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Alecani Cliffside Dwelling
Who are the Alecani - http://tea-feathers.tumblr.com/post.....-alecani-are-a
More about TeaFeathers - http://tea-feathers.tumblr.com/
www.patreon.com/Eskiworks
This is my first architecture design I have ever made, so forgive any mistakes. I stuck with monochrome to keep myself focused on the structure over the colors for now. This is a typical dwelling for an Alecani of the Ku’Dimali tribe in my headworld, TeaFeathers! The Ku’Dimali are the tribe that the main character, Nym, belongs to. They make their homes in the red cliffs of their domain, which are carved out and reused for generations. There are larger Alecani cities in Ku territory, where their stone carved architecture can get pretty epic. Think Petra, but made for flying animals! And now for some info about each room. :D
Outside
Carved into the canyon walls themselves, the face of the home is built for the agile flyers the Alecani are. A large landing deck, stair access for kits, and wingless friends, landing pole above the door of needed as well. The eave above the round wooden door protects from the rain and sun, and the sunken facade has intricately carved tree-themed windows. These windows can have glass, but many of the average Alecani don’t bother paying for glass. When weather gets bad they seal the windows from the inside with waterproof leather flaps. There’s a compartment for the mail near where the stairs meet the deck, and lots of compartments for plants/herbs in the front. Carved rivulets guide water to rain-gathering containers (fish themed!) on every cliff face home, so plants outside can be watered easily (though the Alecani do have aqueducts/irrigation for drinking and bathing water). Sometimes Alecani decorate with thick hand made ropes, colorful flags, and other hanging decor outside.
Greatroom
This is where the family spends most of their time indoors together! It’s large enough for an Alecani to glide across, plenty of room to stretch the wings. Outfitted with lots of comfy round nest-like couches, and lines with pelts in the winter to keep it warm. When you first walk in, there is a space to set your things, offer small tributes to the house spirits, and wash your feet/paws if needed. There are usually a lot of plants on the walls, and abundant indoor lighting from the resident light spirits. There are quite a few domestic spirits that cohabitate with Alecani, but I will outline those later.
Kitchen and food storage
The kitchen is located in the great room. The stove is partly dug into the rock of the floor to create a pit, and topped with a metal stove on which the Alecani can cook. Coals can be raked out into the open area of the pit to help heat the room, or cook additional items on a grill. There is a window right there so any smoke/odor from cooking can be aired out easily. Plus the cook will have a nice view! The food storage room is right next to the kitchen, with a variety of fresh and preserved foods.
Washroom
The wash room is for bathing, but also for washing linens and other items. It’s decked out with a carved stone tub with a shelf/step for the little ones, and carved shelves filled with soaps, detergents, and oils. Stools are available for dry preening sessions, which tend to generate a lot of dander, which can be swept up. A smaller portable tub for washing linens and clothes is available, plus a wash board for scrubbing and plenty of towels. With no plumbing, water is brought in by hand and drained out the bottom directly outside.
Restroom
The restroom is right next door, and serves as a storage for linens and other things, but also for Alecani and guests to relieve themselves. A basket of soft dried leaves (like a lamb’s ear leaf) is available for wiping (yay, bet you wanted to know all about Alecani pooping habits, eh?), and a basin for washing. A scented oil diffuser is on the wall to help with any unpleasant smells, but there is also a window to the outside. The window extends all the way to the floor and there is a waste collection bag/basket hanging outside where waste is dumped, and collected every day to be transported to the community compost pile.
Master Bedroom
This room is usually reserved for breeding females in the family, or the elderly or head of the household. The bed is a soft round mattress laying inside a carved semi-circle in the stone. There’s a bassinet-type area for if there is an infant that must be nursed through the night, but that space can be converted to convenient bedside storage when there are no babies. Up to three Alecani can sleep snugly in that big bed, but there is a place for a hammock as well, for adult offspring, a wet nurse, or a close family friend. There is also a bookshelf and a dresser for personal items and clothing.
Extra bedrooms
As you can see Alecani don’t mind sleeping in the same room as one another, they are very social. Siblings of a single generation often share rooms. Grandparents (and sometimes great grandparents) all live in the family home. When there isn’t enough room in all the bedrooms, sleeping arrangements are made in the great room. Sometimes extra rooms are made by walling off sections of the great room with clay and thatch. The elderly and whoever is breeding get priority for the master bedroom/most comfortable arrangements.
