Traditional Building Facade Characteristics and its Transformations in South Tamilnadu, India

Abstract

The traditional neighbourhood appearances have been diminished by modifying external conventional building elements. The visual attributes and ideology like materials, decorations, texture, colours, openings and roofs have played a significant role in the South Tamilnadu region’s traditional images for investigating this research work. The major objective focuses on visual elements that have regulated the quality, visual ideology, aesthetic appearance, and significance which impact the traditional building facades and their transformations. Understanding through various researchers, synthesis of theories, definitions of conventional building facades, and definitions of transformation of building facades are collected through several peer-reviewed articles in the first component of the paper. The second component of the research paper examines the evaluation of collection through secondary data of articles from various pioneers in visual element characteristics and their transformations over the years in the South Tamilnadu context. The research also analyses the samples of 30 traditional house facade transformation typologies using one case of primary data collected at Tirunelveli district, the South town of Tamilnadu, in the third component of the paper. Based on the secondary data, the results and discussions have been understandable in influencing and establishing traditional building facade parameters such as form, shape, scale, proportion, decoration, texture, materials, colour, roofs and parapets, openings, doors and windows. Hence, this research aims to find better urban designers and planners with specific procedures and recommendations for the preservation and further improvement in the development of traditional building facades.