In flood plains, and on beaches or unstable ground, buildings are often constructed on stilts to protect them from damage by water, waves or shifting soil or sand.
As these issues were commonly faced by many societies around the world, stilts have become synonymous with various places and cultures, particularly in South East Asia and Venice.
[citation needed] In the 18th Century, Jesuit João Daniel noted “Many nations live on lakes, or among them, where they have, over the water, their houses made of the same sort, only with the amend of being out of hay, that they erect with poles, and palm tree branches, and in them they live joyfully, like fish in the water” whilst travelling in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest.
[3] On the island of Chiloé, modern dwellers have incorporated stilts into house design due to local seismic activity causing tides up to 7 metres in height.
Many storehouses in the Bering Strait and nearby areas inhabited by the Yup’ik people on the mainland were constructed with driftwood stilts, a concept found in many regions around the world, usually to prevent pests from damaging food.
Communities in tropical regions, wetlands, or other environments prone to high levels of moisture often utilise stilts to solve a particular issue facing an area.
Tropical regions can experience large quantities of rainfall in a small amount of time, often causing long and devastating floods for local people.
Stilt homes which have been built using wooden pillars can rot due to general humidity or after being wet by flooding, compromising structural integrity.
[8] Despite providing cooling due to elevating, stilts can adversely affect the thermal efficiency of building, making it more expensive to heat/cool using technologies such as air-conditioning.
While an elevator may be added, this is often an expensive investment and cannot be afforded by people in remote communities, or feasible with local issues such as regular flooding.
[10] Over time, concrete slabs have been added to support the wood and extend the pillars foundation into the ground, making buildings more stable in the case of flooding.
[13] Whilst fleeing the barbarians pillaging the Italian Peninsula in the 6th Century,[14] Roman farmers built elevated huts on wooden stilts on and surrounding the islands in the Venetian Lagoon.
As such, the Venetians utilised approximately 18 metre long (60 feet) wooden poles manufactured from oak, larch or pine from local forests driven to use as the foundations of the city.
[15] These stilts were driven deep into the ground through the unstable silt and dirt and into the hard clay beneath, allowing for a strong and stable structure.
Recent disasters such as tsunamis and flooding in the Teunom region of Sumatra have forced the modernisation of building materials and methods, with concrete replacing the wooden foundations of many houses.
Painting the exterior, including the stilts, usually green, red, blue, or orange gave individual expression to the fisherman who usually made the houses themselves.