More about TeaFeathers - http://tea-feathers.tumblr.com/
www.patreon.com/Eskiworks
This is my first architecture design I have ever made, so forgive any mistakes. I stuck with monochrome to keep myself focused on the structure over the colors for now. This is a typical dwelling for an Alecani of the Ku’Dimali tribe in my headworld, TeaFeathers! The Ku’Dimali are the tribe that the main character, Nym, belongs to. They make their homes in the red cliffs of their domain, which are carved out and reused for generations. There are larger Alecani cities in Ku territory, where their stone carved architecture can get pretty epic. Think Petra, but made for flying animals! And now for some info about each room. :D
Outside
Carved into the canyon walls themselves, the face of the home is built for the agile flyers the Alecani are. A large landing deck, stair access for kits, and wingless friends, landing pole above the door of needed as well. The eave above the round wooden door protects from the rain and sun, and the sunken facade has intricately carved tree-themed windows. These windows can have glass, but many of the average Alecani don’t bother paying for glass. When weather gets bad they seal the windows from the inside with waterproof leather flaps. There’s a compartment for the mail near where the stairs meet the deck, and lots of compartments for plants/herbs in the front. Carved rivulets guide water to rain-gathering containers (fish themed!) on every cliff face home, so plants outside can be watered easily (though the Alecani do have aqueducts/irrigation for drinking and bathing water). Sometimes Alecani decorate with thick hand made ropes, colorful flags, and other hanging decor outside.
Greatroom
This is where the family spends most of their time indoors together! It’s large enough for an Alecani to glide across, plenty of room to stretch the wings. Outfitted with lots of comfy round nest-like couches, and lines with pelts in the winter to keep it warm. When you first walk in, there is a space to set your things, offer small tributes to the house spirits, and wash your feet/paws if needed. There are usually a lot of plants on the walls, and abundant indoor lighting from the resident light spirits. There are quite a few domestic spirits that cohabitate with Alecani, but I will outline those later.
Kitchen and food storage
The kitchen is located in the great room. The stove is partly dug into the rock of the floor to create a pit, and topped with a metal stove on which the Alecani can cook. Coals can be raked out into the open area of the pit to help heat the room, or cook additional items on a grill. There is a window right there so any smoke/odor from cooking can be aired out easily. Plus the cook will have a nice view! The food storage room is right next to the kitchen, with a variety of fresh and preserved foods.
Washroom
The wash room is for bathing, but also for washing linens and other items. It’s decked out with a carved stone tub with a shelf/step for the little ones, and carved shelves filled with soaps, detergents, and oils. Stools are available for dry preening sessions, which tend to generate a lot of dander, which can be swept up. A smaller portable tub for washing linens and clothes is available, plus a wash board for scrubbing and plenty of towels. With no plumbing, water is brought in by hand and drained out the bottom directly outside.
Restroom
The restroom is right next door, and serves as a storage for linens and other things, but also for Alecani and guests to relieve themselves. A basket of soft dried leaves (like a lamb’s ear leaf) is available for wiping (yay, bet you wanted to know all about Alecani pooping habits, eh?), and a basin for washing. A scented oil diffuser is on the wall to help with any unpleasant smells, but there is also a window to the outside. The window extends all the way to the floor and there is a waste collection bag/basket hanging outside where waste is dumped, and collected every day to be transported to the community compost pile.
Master Bedroom
This room is usually reserved for breeding females in the family, or the elderly or head of the household. The bed is a soft round mattress laying inside a carved semi-circle in the stone. There’s a bassinet-type area for if there is an infant that must be nursed through the night, but that space can be converted to convenient bedside storage when there are no babies. Up to three Alecani can sleep snugly in that big bed, but there is a place for a hammock as well, for adult offspring, a wet nurse, or a close family friend. There is also a bookshelf and a dresser for personal items and clothing.
Extra bedrooms
As you can see Alecani don’t mind sleeping in the same room as one another, they are very social. Siblings of a single generation often share rooms. Grandparents (and sometimes great grandparents) all live in the family home. When there isn’t enough room in all the bedrooms, sleeping arrangements are made in the great room. Sometimes extra rooms are made by walling off sections of the great room with clay and thatch. The elderly and whoever is breeding get priority for the master bedroom/most comfortable arrangements.
