The writer of the article was bemoaning the homogeneity of American cities. He was sitting in some chain restaurant looking across the highway at a major department store flanked by gas stations, and realizing that there was nothing in sight that would tell him in which of these United States he was, let alone which city’s outskirts he now graced.
I understood his point. All Wal-Marts look pretty much the same. Pathmarks are difficult to distinguish from each other. Hearing that one of the new buildings in a burgeoning shopping district outside town was to be a Wawa, I was able to identify which partially constructed edifice it was by the framing around the front door. I also recognized that another unfinished structure was destined to become a Walgreen’s, again based on the position and shape of the door. Cracker Barrel’s restaurant shops are so similar that children often think they’re in the same one when they are hundreds of miles removed. Appleby’s, Lone Star, Wendy’s, TGI Fridays, Red Lobster, Friendly’s, and perhaps hundreds of other chains appear everywhere, each sporting a recognizable façade from Maine to Hawaii. There is this sameness to the country, at least in the buildings that dominate the roadsides.
Perhaps the author is older than I. I can’t remember a time when there were not such chains. I still recognize the familiar roofs which once covered Howard Johnson’s, and the spires that topped A&P Supermarkets. Yet I would have to agree that there is less diversity in the buildings we pass. I read about a gas station that was uniquely designed by an architect to fit the landscape in Fountainhead (a work of fiction), but I don’t recall ever seeing one that didn’t look like thousands of others. Sometimes the only way to know at which New Jersey Turnpike rest area I have stopped is to read the name over the door, and this despite the fact that each is dedicated to the memory of a different famous New Jersey citizen as diverse as Molly Pitcher, Woodrow Wilson, and Vince Lombardi. There’s nothing particularly distinct about most places.
I know that every city has its own features. Ben Franklin is visible among the tops of buildings in Philadelphia. San Francisco has the Golden Gate Bridge. Even without the World Trade Center, New York’s skyline sports the distinctive Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. These are remnants of an earlier time; but then, they are not so old, and to be identified with their home cities landmark features have to have been around for at least a few years. So there are differences. Yet there is still the homogeneity–McDonalds and Burger King, Motel Six and Holiday Inn, Home Depot and Seven Eleven, so many corporate offspring who clearly bear the visage of their parents. The more places you visit, the more they all begin to look the same.
I pondered this, and wondered why we would expect them to look different. After all, if Acme has carefully analyzed what makes for the best shopping experience for their customers, wouldn’t we expect that anything which contributes to that would be duplicated in all its facilities? The buildings all look the same in part because they convey brand identity, and in part because each company has determined the best design for its buildings, to be used wherever they appear. The question really is why we should expect it to be otherwise.
Yet it was otherwise, and perhaps not so long ago. Buildings in New England, whether homes or stores or offices, were distinctly different from those on the Gulf Coast. Different parts of the world, even different parts of the country, had recognizably different architecture.
I knew immediately that this was something I had overlooked in my own world designs. I never gave much thought to the general appearance of the buildings; they were just buildings. One castle, in my perhaps sometimes more limited imagination, looked very like another. Never mind that the photos of real castles on the wall calendar that graced our kitchen one year showed entirely distinct designs, the images in my head were all of gray granite with parapets and crenellated battlements. I had seen Dutch roofs and sharply peaked roofs and lean-to roofs and flat roofs, and even understood the structural reasons for each, but my game world houses just had roofs, and only if someone asked.
Thus when I asked myself why different parts of the country, and of the world, use to have different kinds of buildings, the answer came to me immediately. The answer to this is very like that to the question addressed in Civil Planning. Then we asked how to design roads that felt real, and considered the impact of geography and landmarks in the courses real roads follow. In much the same way, architecture at one time reflected the local conditions under which the buildings were constructed. It did so in three primary ways.
In our modern world, many of our buildings rely on steel construction; steel is seldom produced locally, but is imported from mills in such distant exotic places as Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Bricks and cinder blocks are frequently trucked in from elsewhere, and even lumber comes from far away for most of us. Thus if we’re building something, it doesn’t much matter what materials we choose; we’ve got to ship them from wherever they are found to wherever we are building.
