Socio-cultural Characteristics of the Vernacular Houses

Human’s house without any consideration to physical dimensions and natural and climatic regulations is affected by the cultural factors of society, beliefs and the non-material needs of life, which give meaning to human’s residence. In residential architecture, socio-cultural factors, effective on people’s daily life and their living methods, exert some important regulations on the subject of house; therefore study of the characteristics of vernacular houses without cogitation is not very useful. Paying careful attention to cultural characteristics of the architecture of people’s houses and mentioning the functions of house with this respect, originated from socio-cultural characteristics, reciprocal actions and human relations, are the subjects of this article. Therefore the main question of this article is this: what socio-cultural needs have affected on vernacular houses, in other words, what are the needs of vernacular houses? This article which is theoretical with a view to type, in post-structuralism and qualitative paradigm and paying careful attention to daily life is in the theoretical frame extracted from the theories of Amos Rappaport and Edward Hall. Gathering the information of this article was based on library studies and investigation of field observations. The research strategy is descriptive- analytical. The article information was analyzed independent from numerical documents and in a comparison procedure. In this article, house has been studied from the viewpoint of cultural needs. The research findings show that selection of house has been one of the most important transformations of people’s life in pre-historical period following to taking an important decision based on settlement and is synonym to an existence selection. House is visualization of the view to life and is built in continuation of life style. Vernacular house, which is one of the people’s architecture, is the visualization of culture without any chapter and as well as being originated from social characteristics, has a key role in production and visualization of culture. Architecture of vernacular houses is the symbol of tangible needs and the society’s values and the people’s ideology. Reciprocal effects of natural, economic and socio-cultural factors on each other and on house depend on time and place and totally form living methods, which are some of the most important factors for vernacular houses formation. The research result is a statement of distribution of cultural functions on promoting residential quality, meeting non-material needs and inclusion of belief characteristics.