Threshold and transition
Veranda
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It is the roofed strip that runs along the facade under the extension of the roof. It is open to the outside on one or more sides.
What it solves
It shades the walls and lets the windows stay open even when it rains. It is the outdoor living room of the tropics, where the house meets the street or the garden.
Today
Give it at least the width for a chair and a person walking past, with generous eaves and a floor that drains outward.
Common mistake
Enclosing it with glass or bars until it loses the shade and ventilation that justified it.
Tomorrow
The veranda is the outdoor living room where an older person spends the afternoon in the shade and greets passersby. In hotter climates it is also the cheapest way to protect the walls from the sun.
Where it comes from
- 1Japanese house Japan, around the 12th century
The engawa is a timber floor under the eave that keeps the house open in sun or rain and serves as a place to sit facing the garden. - 2House of the Indian subcontinent India, Antiquity
The Vastu Shastra texts call it alinda, and in the south it is known as thinnai, a cool, social place. - 3Colonial architecture Australia, since the 1850s
Verandas became widespread, and in Queensland they surround the whole house in response to the subtropical climate. - 4Adobe house Costa Rica, 17th to 20th centuries
The corredor is a gallery covered by the extension of the roof where family and neighbors gathered.
Masters
- Geoffrey Bawa Lunuganga, Bentota, Sri Lanka, 1948
He expands a small bungalow by adding a veranda and a courtyard. The roofed veranda becomes the open living room of the house in the tropical climate.
Appears in the routes
See also
Also in Threshold and transition
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.