Constructive Characterization of Gorongosa National Park Villages

Abstract

The Gorongosa National Park was created in 1960 and it has 4.067km2 that integrates the Serra da Gorongosa and the local communities that live nearby. This work aims the characterization of the traditional houses and ways of building observed in the natural park. The main objective is the identification and characterization of constructive systems and the organization of villages in the Gorongosa National Park. This characterization is intended to be constructive from the point of view of the materials, geometry and solutions applied on the construction. The present work has many phases, in this sense the following stages were defined: Developing the state of art based on the analysis of constructive characterization methods and bibliographic research on earth systems used in Mozambique and other countries with similar conditions and climates; Definition of the studying cases: identification of the villages that were objects of studies, definition of survey criteria and registration; Visiting the villages and surveying the solutions through photographic register, visual observation, measurements, interviews; Registering identification files to each solution, etc. The work presents the typologies of construction found, namely: constructions with walls made from earth commonly used in the country, being the most usual technology the earth covering over wooden structures with different geometries and pieces of different shapes and dimensions. The study has documented some of the most current solutions in National Park.

References
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