STRUCTURAL DESIGN FOR ARCHITECTURE

Structural Design for Architecture

Fig. 6.11 The medieval half-

timbered house was basically a

loadbearing-wall structure. The

walls consisted of vertical

elements at relatively close

spacing tied by horizontal

elements at each storey level.

The structure is stabilised by the

massive masonry chimney and by

the inclined, often curved, corner

elements. The sizes of the cross-

sections of the main element

were large.

cutting away of material (mortice-and-tenon,

halved, dovetail) and the resulting inefficiency

was one of the reasons why timbers of large

cross-section were used. The loadbearing walls

were arranged parallel to each other and

connected by horizontal beamed floors and

rafter or trussed-roof structures. The building

was completed by non-structural elements.

The wall infilling was entirely non-structural

and was made from a variety of materials.

Brickwork or plaster on a woven mesh of thin

timbers were commonly used. Normally, the

structural timber was exposed on the exterior

of the buildings, but occasionally the walls

were rendered with plaster or lime.

The European tradition of the half-timbered

building occurred north of the Alps and was

associated with the rise of the mercantile

middle class which occurred after the

Reformation. The building type was used

extensively for merchants' houses and public

buildings in the trading towns of northern

Europe.

The form of the buildings was predominantly

rectilinear and the plan was that of the

loadbearing-wall structure - parallel arrange-

ments of walls supporting one-way-spanning

floors and pitched roofs. Often, the buildings

were of considerable height (five or six storeys)

and the patterns formed by the exposed struc-

tural timbers on the external walls were

frequently used as ornamentation and

regularised and formalised for aesthetic

186 purposes (Fig. 6.13).