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Item The Lamu house - an East African architectural enigma.(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2001-01-02) Steyn, GeraldLamu is a living town off the Kenya coast. It was recently nominated to the World Heritage List. The town has been relatively undisturbed by colonization and modernization. This study reports on the early Swahili dwelling, which is still a functioning type in Lamu. It commences with a brief historical perspective of Lamu in its Swahili and East African coastal setting. It compares descriptions of the Lamu house, as found in literature, with personal observations and field surveys, including a short description of construction methods. The study offers observations on conservation and the current state of the Lamu house. It is concluded with a comparison between Lamu and Stone Town, Zanzibar, in terms of house types and settlement patterns. We found that the Lamu house is the stage for Swahili ritual and that the ancient and climatically uncomfortable plan form has been retained for nearly a millennium because of its symbolic value.Item Erich Mayer's depiction of the vernacular hut and multiple hut building tradition.(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002-01-01) Naude, MauritzErich Mayer is not considered as one of South Africa's well-known and significant artists. Regardless of this, South Africa has inherited a few thousand drawings and water colour paintings from Mayer that are of incalculable value to historians and cultural historians. His work has also not been "discovered" and exploited by architectural historians interested in South African vernacular architecture. Mayer visited various regions in South Africa and made drawings of the simple vernacular homesteads and other structures he saw on the farms and in the smaller villages and hamlets. Most of the buildings have now probably disappeared and the drawings are the only evidence of building types that otherwise could only have survived through oral traditions and legends. The buildings vary from beehive structures covered with grass mats in the Northwest, "kapsteil" dwellings in Namaqualand, to Bushveld dwellings with gables and thatched roofs. Mayer also made a contribution to the recording of the crude shelters the prisoners of war erected in the prisoner of war camp on St Helena, where he was sent as prisoner of war during the Anglo-Boer War (1899- 1902). Even though these structures were not erected on South African soil, they reflected the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the Boers who were imprisoned.