The need for shelter is basic to man. But transcending this is a set of overriding values, intrinsic to the human condition: a concern for life, for community, for beauty.

Through the centuries, man has created his habitat through an intuitive and instinctive process. In looking at the examples shown in this section (the villages of Banni in Kutch, a pol in Ahmedabad, the desert city of Jaisalmer, bamboo housing in the Assam region and a squatter colony in Bombay) we must try to understand not only the buildings and the community spaces that lie between them, but also the underlying deep- structure that has generated this habitat.