METHOD OF BUILDING

1. TRADITION BUILDING
It is that mode of building that is most firmly linked with human life in any geographical and
cultural setting and which reflects the dynamics of that setting most distinctly. We can also
describe it as a system of building that has developed from the use of forms of construction
evolved by the traditional building crafts.
Factors identified as playing leading roles in influencing traditional buildings are:
i. Geographical location and availability of local building materials.
ii. Climate conditions
iii. Socio-economic/political state of the people
iv. Spiritual or religious beliefs of the people.
However, the term “traditional” is relative and should be defined within specific geographical
contexts so as not to be misleading. What is traditional in Europe and other industrialized nations
tend to advance in African and the developing countries.
Three types of building materials closely associated with traditional buildings in Africa are:
1. Earth (Mud)
2. Vegetable materials
3. Stone
A. EARTH
Earth consists of a mixture of soil types in varying proportion in which the clay content makes
the soil sticky while the sand content gives it strength. It is an extremely versatile material which
can be used to express a wide variety of shapes and roof forms ranging domes, vaults, shells, and
flat roofs. Nevertheless, mud surfaces due to the plastic nature of their clay content require
regular maintenance to prevent water sipping in through cracks. Techniques of preparing earth
for building include the use of earth bricks and swish puddling.
Earth Floors
Good and hard earth floors were constructed by beating the floor with a flat wooden tool, while
the earth was setting. Sometimes, earth was mixed with charcoal or cowdung along with other
small aggregates, as in Zulu houses.
Earth Roofs
These were usually flat, consisting of timber reinforcement in the form of mating of short poles
arranged in a herring bones pattern on top of the roof beams and plastering the lot over with
earth.
In Hausaland, roofs were also constructed in form of vaults and domes with arches reinforced
with short pieces of palm. In rectangular buildings, two sets of arches sprang from the walls (not
the corners) intersecting at right angles. In circular buildings, several arches sprang from equally
spaced points along the wall and intersected at the apex. The spaces between the arches were
then filled with short pieces of palm arranged in a herring bone pattern. A final earth plastering
was then applied.

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B. VEGETABLE MATERIALS
These were associated with the Normadic tribes, who by the nature of their lifestyle and
occupation – hunters gatherers, pastoralists and cattle rearers – needed buildings that could easily
be dismantled and transported.
The structures assumed the form of a framework of Loops and Arches intersecting at an apex and
were covered with mats, thatch, animal skin or a combination of these. Other buildings were in
the form of a covering or woven hair or the same covering materials mentioned above laid over a
framework of poles which were in turn laid across forked sticks.
Vegetable materials feature most prominently as Roofing materials. The buildings had massive
roofs of various forms of thatch received by earth walls, which were as low as 1.5metres. in
some cases, the thatch roof reached the ground, forming conical ‘beehive’ houses. Thatching was
mainly plain, although in some cases they were stepped. The mostly used materials for thatching
were reeds, grass, banana or bamboo leaves.
However, for thatching rectangular buildings, the most frequently used for vegetable material
was palm leaf. Thus, was prepared by plaiting the two halves of different leaves together to form
a stiff matt of about 1m length which was then latched on the roof framework.

C. STONE
Stone buildings were quite widespread in the four geographical locations of East African coasts
Abyssinia the upper Niger area and the uplands. In some cases, circular building forms, the
stones were either not dressed or roughly dressed and set in a bed of earth/mud. In other areas,
stone was used as a foundation layer underneath earth or earth brick walls. This sometimes made
up about half the height of the building. In many of these cultures, stone houses were sometimes
difficult to identify as they were often plastered over with earth.
In Zimbabwe and Rhodesia, a dry-stone technique of construction was employed, which
involved roughly dressed stone facing enclosing a core of rubble with the width of the wall being
sometimes more than 2 meters.
All the methods and materials of traditional buildings discussed so far refer to Africa the term
“traditional” is relative as what is tradition in Europe tends to be advanced in Africa and the less
developed countries of the world. We can note the following salient points concerning traditional
buildings in the developed world.
 They are generally seen to embrace any building that employed the services of various
crafts, such as bricklaying, carpentry, plastering, plumbing, tiling, slating, etc.
 This wide range of crafts involved goes on to highlight the number of skilled labourer
needed.
 Therefore, traditional building construction was very well organized, as a proper
knowledge of the sequence on which the various crafts are to be carried out was needed.
 The materials most widely used were bricks, stone and woof for the walls, while the
floors were usually of wood. The roofs took on a wide variety of materials including
slates, tiles and shingles, fitted on a framework of timber members. Windows were either
wood or a mixture of wood and glass with some degree of ornamentation in some cases.
 They were often localized to specific sites and built for specific requirements, mainly
shelter.
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  Traditional buildings have continued to be in demand in spite of the technological
advancement of these countries, mainly because of the little fixed assets required in terms
of machinery and plant, and the familiarity of the skilled labour and craftsmen to the
building techniques.

