Seeking Shelter: How the Environment Shapes Architecture in Worldbuilding

Haly examines how weather events, disasters, dangerous neighbors, predatory animals, and other climate and critters

Twisted Tuesday: Building Against the Environment

Yesterday, I covered a bit about how architecture can be used to showcase local resources and geography, highlighting the environment in which your characters work, play, and live. It can also be used to illustrate values, technology level, and several other key points of local culture.

What I did not cover is architecture’s primary purpose: keeping people safe from the environment. Sheltering from the rain, retaining warmth and keeping out the cold, hiding us from predators. Through the course of history, people have progressed from caves to portable shelters built of sticks and skins. Agriculture led to stability which led to constructed permanent structures from local resources, in order to protect from the local environment.

In general, there are two big things to consider when worldbuilding constructions that protect against the environment: climate and critters. Let’s have a closer look at each.

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Climate

Climate, weather, and disasters fall into the same category of Uncontrollable Elements. In addition to all the usual weather (snow, rain, wind, sun), there are all the different flavors of extreme weather such as blizzard, flood, hurricane, tornado, and drought. Then, there are other environmental disruptions and disasters such as volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, earthquakes, avalanches, mudslides and sinkholes.

While not every location in your world will be prone to all of these things, it’s important to have a good idea of which ones are most likely to happen in any given area so that you can understand how the people there react to, and build against, these happenings.

For example, where I live in the Midwest United States, we get rain, snow, wind, thunderstorms, tornados, occasional floods, occasional blizzards and ice storms. Our buildings tend to have sloped roofs to help with water runoff from the rain and snow. We have gutters to help prevent water getting into the walls and doing damage.

In areas where earthquakes are more prone, the buildings are designed and constructed to withstand a certain amount of vibration. Likewise, when typhoons and hurricanes are common, buildings are required to have storm shutters and other safety measures.

Consider the uncontrollable elements of your world, the unpredictable forces that affect the people and their daily lives.

Critters

Just as climate describes more than rain and sun, critters is another umbrella term I’m using to describe Living Dangers. From neighboring people with a grievance and predatory wildlife, to disease-bearing insects and toxic spores, keeping ourselves safe from other living things is pretty critical.

We have screens and nets to keep insects out of our homes and away from our sleeping bodies. Tightly constructed doors, walls, and windows help keep vermin away from our food supplies. Tall, thick walls can help protect us from rampaging neighbors. Tall fences keep dangerous wildlife out.

It’s important to take a look at the dangers in your world and really consider how people have designed the world to be safer and more comfortable in the face of those dangers.

My friend

Nulcheck

and I were talking earlier about dragons, and how a world has to be structured to accommodate dragon riders and tame dragons. Nul pointed out that the architecture and layout of any town would have to have open space as a waiting place for dragons who couldn’t go into the inn and how wood fences wouldn’t really work…so I mentioned stone walls. (Stone bridges would be a necessity, too, come to think of it.) Which means that masons and stone cutters will be important jobs with a lot of work….and on and on and on.

As you can see, keeping the environment out of our immediate space is one of the primary functions of architecture. Let me know in the comments what special environmental concerns people in YOUR world have to protect against! How do they use architecture to help with that??

Worldbuilding Wednesday

It’s everyone’s favorite column of the week, Ask the Bard, where I dedicate the entire newsletter to answering YOUR questions! In order to do that, you have to send me your questions! Hit me up in the Chat, send me a DM, tag me in a Note, or ask in the comments!

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This Week:

Worldbuilding Wednesday: Ask the Bard

Throwback Thursday: To Be Determined

Feature Friday: GenCon Event Plans