This has not always been so. It has never before been cost effective to import building materials for mundane construction as compared with using local materials, because transportation was a major expense. Kings and princes, major religious orders, powerful financial institutions–the wealthy of the world relished the ostentation of erecting an edifice from such materials. Those of ordinary means could not afford such extravagance. Thus in most parts of the world, people built their homes and cities from the materials at hand. The proliferation of forests around the world made wood a very popular material; there are many places, though, where wood is scarce. Stone is abundant where mountains have been thrust up through the soil or glaciers have scraped the surface and retreated, and so is a common building material in such areas. Those who have metals use them, sometimes merely as means of securing other materials, sometimes for roofing or even entire structures, if the technology to work with them is available. Clay will make bricks; lime has long been used with sand and gravel for cement and concrete. When more common and practical construction materials are more difficult to find, more unusual materials are put to use. Eskimos built homes of ice. Animal skins have been used for tents, as have woven fabrics. Entire homes are made of thatch, grasses and other plants, and even in places having more durable materials for walls thatch has been used for insulated roofs. In the dry grasslands of the Great Plains, simple sod homes were built, cutting the grass from the ground in rectangular mats and stacking them to form walls.
Of course, the available materials have a tremendous influence on the form of the building. It is relatively easy to make a sloping roof of wood. It is a considerably greater challenge to do the same with stones or bricks. Sod houses don’t generally have a second story.
The sloping roof is an example of the second way in which local conditions impact building design. Houses in the Middle East have had flat roofs for millennia; people used the roofs of their homes as extra living space three thousand years ago. Yet in Europe and North America, flat roofs have been rare, with sloping roofs dominating and growing steeper in more northern regions. This is a response to the climate. Snow collecting on a roof during the winter strains the structural supports. It will tend to tumble off a sloped roof, reducing the weight. Meanwhile, the flat roof enables the homeowner to catch rainwater and drain it into barrels for use. There are many ways in which climate impacts design. Pilings are common in areas prone to flooding. Even today at the New Jersey shore, some of the homes near the beaches stand on columns, or have garages beneath and living space above, so that rising waters might not reach the people. Ancient nordic buildings had thick walls, small vents, and large fireplaces, often with a common sleeping area, all to retain heat against the frigid environment. Tropical buildings have light screen-like walls and many windows to admit any trace of a cooling breeze. Some places build to survive the most severe storms likely to occur. In contrast, for centuries tropical islanders, faced with fairly frequent and devastating tropical storms against which there was little they could build to withstand the winds and surf, instead built homes they could abandon to the storm and then easily replace.
Finally, local conditions affect building design through the lifestyles of the people. Nomadic families build very temporary dwellings, either of a sort that can be packed and moved, or of a type that may be built from local materials swiftly at need and then abandoned when it’s time to leave. Herdsman whose flocks must ever be moved to good grass are of this type, but so are hunters who follow the game and gatherers who move in and out of areas as seasonal changes bring rich crops or inclement weather. Even some agricultural cultures are semi-nomadic, such as the ancient Egyptians who retreated each year to the high ground while the flooding Nile deposited the rich sediment in which their crops would thrive once the waters receded.
In contrast, settled peoples usually build more permanent homes. These are the norm in industrial areas, but agriculture and fishing lend themselves to more permanent settlements, trading is enhanced by fixed centers for commerce, and even hunting and husbandry can benefit from some small permanent settlements.
Finally, in some places defense is necessary, against animals or people. This means that at least some of the buildings must be fortified in whatever way fits this people’s approach to mutual defense. The walled cities of ancient Mediterranean area kingdoms are echoed in the mott and bailey castles of feudal Europe and again in the stockade fenced forts of the American West. Not every culture builds such defenses. Not every culture perceives value in them, and they do not always have value. Castle walls of granite were of little use once cannon started tearing them down faster than the trebuchet ever could. Stockade fences were useful only because native Americans didn’t have artillery.
Thus when we build our imaginary towns, we should recognize that each may be unique. We should ask ourselves first what materials are conveniently available for construction; second, against what sort of conditions these buildings must stand; and third, whether lifestyles will make a difference in what is built. Grass huts and stone fortresses are built by very different people in very different places for very different reasons, and understanding this place and these people will point to a particular kind of building for each settlement you devise.
Next week, something different.
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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc. His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.
