A longhouse is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling that has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. The design and structure of longhouses vary depending on the culture and location. Here are some examples:

• North America: Longhouses were the traditional homes for many of the farming tribes of American Indians that lived in southern New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The Haudenosaunee people of upstate New York were among them. A traditional longhouse was built by using a rectangular frame of saplings, each 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.5 cm) in diameter. The length and interior space of the longhouse was divided up into compartments or apartments, which were 20 feet long. Two families lived in each compartment, one on each side of an aisle that ran down the center. The aisle extended from one compartment to the next and ran the full length of the longhouse. The aisle was 10 feet wide and was a common space used by both families in the compartment.

• Asia: Old longhouses in Asia were made of tree trunks as structure members, long leaves as the roof cover, split bamboo or small tree trunks as the flooring, and tree bark as the wall coverings. In Borneo, the entire architecture is designed and built as a standing tree with branches to the right and left with the front part facing the sunrise while the back faces the sunset. The longhouse building acts as the normal accommodation and a house of worship for religious activities. The entry could double as a canoe dock. Cooling air could circulate underneath the raised floor of the dwelling, and the elevated living areas were more likely to catch above-ground breezes. In the past, longhouses were primarily made out of timber sourced from trees such as Eusideroxylon zwageri (Bornean ironwood) so the longhouses were able to stand firm and durable.

• Other regions: Vikings also lived in longhouses, and today, some rice-farming people in Borneo live in them.

It is important to note that the term "longhouse" has also been used in a different context in certain corners of the online right, where it refers to a metonym for the disequilibrium afflicting the contemporary social imaginary. In this context, it refers to the remarkable overcorrection of the last two generations toward social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling, directing, and modeling behavior.