2. POST- TRADITIONAL BUILDING

Generally, post-traditionally building can be defined as that method of building that evolves from
a mixture of traditional building or construction forms with newly developed techniques and
materials of construction.
The inference is that traditional buildings have been experiencing a constant change due to the
introduction of new materials and the developing of new techniques. Again, this method of
building must be put in context, to avoid any ambiguity and misunderstanding.
In the context of Africa and developing countries, post-traditional or conventional buildings are
those categories of buildings that metamorphosed from the traditional earth, wood, stone and
vegetable buildings, as a result of the influence and introduction of new building materials and
techniques from the developed countries. These were considered superior in terms of durability
and aesthetics. They include sandcrete blocks, cement, and corrugated iron sheets alongside their
new technique of application.

i. Post-traditional Buildings in Developed Countries

Here, the most significant changes came with the discovery of Portland, cement and mild steel,
which made it possible to obtain complex forms, especially with the emergence of reinforced
concrete, steel, by its nature is produced as a pre-formed material, which lends itself to off-site
fabrication, resulting in skeletal forms of construction. Other notable innovations included the
cantilever as well as greater flexibility in design forms, due to the plastic nature of concrete.
With the need for more efficient organization of the construction processes related to these new
forms of building, the building industry became more specialized. In the case of large and
complex buildings especially, machinery and plants such as those for excavations, earth moving,
and mixing and transportation of concrete, were introduced into the building system. The post-
traditional building system has therefore been found to be capital intensive and as such, issued
only in buildings require specialized methods.
Though to a lesser degree, the services of craftsmen are still required. Apart from specialized
work in reinforced concrete and steelwork, the remainder of the carcassing and finishing work
tends to be caried out along craft lines. While making much use of prefabricated components,
there are not designed and used relative to each other to produce a rationalized system.
In summary, post-traditional or conventional building varied from the traditional form, not so
much in radical differences, but mainly in the scale of the work carried out and as a consequence,
in the use of expensive mechanical plants for many operations.

3. RATIONALIZED BUILDING

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This method of building is concerned with the application of the organizational techniques used
in the manufacturing industry to the construction process.
This approach to building derives from:- increase in complexity and size of buildings; demand
for more buildings of all types; and need to economize layout and reduce costs.

Essential Features of the Rationalized Method are:

1. An efficient layout of site: Advance study of the layout of the site is important, to ensure
easy flow of materials and orderly processes of work, with minimum movement of operatives
and materials, and least double handling during the process of work. There must be a good
flow line relationship between materials, mechanical plant and wok.
2. A practical, orderly sequence of work: The essential aim is continuity of work, because
lack of continuity, results in delays in productive time of labor and machines. These in turn
increase overhead costs. Delays often result when works of certain trades are suspended to
enable works of other trades to progress.
3. Specialization of operations: This implies doing similar works in series. It involves the
repeated performance of the same operation by the same operative or gang of operatives.
Such repetition of the same operations result in decreased completion time and increased
skills. The job is thus broken down into sections, each involving only one type of operation
or a group of similar operations. The job is planned in such a way that the same gang moves
from work place to work place to carry out the same operation.
4. Rational use of prefabrication and standardization: When used in a rational way,
fabricated, standardized components can reduce the requirement for skilled labor, simplify
construction by reducing the number of operations, and facilitate continuity in the remaining
operations.
5. Rational use of mechanical plant: The use of mechanical plant is essential to achieve
continuity of operations and reduce labor.

4. SYSTEM BUILDING
This refers to a method of building based on forms of construction in which the component parts
of the building fabric are wholly fabric produced and site assembled.
The components relate to each other only as parts of a single integrated system of construction,
based on specific building use types such as schools, hospitals, houses or offices.
i. A closed system building occurs when components for specific buildings or building
types are not interchangeable with components of other systems.
The benefits/advantages of system building are:
 Reduction in amount of skilled labor needed on site since fabrication is removed from the
site;
 Avoidance of delays due to adverse weather conditions;
 Reduction in the duration of construction helps to offset the high cost of factory production
and transportation to site.
However, to maximize priority, a thorough coordination of design, production and assembly
processes is essential. Close integration of factory production which site work is of great

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importance. The architect must therefore have a grasp of the economics of factory production,
understand the processes involved, and appropriately design for them. The contractor as well,
must understand the implication of a system, which provides him with a set of already
manufactured components, which he must assemble into a building, rather than himself
constructing the building from the ground.
Economically, system building is appropriate only to large-scale production and necessitates the
availability of a large market, which it can supply.

ii. Component (Open System) Building

In the component or open system building like the preceding method component part of the
building fabric are factory produced and site assembled.
However, this method differs in that:
i. The production of the components is not limited to a single manufacturer or developer; and
ii. Each component is interchangeable with those produced by any manufacturer.
It is thus a method of building which incorporates interrelated factory produced components
from a variety of sources and a relatively wide range of materials. It therefore operates within a
framework of coordinated dimensions by which the components relate to each other and to the
structure, in order to keep variety within acceptable limits for mass production. These stipulated
dimensions include floor-to-floor heights, floor and roof spans, standardized design for functions
of various types and agreed tolerances. Components exist for both frame and load bearing
materials.
Thus, the economic advantages of mass production combine with the greatest possible freedom
to design, to meet user and site requirements more precisely and over a wide range of building
types, than is possible with system building.

Types of Components (Closed)

A section is formed to a definite cross-section but is of unspecified length continuous process
such as rolling, extruding or drawing usually produce sections. Examples are steel joists and
tubes, timber section
A unit is formed as a simple article with all three dimensions specified. It is complete in itself
but is intended to be part of a larger whole. For example, a brick, block or sheet of glass.
Compound units are a combination of sections and units formed as a complex article with all
three dimensions specified. It is complete in itself but is intended to be part of a complete
building, such as a door and frame or a roof truss.