Post #95587 by Kava Dan on Wed, Jun 9, 2004 8:43 PM

Hip & Gable are western terms, so they wont help much in a search. The roof of the pic I posted is a gable roof. A hip roof has slopes on all sides, another popular style in the South Pacific was the conical or round buildings, think of half of an upside down coconut shell. There was also a lot of variations. Try typing in the names of South Pacific countries followed by house or home in the google "image" search. Another reason for the high roofs was that they normally had a fire pit that burned continually inside the structure for cooking and heat. Since they didn't have chimney's, the smoke would raise into the roof, The smoke also helped seal the roof from rain and keep insects out. They actually hold up pretty good in a storm and rain, a cyclone would normally level the house if one were to hit it.

BOT has great pictures of western Tiki building's and covers some of the history of the original dwelling's as well. Another book that might interest you is "Tropical Asian Style" it mainly focuses on contemporary tropical homes, but has a chapter on it's origins. There isn't a lot of information out there.

Below is a rendering of the house I'm building in Fiji, it's a contemporary design, but I borrowed from local Fijian "Vale's" and the Bali Pavilion style. The roof is a hip roof, the small house on the lower left is another example of a gable roof.

[ Edited by: Kava Dan on 2004-06-09 20:53 ]