Research On Traditional Mountainous Architecture Of Western Himalayas

According to the terrain, India can be divided into three parts:Himalayas in the north, Central Plain (namely the Indo—Gangetic Plain) in the middle and Deccan Plateau in the south. The Uttarakhand is located in the north of the Himalayas and belongs to the northern India, with its north borders with Tibet, east borders with Nepal, while the Himachal Pradesh neighbors to its west and the Uttar Pradesh to its south. Its unique mountain terrain, extreme climate environment and forces of religion and nature together contribute to the state's special traditional vernacular architecture style whose formation process has reflected the strong environmental adaptability. These traditional architecture are based on the mountain terrain, have formed the mainstream context of social and cultural life, revealing and representing the essence of life diversity. The design and construction of these traditional architecture fully considerates the local climate and geographic conditions, acquires materials to the nearest and uses the localization technology to form a set of sustainable architectural system.The full paper is divided into seven chapters:The first chapter is the introduction, which illustrates the source of the paper, the research purpose and content, the research status at home and abroad, puts forward the research train of thought as well as the thesis framework and general idea; The second chapter illustrates the natural environment and cultural background of Uttarakhand, carries out the topic respectively from the landform, climate characteristics, resources and other natural conditions, so as to introduce the political history, culture, education, religion and other cultural background of Uttarakhand; The third chapter introduces the traditional settlements of Uttarakhand, focusing on the analysis of the various categories of functions of city type and traditional villages with typical cases; The fourth chapter demonstrates the traditional religious architectures of Uttarakhand, it's the most important part of the paper, emphatically analyzed the origin and development of the main religious Hindu temple as well as Various forms of temples; The fifth chapter focuses on the traditional residential architectures of Uttarakhand, analyzes the architectural morphology change under different altitude respectively from the three elevation dimensions of the Himalayan, especially the seismic architecture which made of stone and timbers of middle Himalaya in Uttarakhand. The sixth chapter discusses the traditional construction technology, systematically introduces the detailed practice between various of the traditional architectural components, highlights on the preliminary research of the seismic system construction technology; The seventh chapter shows the traditional decorative arts of Uttarakhand, vividly describes the decoration patterns and graphic evolution with various materials in graphic way.