Bhutan - Lindsay Brown [58]
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Many houses are decorated with carved wooden phalluses, often crossed by a sword, which are hung at the four corners or over the door to ward off evil.
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The foundation is made from stones placed in a trench and built up to a height of about 50cm above the ground. In central and eastern Bhutan the walls are usually made of stone. In the west the walls are 80cm to 100cm thick and are made of compacted earth, which provides an extremely strong, rigid and durable structure. To build these walls, a wooden frame is constructed then filled with damp mud. The mud is compacted by being pounded with wooden poles to which a flat ram is attached. When the wall reaches the top of the frame, the frame is shifted upwards and the process begins again.
The pounders are usually teams of women, who sing and dance as they beat the walls. Although Bhutanese women are usually shy and modest with outsiders, they traditionally loosen their inhibitions and exchange ribald comments with men as they perform the pounding, which can take several weeks for a large house. Once the mud wall is finished, it is either left in its natural colour or is whitewashed.
On the lower floor, an opening for a door, and perhaps some windows, is left in the mud wall that forms the front of the house, which traditionally faces south. The upper floor is supported by wooden beams that fit into holes in the mud wall. Central columns are used to support the beams, because it is difficult to find a single piece of timber to span the entire width of the house. The earthen walls for the upper floor form only the back of the house and the back half of the two side exterior walls. The front portion of the living area is always built of timber, which is sometimes elaborately decorated, with large divided windows facing south. The wooden portion of the house extends out over the front and side mud or stone walls.
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Building regulations insist all windows in a building (with the exception of toilet windows) must incorporate a horzhing, the very characteristic trefoil cut-out at the top of all Bhutanese windows.
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Following tradition, and also structurally logical, the windows on the lower floor are small; larger windows are built on upper floors. In older houses the windows are sliding wooden panels, not glass. Above all, windows in Bhutan comprise a cut-out of a curved trefoil motif, called a horzhing. In Bhutan there are often several explanations for everything, and this motif is said to be either of Persian influence or simply a practical design which allows a person to look out of the window while the smoke blows out through the opening above their head.
An elaborate wooden cornice is usually built along the top of the wall directly under the roof of the house. Traditional roofs are pitched and covered with wooden shingles. Often the roofs leak because the pitch is insufficient or the shingles have been badly prepared. Shingles need to be replaced frequently and many people now choose corrugated sheet metal for their roofs. A feature missing in all Bhutanese architecture is a gutter – expect a soaking when you enter or leave a house during rain.
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Wooden roofing shingles typically last about three years before they need replacing, hence the practical and ecological, but not necessarily aesthetic, shift to corrugated iron roofing.
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The internal walls, and often parts of the external walls, are built with a timber frame that is filled in with woven bamboo and plastered with mud. This construction is called shaddam (weave-mud).
The heavy wooden doors are made from several planks held firmly together using a tongue-and-groove technique. This technique is used to fit together all the woodwork, and not a single nail is used in a traditional structure. The door hinge is a pair of wooden pegs that fit into round holes above and below the door frame.
A large space is left below the roof. This serves as a place for storing