The eight papers in this volume examine the spatial organisation of a variety of Austronesian houses and related the domestic design of these houses to the social and ritual practices of the specific groups who reside within them. The houses considered from longhouses in Borneo to the meeting-houses of the Maori of New Zealand and from the magnificent houses of the Minangkabau of Sumatra to the simpler dwellings of the population of Goodenough Island in Papua New Guinea. Together these papers indicate common features of domestic design from island Southeast Asia to Melanesia and the Pacific.