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Timber framing is a type of construction in which a building is primarily supported by timber posts and beams connected by joinery. It is exemplified in the half-timber dwellings and public buildings of 13th through 17th century Europe that featured walls with exposed frames and spaces between framing members infilled with wattle and daub, plasterwork, or masonry. However, joinered timber construction probably originated in the West in Bronze Age Greece. Timber framed construction declined in Europe with the increasing use of masonry. In America, it prevailed into the 19th century, when light-frame construction rendered it obsolete.

A distinct tradition of timber framing was developed in China and spread from there. More artful and delicate than Western timber framing, it is well-represented by Japanese and Chinese temples and palaces dating from the 13th century. Highly componentized and engineered, timber framing is still used in Japanese homes. Timber framing also continues in southeast Asia, especially Thailand.

The Tudor revival style of architecture imitated the appearance of half-timber construction without actually using timbers to support anything. However, there have been serious efforts to faithfully imitate the real thing by historicists and restorationists, mostly since 1970. Many half-timber buildings in German towns are actually modernized copies of buildings destroyed in World War II. Modern advocates of timber framed buildings with curtain walls tout their potential for quick assembly, their weather-tightness, and the cost-effectiveness of cutting and assembling them with high-tech equipment. Since 1900, some large homes, park buildings, churches and a few commercial structures have been built with timber frames exposed inside to exploit the elegant and dramatic beauty of massive and precisely fitted unadorned wood.

History

Humans have been building with wood since the emergence of Homo habilis two million years ago, according to evidence in the form of a circle of stones that were probably used to anchor a shelter made of saplings. Similar circles of stones have been found in other places, including Terra Amata, near present-day Nice, France, dated to about 380,000 years ago. Because of the impermanence of wood, remains of actual wood structures from lithic ages are found only where extraordinary circumstances preserved them. Remains of Neolithic stilt dwellings up to 7,000 years old have been found in several places in Europe and China.

The difficulty of connecting timbers constrained their use until metal tools and methods of joinery were developed in the Bronze Age. Until then builders made do by building over a pit, setting posts in the ground, lashing pieces, taking advantage of natural crotches in posts, or using saplings and branches woven together. In the West, Egyptians invented methods of joinery by 3,000 B.C.E., but had little use for it in building construction, as they used dried brick for walls and roofs were typically made with simple timber beams set in the walls and overlaid with sticks, palm leaves and soil held in place by gravity.

The oldest evidence of the use of joinery to construct buildings in the West is ironically found in stone Greek temples. These were modeled on earlier wood buildings in sufficient detail to reveal that pegs were used to hold roof trusses together. Stone columns were copied from tree trunk posts. The beams they supported could not have been held in place without mortise and tenon joints.

Timber-framed construction was used in republican Rome for apartment buildings. Roman engineers devised timber trusses for the large roof spans of basilicas. Romans also introduced the practice of building a timber frame on a sill supported above the dampness of the ground on a masonry foundation to colonial towns. Wattle and daub was commonly used for infill. These buildings had the essential features of half-timber construction.

During the early Middle Ages, half-timber buildings continued to be built, but not in great numbers. Poor farmers built as they had in the Bronze Age and the wealthy prefered masonry. Few half-timber structures erected before the 14th century survive. However, many buildings older than that have been heavily modified or were clad in wood. These include the stave churches of Scandinavia. Nearly all Gothic cathedrals have timber-framed roofs concealed from the interior by masonry vaults that support only their own weight.

With the revival of commerce and the growth of towns in northern Europe, half-timber buildings became the favored type for the petty bourgiousie. They could be built faster and cheaper than masonry structures and higher than more primitive alternatives. Early on, thatched roofs were common, but catastrophic fires eventually put an end to them. As towns grew, timber framed buildings grew taller and closer together.

Fire was always a threat. Masonry buildings with wood floors and flammable contents were not especially less likely places for fires to start, but having mostly nonflammable exteriors, they better resisted the spread of fire from building to building.

Over time, half-timber buildings evolved from purely utilitarian structures to achieve an aesthetic that used the contrast between timbers and infill panels as a decorative feature. This reached its culmination in Germany and Switzerland.

Evidence that ancient Greeks also used it is found in the [1] forms of their temples. European colonists in modern times brought timber framing to North America, Australia, and South Africa. In China, mortise-and-tenon construction was known as long ago as 5,000 BCE. From there it was introduced to Japan, Tibet, northern India and Nepal, parts of southeastern Asia and Oceana. In parts of the world where brick or stone construction was prevalent, timber was commonly used to support flat roofs. Elsewhere (and everywhere before the Bronze Age) the difficulty of fastening timbers without saws, chisels and drills put severe limitations on timber construction. In northern Europe, timber framing peaked in both quantity and quality in late medieval and early modern times. This was the age of half-timber construction, in which frames were not concealed. In the 17th century, declining supplies of timber, concerns about fire and the increasing affordability of fired brick nearly put an end to timber framing. In England, a fewer timber framed homes were built and the frames were increasingly concealed behind siding boards. Deforestation put an end to timber framing in Greece and southern Europe.

the modern term for the traditional half-timbered construction in which timber provides a visible skeletal frame that supports the whole building. The terms are in fact interchangeable.