Category Artwork (Digital) / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1491 x 1500px
File Size 3.41 MB
Listed in Folders
How well ventilated are these homes? I see the stove vents outside, but generally I imagine with no windows those rooms get muuuuuuggy. Or are the plants living and they're used to help with CO2 and keeping the air fresh in these inner rooms? Are plants changed often/hi sunlight is needed or? I'm going to guess the whole place stays relatively cool tho because ROCK. (Well, probably warmer closer to the front/outside where all that sunshine is hanging out). Are some storage rooms perhaps kept further in the back to stay cooler? /sorry, I am like in A+ Worldbuilding mood so I am full of questions hi
Plants help quite a bit, but there are also ventilation shafts! The shafts, and many of the stone structures are maintained by house stonebore spirits, helpful domestic spirits that live alongside the Alecani. Was going to go into that more when I post about house spirits!
The plants do quit well in low light, lots of irl plants do as well. There's decent indoor lighting (again from house spirits of another sort), and plants can feed off that light somewhat as well.
As for location of storage rooms, that's up to the family living there! The boundary between the greatroom and the ring of outer rooms is the only solid stone structure, ll the walls between those rooms are basically mud/straw (cob). They can be rebuilt and changed depending on how the residents want the layout to be in their home.
YAY QUESTIONS <3
The plants do quit well in low light, lots of irl plants do as well. There's decent indoor lighting (again from house spirits of another sort), and plants can feed off that light somewhat as well.
As for location of storage rooms, that's up to the family living there! The boundary between the greatroom and the ring of outer rooms is the only solid stone structure, ll the walls between those rooms are basically mud/straw (cob). They can be rebuilt and changed depending on how the residents want the layout to be in their home.
YAY QUESTIONS <3
I thought I mentioned in the description that they have aquaducts to move water into their villages/towns, but true plumbing that can bring fresh water up from the canyon bottom (river being a typical source of water) and waste water out? No, they don't have that level of modern plumbing.
Wonderful illustrations! A cool feature of so much rock you didn't mention is something called thermal lag. Materials like stone and concrete heat and cool slowly but have a lot of capacity to store heat. The result is that the wall's interior temperature will lag behind the exterior. For example, a wall facing the sun will gradually heat up through the day until it becomes "saturated" with warmth. As temperature begins to fall outside, the walls will release their stored heat and the interior will be kept warm. By morning the walls will have cooled thoroughly, and while they're warming over the course of a day the interior spaces will be kept cool. It's a well known tactic in sustainable architecture to ease the burden of heating and cooling a space, and it works best in places with a marked difference between night and day temperatures :)
And if you really want to nit pick architecture, those dwellings aren't up to basic fire code >:C Better watch those cooking fires little Alecani!
And if you really want to nit pick architecture, those dwellings aren't up to basic fire code >:C Better watch those cooking fires little Alecani!
It's a lovely piece of art, though there is a lot to comment on as a habitable design. Assuming the level of development is pre-industrial, would it not be more efficient for laundry/ bathing, to be where the water is, rather than transporting it to a cliff side dwelling? Without plumbing, they ought to stay where the water is, other than fetching and carrying for cooking and maybe some scrubbing of floors. Also wouldn't it be healthier to keep the smoke out, by cooking outside on the patio there, rather than under the roof, where there may be increased chance of a fire hazard? Also, wouldn't you want the food storage away from the outside walls, so that the constant temps of the inner cave would help with the storage, and the lack of light would suppress the growth of mold? I would also think that their furniture, would be smaller for portability, and a bite more like ancient japanese , using Sashimono style joinery, to avoid needing nails or other forged pieces. There are a lot of textiles used here as well. How are they made, and from what?
Worldbuilding is something I do at the drop of a hat. sorry.
Worldbuilding is something I do at the drop of a hat. sorry.
would it not be more efficient for laundry/ bathing, to be where the water is, rather than transporting it to a cliff side dwelling? Without plumbing, they ought to stay where the water is, other than fetching and carrying for cooking and maybe some scrubbing of floors.
