Culture and House Form (Case Study: Traditional Houses in Tonekabon and Ramsar)

House form depends on several parameters, which their importance and influence are not at the same level. One of the critical parameters which hugely alter house form is the cultural characteristics of its residents; culture explains different types of dwellings in different areas even with the same technological and economic status. In equal condition of all other parameters, cultural characteristics are the most affecting issue in the physical form and spatial configuration of the house. The challenging point is that the culture is a vast area from point of view of design. Taking this into account, in the present paper, in order to be able to face this challenge, impact of cultural characteristics in the design procedure and different house forms has been explained. Firstly, these questions are answered: Which cultural elements are the most influential ones affecting house form? How are these elements categorized in terms of their impact on the house form? nswering the latter question will lead us to the point which a hierarchy model could be obtained and finally the cultureform relation could be decoded for different communities with different cultural characteristics. The research method of this study is analytical-descriptive in which we have used library study for data collection. Then, the model of this study is developed to illustrate the hierarchical relationship between culture and house form. The case studies include traditional house forms from cities of Ramsar and Tonekabon located in western Mazandaran. Western parts of Mazandaran province isconsidered to be a region with humid and mild climate. Moreover, the physical forms of he houses in the area are the excellent samples of traditional Northern cities’ architecture in Iran. The methodology of the study implements a theoretical framework with the analytical-descriptive research method using library study for data collection. In terms of the case studies, the required data are obtained by field observations including survey, typology, and interviewing residents. Considering the sparse distribution of the rural population and the favorite houses, and also because of limited available data resources, it was crucial to make smart and random choices of data. Randomness of the selected samples gives us the power to generalize the limited on-site collected data to the whole study domain. These choices were made according to information obtained from Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (ICHTO). In the next step, obtained data are analyzed using comparative study and logical reasoning based on the theoretical framework which is considered in the present study. In order to be able to understand the effects of different cultural elements on the house form, data associated with each sample forms are categorized based on the cultural elements. Finally, the results of comparison studies are presented in tables putting light on hidden aspects of culture-form and culture-design relation. The hierarchy in the tables shows that the culture is associated with world-view of the people and can be seen in their everyday life, like theform of their houses. Taking this into account one can say that the culture adapts people’s life from one side and affects the shape of their life tools (like the architecture of their houses) from the other side. The results of the study indicate that the model is valid for different communities, and can be used for discovering cultural elements of a community in accordance with the house forms.