The structure

The main structure

By tradition, the timbers, with their riven side facing out, were mortised and pegged together, often receiving triangulated bracing to reinforce other members of the structure.
The spaces between the timber frames were then infilled with wattle-and-daub, brick or rubble, with plastered faces on the exterior and interior which were often “ceiled” with wainscoting for insulation and warmth. This method of infilling the spaces created the half-timbered style, with the timbers of the frame being visible both inside and outside the building.

Jetties

Where the houseowner could afford it the more expensive technique of jettying was incorporated in the construction of the house.

A jetty is an upper floor that depends on a cantilever system in which a horizontal beam, the jetty bressummer, on which the wall above rests, projects forward beyond the floor below.

The vertical timbers

The vertical timbers include:

posts (main supports at corners and other major uprights),
studs (subsidiary upright limbs in framed walls).

The horizontal timbers

The horizontal timbers include:

sill-beams (also called ground-sills or sole-pieces, at the bottom of a wall into which posts and studs are fitted using tenons),
noggin-pieces (the horizontal timbers forming the tops and bottoms of the frames of infill-panels),
wall-plates (at the top of timber-framed walls that support the trusses and joists of the roof).

It is when jettying is included, however, that by far the greatest number of horizontal elements are present:

the jetty bressummer (or breastsummer), the main sill on which the projecting wall above rests and which stretches across the whole width of the jetty wall. The bressummer is itself cantilevered forward beyond the wall below.
the dragon-beam which runs diagonally from one corner to another, and supports the corner posts above and is supported by the corner posts below.
the jetty beams or joists which conform to the greater dimensions of the floor above but rest at right angles on the jetty-plates that conform to the shorter dimensions of the floor below. The jetty beams are morticed at 45° into the sides of the dragon beams. They are the main constituents of the cantilever system and they determine how far the jetty projects
the jetty-plates, designed to carry the jetty beams. The jetty plates themselves are supported by the corner posts of the recessed floor below.

The sloping timbers

The sloping timbers include:

trusses (the slanting timbers forming the triangular framework at gables and roof),
braces (slanting beams giving extra support between horizontal or vertical members of the timber frame),
herringbone bracing (a decorative and supporting style of frame, usually at 45 ° to the upright and horizontal directions of the frame).

Distinctive features of modern timber frame structures

It is in the United States and Canada, however, that the art of timber frame construction has been revived since the 1970s, and is now experiencing a thriving renaissance of the ancient skills. This is largely due to such practitioners as Jack Sobon and Ted Benson who studied old plans and techniques and revived the technique that had been long neglected.

Timber framed structures differ from conventional wood framed buildings in several ways. Timber framing uses fewer, larger wooden members, commonly using timbers with dimensions in the range of 6" to 12" as opposed to common wood framing which uses many more timbers with their dimensions usually in the 2" to 10" range. The methods of fastening the frame members also differ, in conventional framing the members are joined using nails or other mechanical fasteners while timber framing uses mortice and tenon or more complex joints which are usually fastened using only wooden pegs.

Recently it has become common to surround the timber structure entirely in manufactured panels, such as Sips (Structural Insulating Panels). This method of enclosure means that the timbers can only be seen from inside the building, but has the benefits of being less complex to build and offering more efficient heat insulation. Structural Insulated Panels are a sandwich construction of two rigid composite materials usually wood based like OSB or plywood with a foamed insulating material in between either by gluing billets as in EPS (Expanded Polystyrene) or foamed and formed in place with Urethane. The advantage of this for timber framing in the modern world is less of a dependency on bracing and auxiliary members like minor joists and rafters as the panels can span a considerable distance and greatly increase the stiffness of the timber frame itself.

Alternative ways include the use of straw bale construction. The straw bales are stacked for the walls with various finishes applied to the interior and exterior such as stucco and plaster. This appeals to the traditionalist and the Mother Earth News as this is using "found" materials to build.

History and traditions

The techniques used in timber framing date back thousands of years, and have been used in many parts of the world during various periods such as ancient Japan, Europe and medieval England.

Half-timbered construction in the Northern European vernacular building style is characteristic of medieval and early modern England, Germany and parts of France, in localities where timber was in good supply and building stone and the skills to work it were in short supply. In half-timbered construction timbers that were riven in half provided the complete skeletal framing of the building.