Most Alecani villages have common bath houses and common places to wash things like linens! The Ku'Dimali are a pretty wealthy territory, so there's lots of resources to go around to hire people to carry water up and down, plus still the option to do you water related biz in the designated public spaces.
Also wouldn't it be healthier to keep the smoke out, by cooking outside on the patio there, rather than under the roof, where there may be increased chance of a fire hazard?
There's a chimney! *points* And a window right next to where the coking is done! As for fire hazard, while there are certainly flammable things inside the home, the structure itself is carved directly from stone. Fire hazard it a lot lower.
Also, wouldn't you want the food storage away from the outside walls, so that the constant temps of the inner cave would help with the storage, and the lack of light would suppress the growth of mold?
That's up the each individual resident! Sure, that's a good idea, but maybe they want food storage to be close to their cooking area too. This layout is not set ins tone (pardon the pun) and rooms can be shuffled and reassigned as needed.
I would also think that their furniture, would be smaller for portability, and a bite more like ancient japanese , using Sashimono style joinery, to avoid needing nails or other forged pieces.
I guess that's more a matter of taste and opinion! I designed the furniture to be large and nest-shaped to fit several Alecani, or one Alecani who wishes to spread their wings. Tiny furniture is not very cuddle receptive. Also no need to avoid needing nails or forged pieces, the Alecani live with the Pylura, who are by their nature metallurgists! Getting nails for building furniture really would be no big deal.
There are a lot of textiles used here as well. How are they made, and from what?
Fiber arts can encompass both animals and plant fibers, for which there are abundant sources in many regions of this continent! These fellows are also furry in nature, shedding and molting is a natural process. When the season's change the the Alecani and Pylura blow their coats, a lot of that is saved for such needs. But like I said, plant fiber sources exist, and they are capable of acquiring animal fibers outside their own fur coats. In addition, some of what you are perceiving as textile could possibly be leather. They are avid hunters after all!
Most Alecani villages have common bath houses and common places to wash things like linens! The Ku'Dimali are a pretty wealthy territory, so there's lots of resources to go around to hire people to carry water up and down, plus still the option to do you water related biz in the designated public spaces.
Also wouldn't it be healthier to keep the smoke out, by cooking outside on the patio there, rather than under the roof, where there may be increased chance of a fire hazard?
There's a chimney! *points* And a window right next to where the coking is done! As for fire hazard, while there are certainly flammable things inside the home, the structure itself is carved directly from stone. Fire hazard it a lot lower.
Also, wouldn't you want the food storage away from the outside walls, so that the constant temps of the inner cave would help with the storage, and the lack of light would suppress the growth of mold?
That's up the each individual resident! Sure, that's a good idea, but maybe they want food storage to be close to their cooking area too. This layout is not set ins tone (pardon the pun) and rooms can be shuffled and reassigned as needed.
I would also think that their furniture, would be smaller for portability, and a bite more like ancient japanese , using Sashimono style joinery, to avoid needing nails or other forged pieces.
I guess that's more a matter of taste and opinion! I designed the furniture to be large and nest-shaped to fit several Alecani, or one Alecani who wishes to spread their wings. Tiny furniture is not very cuddle receptive. Also no need to avoid needing nails or forged pieces, the Alecani live with the Pylura, who are by their nature metallurgists! Getting nails for building furniture really would be no big deal.
There are a lot of textiles used here as well. How are they made, and from what?
Fiber arts can encompass both animals and plant fibers, for which there are abundant sources in many regions of this continent! These fellows are also furry in nature, shedding and molting is a natural process. When the season's change the the Alecani and Pylura blow their coats, a lot of that is saved for such needs. But like I said, plant fiber sources exist, and they are capable of acquiring animal fibers outside their own fur coats. In addition, some of what you are perceiving as textile could possibly be leather. They are avid hunters after all!
I like the layout of the this house. And it is so natural too.
Although if you don't mind if I draw what my version of this house might look like and how it will flow. Now it will just be vary basic since I'm not vary good at drawing furniture. So my drawing will just be a floor plan of the house.
Although if you don't mind if I draw what my version of this house might look like and how it will flow. Now it will just be vary basic since I'm not vary good at drawing furniture. So my drawing will just be a floor plan of the house.
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