Process-Preliminary houses

by Di Hu

Learning to use SketchUP (Figure 1):

It did not take long to complete the SketchUP tutorials, but I found that the program took a lot of practice to be proficient. I modeled some round stone huts and Inca style longhouses for practice. I spent six hours learning SketchUP to proficiency. Some of the problems that I encountered into were:
1) If I make a mistake, it was hard to correct it because Sketchup connected two surfaces if they touched.
2) Making windows was hard when you have a three-dimensional wall, you need to connect lines inside the walls in order to have a true window, and not just negative space.
3) I could make a hole in a curved surface. This posed a problem if I wanted to put a door in a round hut.
4) It was hard to move around inside the buildings because when I dragged myself around, I often ended up inside walls and lose my bearings.

Drawing Preliminary houses

I used the typologies of Tiwanaku houses found in Escalantes’ book (which can also be found in the Putucos book) to model the rough form. I used Escalantes’ site plans from La Karana for the dimensions of the house and the thickness of the walls. My first house was by far the most time consuming and elaborate (Figure 2). It had a complicated edifice with a step porch. I started with importing the site plan into Sketchup. I then took the rectangle tool and raised it up. I discovered later that this was much easier if I just use the pencil tool and trace the site plan. However, aligning the rectangles correctly took probably half an hour by itself. I worked on the roof and details of the house. To ensure correct dimensions, I measured the widths and heights of the door and roof. Everything was symmetrical and accurate. I even made sure the door was lower than modern doors. The door is just a little over 5 feet tall. After modeling the base of the house, I moved on to the roof. It was a frustrating ordeal. I made the roof separately and tried to place it on top of the house. However, Sketchup does not allow a smooth placement, and I struggled with the program for an hour. I did not add any textures yet. In all, I spent 4.5 hours on the first house alone.

I modeled four other houses in about the same time it took me to make my first one. The first thing I did was modify the roof on Figure 2. This gave me an idea to just make components of houses and then combine them in different ways with different modifications. This was much more efficient than starting a house from scratch. It also saved me from starting over when I make mistakes because I can just put together the pre-made components. Before, when I messed up, I often had to start over from scratch because Sketchup groups everything together once they touch. It took me just four more hours to make four more houses.

To find other dimensions of houses and the placement of the doors, I used Goldstein’s site plans from Lukurmata Structure 14, a Tiwanaku III house, and modeled the walls and the posts. Then I used the rough dimensions and the post holes to evaluate where the doors would be. I spent 2 hours modeling the Lurkurmata house (Figure 6).

Almost all the doors are trapezoidal. This is mainly interpretive. I used Escalante's drawings, but in retrospect, I could have made "T" shaped doors also. These doors are shaped like the Pumapunku temple at Tiwanaku.

Not all of the houses made it to the final compound because the compound we wanted to model was not an elite compound. This meant that I could not use Figure 2. Also, Figure 3 did not match stylistically with the other houses.