A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures.[1] In some contexts, "house" may mean the same as dwelling, residence, home, abode, lodging, accommodation, or housing, among other meanings.
The social unit that lives in a house is known as a household. Most commonly, a household is a family unit of some kind, though households can be other social groups, such as single persons, or groups of unrelated individuals. Settled agrarian and industrial societies are composed of household units living permanently in housing of various types, according to a variety of forms of land tenure. English-speaking people generally call any building they routinely occupy "home". Many people leave their houses during the day for work and recreation, and return to them to sleep and for other activities.
A growing point of interest is the energy consumption of a house; while many houses in Japan have no insulation at all, in Europe from 2018 all houses built should have no energy consumption at all.
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House derives directly from Old English Hus meaning 'Dwelling, shelter, home, house," which in turn derives from Proto-Germanic Khusan (reconstructed by etymological analysis) which is of unknown origin.[2]
Ideally, architects of houses design rooms to meet the needs of the people who will live in the house. Such designing, known as "interior design", has become a popular subject in universities. Feng shui, originally a Chinese method of moving houses according to such factors as rain and micro-climates, has recently expanded its scope to address the design of interior spaces with a view to promoting harmonious effects on the people living inside the house. Feng shui can also mean the "aura" in or around a dwelling. Compare the real-estate sales concept of "indoor-outdoor flow".
The square footage of a house in the United States reports the area of "living space", excluding the garage and other non-living spaces. The "square meters" figure of a house in Europe reports the area of the walls enclosing the home, and thus includes any attached garage and non-living spaces. How many floors, or levels, the home is will play a big role in determining the square footage of a home.
Many houses have several large rooms with specialized functions and several very small rooms for other various reasons. These may include a living/eating area, a sleeping area, and (if suitable facilities and services exist) washing and lavatory areas. Additionally, spa room, indoor pool, indoor basketball goal, and so forth. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such as chickens or larger livestock (like cattle) often share part of the house with human beings. Most conventional modern houses will at least contain a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen (or kitchen area), and a living room. A typical "foursquare house" (as pictured) occurred commonly in the early history of the United States of America where they were mainly built, with a staircase in the center of the house, surrounded by four rooms, and connected to other sections of the home (including in more recent eras a garage).
The names of parts of a house often echo the names of parts of other buildings, but could typically include:
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Some houses have a pool in the backyard, or a trampoline, or a playground. |
It is unknown of the complete origin of the house and its interior, but it can be traced back to the most simplest form of shelters. Roman architect Vitruvius' theories have claimed the first form of architecture as a frame of timber branches finished in mud, also known as the primitive hut.[3] Philip Tabor later states the contribution of 17th century Dutch houses as the foundation of houses today.
In the Middle Ages, the Manor Houses facilitated different activities and events. Furthermore, the houses accommodated numerous people, including the likes of the family, relatives, employees, servants and their guests.[3] Their lifestyles were largely communal, as areas such as the Great Hall enforced the custom of dining and meetings and the Solar intended for shared sleeping beds.[5]
During the 15th and 16th centuries, the Italian Renaissance Palazzo consisted of plentiful rooms of connectivity. Unlike the qualities and uses of the Manor Houses, most rooms of the palazzo contained no purpose, yet were given several doors. These doors adjoined rooms in which Robin Evans describes as a ‘matrix of discrete but thoroughly interconnected chambers.’[6] The layout allowed occupants to freely walk room to room from one door to another, thus breaking the boundaries of privacy.
Although very public, the open plan however encouraged sociality and connectivity for all inhabitants.[3]
It is believed that the segregation of rooms and the initiation of privacy may have been first founded in 1597, England at the Beaufort House, Chelsea. Designed by English Architect John Thorpe, he writes on his plans, ‘A Long Entry through all’.[7] The separation of the passageway from the room developed the function of the corridor. This new extension was revolutionary at the time, allowing the integration of one door per room, in which all universally connected to the same corridor. English-German Architect, Sir Roger Pratt states ‘the common way in the middle through the whole length of the house, [avoids] the offices (i.e. utility rooms) from one molesting the other by continual passing through them.’[8] Social hierarchies within the 17th century was highly regarded, as architecture was able epitomize the servants and the upper class. More privacy is offered to the occupant as Pratt further claims, ‘the ordinary servants may never publicly appear in passing to and fro for their occasions there.’[8] These prejudices between rich and poor soon influenced the integration of the corridor in housing by the 19th century.
