 mIf 20% out: 0.88 m | Interpolated | The longest pole that can be cut nearby and carried to the spot by hand by one or two people. It bounds the whole building: nothing here is sawn, hauled or bought. | |
| 0.08 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Section of a pole. | |
| 0.42 mIf 20% out: 0.08 m | Interpolated | Height of the floor above the forest floor, on the raised form. | |
| 0.05 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Thickness of the floor of split poles. | |
| 1.65 mIf 20% out: 0.33 m | Interpolated | Height of the high edge of the roof above the floor: enough to sit and work under, and no more. | |
| 0.75 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Fall of the roof from its high edge to its low one, on the overnight kind. | |
| 1.05 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Fall of the roof on the seasonal kind: steeper, because a season of rain is not a night of it. | |
| 0.50 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Overhang on the low side, which is all there is against blown rain. | |
| 0.11 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Thickness of the leaf covering. | |
| 0.07 mIf 20% out: 0.03 m | Interpolated | Section of a roof edge pole. | |
| 0.55 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Spacing of the rafters. | |
| 0.50 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Side of the fire on the ground, beside the floor rather than on it. | |
| 0.10 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Height of the wood and ash of the fire. | |
| 22.00 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Distance to the previous shelter, left standing. Melangun means going and not returning to the place; what is left is neither dismantled nor burned. | |
| 7.00 mMoves no measurement | Interpolated | Radius of the roughly cleared ground around a sudung. | |
| 0.30Moves no measurement | Interpolated | Depth of the tested joint engagement, as a share of the smaller member. | |
| 1Moves no measurement | Canon | When somebody dies, their family leaves the place and does not return: that is melangun. The shelter is not dismantled, not burned and not inherited — it is left standing and the forest takes it back. Three other buildings here also end: a bade is burned the same afternoon, a woloan house is unpegged and carried away, a waruga is made never to move at all. This one ends on a day nobody chooses. | |
| 1Moves no measurement | Canon | The plan is a row of people lying side by side. Four other packs in this project measure a human body — a bale’s standing owner, a waruga’s folded dead, a body that must not fit through a bhaga’s door, a body stooping into an ume kbubu — and all four measure a height. This one measures people lying down, and it is the first body figure here that sets a plan. | |
| 1Moves no measurement | Canon | Nothing is sawn, hauled or bought. Every pole is cut near where the shelter stands and carried by hand, so the size of this building is bounded by an arm and an afternoon. The woloan house is bounded by the length of a lorry and the Baduy imah by the length of a pole that may not be spliced; this one by what a person can pick up. | |
| 0Moves no measurement | Canon | Zero pegs, zero nails, zero buried posts. Everything is lashed with rattan and stands on the ground, because a building that has to be walkable-away-from cannot hold anything valuable inside itself. |
Bibliography
sandbukt-1988 · ethnography
Sandbukt, Ø., “Resource Constraints and Relations of Appropriation among Tropical Forest Foragers: The Case of the Sumatran Kubu”, Research in Economic Anthropology 10, 1988.
prasetijo-2011 · ethnography
Prasetijo, A., Orang Rimba: True Custodian of the Forest (Ekonesia, Jakarta, 2011).
depdikbud-1986 · reference
Arsitektur Tradisional Daerah Jambi (Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, Jakarta, 1986).
anthropometry · none
Ukuran tubuh manusia yang ditetapkan penulis, bukan dari sumber tentang Orang Rimba. Kunci yang sama dipakai pak Bali, Waruga, Ngada, dan Atoni.
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.
- 0.88 m
- 0.37 m
- 0.34 m
- 0.33 m
- 0.14 m
- 0.08 m
- 0.07 m
- 0.03 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 z = 0, across the row of sleepers — and deliberately not so along the fall of the roof
120 points; largest mirror deviation 0.00 mm.
- passEvery tenon contained in its mortise
3 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
15 parts, every one bearing on something already standing or on the ground.
- passMesh integrity: indices, triangles, normals
0 triangles; indices in range, none degenerate, every normal unit length.
- passThe floor is a row of sleeping bodies, and they fit
4 people lying side by side need 2.20 m, and the floor is 2.90 m × 2.42 m. Four other packs here measure a human body and all four measure a height; this one measures a width.
- passNothing in it is longer than a person can carry
The longest member is 3.04 m against the 4.40 m that can be cut nearby and carried by hand. The woloan house is bounded by the length of a lorry and the Baduy imah by a pole that may not be spliced; this one by what a person can pick up — and that bound comes closer every time one more person has to sleep under it.
- passNothing is pegged, nailed or buried
3 joints and every one a rattan lashing; zero buried posts; 3 materials and all of them were standing in that forest an hour before the building was. A shelter that has to be left on the day somebody dies cannot hold anything anybody would come back for.
- passEvery part declares the dimensions it came from
15 parts, every one tagged. By least-sourced input: 0 measured, 0 canon, 15 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.
Giving everybody a little more room to sleep is not an indulgence; it is the first thing a family of six would change. And no part of the building becomes wrong: it still stands, the roof still falls one way, the floor still holds everybody, nothing is pegged or buried, and it still goes up in an afternoon. What breaks is the edge pole across the front — it is now longer than anything that can be cut nearby and carried by hand, so the shelter that would be better to sleep in is a shelter that cannot be built where it is needed.
The house as built
Rear prow raised to 0.16 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.