ABSTRACT
Every building is a constructed compromise, and this is particularly evident in vernacular architecture: “architecture without architects” (Rudofsky 1987). All architecture must balance multiple factors such as material limits, engineering constraints, construction costs, culturally defined aesthetic and symbolic contexts, activity limits, and so on (Rapoport 1969). Amos Rapoport has observed:
The organization of the [built] environment is . . . the result of the application of sets of rules that reflect differing concepts of environmental quality. Design can hence be seen as an attempt to give form of expression to some image of an ideal environment, to make actual and ideal environments congruent. This involves ideas of environmental quality which are extremely complex and variable and cannot be assumed a priori but need to be discovered.