Witold Rybczynski later states, ‘the subdivision of the house into day and night uses, and into formal and informal areas, had begun.’[9] Rooms were changed from public to private as single entryways forced notions of entering a room with a specific purpose.[3]
Compared to the large scaled houses in England and the Renaissance, the 17th Century Dutch house was smaller, and was only inhabited by up to four to five members.[3] This was due to their embracement of ‘self-reliance’,[3] distinguishing the dependence on servants and encompassing lifestyles surrounded by family. It was important for the Dutch to separate work from domesticity, as the home became an escape and a place of comfort. This way of living and the home is noted to be highly similar to the contemporary family and their inhabitations. House layouts also possessed the idea of the corridor as well as the importance of function and privacy.
By the end of the 17th Century, the house layout was soon transformed to become work-free, enforcing these ideas within the long future. This came in favour for the industrial revolution, gaining large-scale factory production and workers.[3] The house layout of the Dutch and its functions are still relevant today.
The introduction of technology and electronic systems within the house has questioned the impressions of privacy as well as the segregation of work from home. Technological advances of surveillance and communications allow insight of personal habits and private lives.[3] As a result, the ‘private becomes ever more public, [and] the desire for a protective home life increases, fuelled by the very media that undermine it’ writes Hill.[3] Work also, has been altered due to the increase of communications. The ‘deluge of information’,[3] has expressed the efforts of work, conveniently gaining access inside the house. Although commuting is reduced, ‘the desire to separate working and living remains apparent.’[3] In [[Jonathan Hill's book Immature Architecture, he identifies this new invasion of privacy as Electromagnetic Weather. Natural or man-made weather remains concurrent inside or outside the house, yet the electromagnetic weather is able to generate within both positions.[3]
In the United States, modern house-construction techniques include light-frame construction (in areas with access to supplies of wood) and adobe or sometimes rammed-earth construction (in arid regions with scarce wood-resources). Some areas use brick almost exclusively, and quarried stone has long provided walling. To some extent, aluminum and steel have displaced some traditional building materials. Increasingly popular alternative construction materials include insulating concrete forms (foam forms filled with concrete), structural insulated panels (foam panels faced with oriented strand board or fiber cement), and light-gauge steel framing and heavy-gauge steel framing.
More generally, people often build houses out of the nearest available material, and often tradition and/or culture govern construction-materials, so whole towns, areas, counties or even states/countries may be built out of one main type of material. For example, a large fraction of American houses use wood, while most British and many European houses utilize stone or brick.
In the 1900s, some house designers started using prefabrication. Sears, Roebuck & Co. first marketed their Sears Catalog Homes to the general public in 1908. Prefab techniques became popular after World War II. First small inside rooms framing, then later, whole walls were prefabricated and carried to the construction site. The original impetus was to use the labor force inside a shelter during inclement weather. More recently builders have begun to collaborate with structural engineers who use computers and finite element analysis to design prefabricated steel-framed homes with known resistance to high wind-loads and seismic forces. These newer products provide labor savings, more consistent quality, and possibly accelerated construction processes.
Lesser-used construction methods have gained (or regained) popularity in recent years. Though not in wide use, these methods frequently appeal to homeowners who may become actively involved in the construction process. They include:
In the developed world, energy-conservation has grown in importance in house-design. Housing produces a major proportion of carbon emissions (30% of the total in the UK, for example).[11]
Development of a number of low-energy building types and techniques continues. They include the zero-energy house, the passive solar house, the autonomous buildings, the superinsulated and houses built to the Passivhaus standard.
