The construction of half-timbered buildings
declined in the seventeenth century for
economic reasons. The very large sections of
timber which were required became increas-
ingly scarce, and therefore expensive, and the
labour-intensive construction process, with its
requirement for complicated joints, became
uneconomical in the context of a growing
materialistic, industrialised society in which
labour costs were destined inexorably to rise.
Thus did a building system which had consid-
erable architectural potential pass out of
existence. Its revival, in a modern or post-
modern context, should not be ruled out, in
view of its potential as a constructional system
for a sustainable architecture.
The same economic forces which caused the
demise of the half-timbered building led
eventually to the development of a new type of
timber loadbearing-wall structure, the timber
wallframe. The wallframe type of building,
which was developed in the nineteenth century
in North America, can be seen as an inevitable
consequence of the increasing use of manufac-
tured products in building (Fig. 6.14).
The wallframe building consisted of a series
of timber loadbearing walls carrying timber
floor and roof structures in a conventional
rectilinear layout not dissimilar to that of the
half-timbered building. The loadbearing walls
were formed by closely spaced timber
elements tied horizontally at the levels of the
roof and floors. In the wallframe building,
however, the timber elements were produced Fig. 6.12 Joints in half-timbered buildings were of the
traditional carpentry type which involved the removal of
large areas of cross-section. This is one of the reasons why
such large overall cross-sections were required.
Fig. 6.13 The exposed structure contributes
to the aesthetic appeal of this modest
example of a half-timbered building.187Timber structures