One tool of earthquake engineering is base isolation which is increasingly used for earthquake protection. Base isolation is a collection of structural elements of a building that should substantially decouple it from the shaking ground thus protecting the building's integrity[12] and enhancing its seismic performance. This technology, which is a kind of seismic vibration control, can be applied both to a newly designed building and to seismic upgrading of existing structures.[13]
Normally, excavations are made around the building and the building is separated from the foundations. Steel or reinforced concrete beams replace the connections to the foundations, while under these, the isolating pads, or base isolators, replace the material removed. While the base isolation tends to restrict transmission of the ground motion to the building, it also keeps the building positioned properly over the foundation. Careful attention to detail is required where the building interfaces with the ground, especially at entrances, stairways and ramps, to ensure sufficient relative motion of those structural elements.
Buildings with historical importance have restrictions.
New houses in the UK are not covered by the Sale of Goods Act. When purchasing a new house the buyer has less legal protection than when buying a new car. New houses in the UK may be covered by a NHBC guarantee but some people feel that it would be more useful to put new houses on the same legal footing as other products.
In the US and Canada, many new houses are built in housing tracts, which provide homeowners a sense of "belonging" and the feeling they have "made the best use" of their money. However, these houses are sometimes built as cheaply and quickly as possible by large builders seeking to maximize profits. Many environmental health issues may be ignored or minimized in the construction of these structures. In one case in Benicia, California, a housing tract was built over an old landfill. Home buyers were never told, and only found out when some began having reactions to high levels of lead and chromium.
With the growth of dense settlement, humans designed ways of identifying houses and/or parcels of land. Individual houses sometimes acquire proper names; and those names may acquire in their turn considerable emotional connotations: see for example the house of Howards End or the castle of Brideshead Revisited. A more systematic and general approach to identifying houses may use various methods of house numbering.
Humans often build "houses" for domestic or wild animals, often resembling smaller versions of human domiciles. Familiar animal houses built by humans include bird-houses, hen-houses/chicken-coops and doghouses (kennels); while housed agricultural animals more often live in barns and stables. However, human interest in building houses for animals does not stop at the domestic pet. People build bat-houses, nesting-sites for wild ducks and other birds, bee houses, giraffe houses, kangaroo houses, worm houses, hermit crab houses, as well as shelters for many other animals.
Forms of (relatively) simple shelter may include:
Houses may express the circumstances or opinions of their builders or their inhabitants. Thus a vast and elaborate house may serve as a sign of conspicuous wealth, whereas a low-profile house built of recycled materials may indicate support of energy conservation.
Houses of particular historical significance (former residences of the famous, for example, or even just very old houses) may gain a protected status in town planning as examples of built heritage and/or of streetscape values. Commemorative plaques may mark such structures.
Home ownership provides a common measure of prosperity in economics. Contrast the importance of house-destruction, tent dwelling and house rebuilding in the wake of many natural disasters.
Peter Olshavsky's "House for the Dance of Death"[14] provides a 'pataphysical variation on the house.
The house occurs as a rare charge in heraldry.
According to statistics from Eurostat, the percentage of households in various European countries with access to (1.) an inside WC, (2.) bath/ shower, and (3.) hot running water on the premises in 1988 were as follows:[15]
According to statistics from the World Bank and the Economic Commission for Europe (UN), the average usable floorspace of dwellings in existence in 1976 in various countries were as follows:[16]
| country | m2 |
|---|---|
| Austria | 86 |
| Belgium | 97 |
| Denmark | 122 |
| Finland | 71 |
| France | 82 |
| Ireland | 88 |
| Luxembourg | 107 |
| Norway | 89 |
| Netherlands | 71 |
| United Kingdom | 70 |
| Sweden | 109 |
| Switzerland | 98 |
| Greece | 80 |
| Spain | 82 |
| Portugal | 104 |
| West Germany | 95 |
| Soviet Union | 49 |
| East Germany | 60 |
| Bulgaria | 63 |
| Hungary | 65 |
| Poland | 58 |
| Romania | 54 |
| Czechoslovakia | 69 |
| Yugoslavia | 65 |
| Canada | 89 |
| United States of America | 120 |
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