Some Roman carpentry preserved in anoxic layers of clay at Romano-British villa sites demonstrate that sophisticated Roman carpentry had all the necessary techniques for this construction. The earliest surviving (French) half-timbered buildings date from the 12th century.

The English tradition

Molded plaster ornamentation ("pargetting") further enriched some English Tudor houses. Half-timbering is characteristic of English vernacular architecture in East Anglia, Worcestershire and Cheshire, where one of the most elaborate surviving English examples of half-timbered construction is Little Moreton Hall. In the Midlands, the oldest timber house in Sheffield, the "Bishops' House" c1500, shows traditional "half-timbered" construction.

In the Weald of Kent and Sussex, the half-timbered structure of the Wealden house, consisted of an open hall with bays on either side and often jettied upper floors.

Half-timbered construction went with colonists to North America in the early 17th century but was soon left behind in New England and the mid-Atlantic colonies for clapboard facings (another tradition of East Anglia).

The French tradition

Elaborately half-timbered housefronts of the 15th century are still remaining in Bourges and Rouen and in Thiers (illustration, right).

The German tradition

In North Germany, Celle is famed for its 16th century half-timbered housefronts. In the later 16th century, timbers are often elaborately carved and spaces infilled with smaller timbering not only for reasons decorative but also structural.

File:Umgestuelpterzuckhut.jpg

Half Timbered house (Umgestülpter Zuckerhut) in Hildesheim - Germany

The Deutsche Fachwerkstraße, the “Route that links Germany’s Medieval Timber-framed Houses”, runs from Lower Saxony in the north of the country, via Hesse and southern Thuringia to Bavaria is an area renowned for its highly picturesque half-timbered buildings.

The Canadian tradition

Called colombage pierroté in Quebec as well other areas of Canada, half-timbered construction infilled with stone and rubble survived into the 19th century and was consciously revived at the end of the century. In Western Canada it was used on buildings in the Red River Settlement; the Men's House at Lower Fort Garry is a good example of colombage pierroté.

Revival styles in later centuries

When half-timbering regained popularity in Britain after 1860 in the various revival styles, such as the "Queen Anne style" houses by Richard Norman Shaw and others, it was often used to evoke a "Tudor" atmosphere (see Tudorbethan), though in Tudor times half-timbering had begun to look rustic and was increasingly limited to villages houses (illustration, above left). In 1912, Allen W. Jackson published The Half-Timber House: Its Origin, Design, Modern Plan, and Construction, and rambling half-timbered beach houses appeared on dunefront properties in Rhode Island or under palm-lined drives of Beverly Hills. During the 1920s increasingly minimal gestures towards some half-timbering in commercial speculative house-building saw the fashion peter out.

It should be noted, however, that in the revival styles, such as Tudorbethan, the "half-timbered" appearance is superimposed on the brickwork or any other material as an outside decorative pastiche rather than consisting of the main timber frame that supported the whole structure as in original half-timbered building.

The benefits of timber framing

The use of timber framing in buildings offers various benefits including aesthetic ones and also structurally, as the timber frame lends itself to open plan designs and allows for complete enclosure in effective insulation for energy efficiency.

The timber frame structure goes up quickly in its modern incarnation. While some modern shops still cut the timbers with hand tools and hand guided power tools there is a rapidly adaption of CNC type machinery. This takes a lot of the repetitive labor work out of the process but currently leaves the finishing and finer touches to the hand cut and layout. Most notably is the complexity of Hip/Valley joinery that as of yet CNC Machinery can not duplicate beyond simple cuts. CNC is despite reservations a boon to the craft no less than the circular saw mill invented by the Shakers.

This does not disparage the traditionalists who have great skill in working raw and imperfect timber through the use of Square rule layout and mapping and scribing techniques. A condition of much of the CNC cut timber is the disclaimer from the tooling manufacture that requires near perfect timber. So odd sized, tree trunk, hand hewn timbers, recycled are usually hand cut even in the machine dominated shops.

One aid in speeding up assembly on site is prefitting the frame, usually in bent or wall sections that are laid out on the shop floor. This can assure a correct fit and with predrilling for the pegs it speeds the site process. This pre-fitting in the shop is independent of a machine or hand cut system. Valley and Hip timbers usually are not prefit but carefully layout and checking can catch most errors before it gets in the field.

Quite literally in 2-3 days an average size timber frame home can be erected and within a week to 2 weeks after that the shell of the house is ready for "drying in", which is to say ready for windows and mechanical and roofing. The shell in this case would be with SIP or Structural Insulated Panels.

The timber frame can give the home owner the ability to make a creative statement through the use of design and specialty touches like carvings of favorite quotes and incorporating timbers from heirloom structures, like a barn from a family homestead.

Disadvantages

Noise from footsteps from the ceiling in such buildings is quite audible; they are also prone to rotting and fire.

External links

Buffalo (New York) as an architectural museum: Half-timber in a variety of North American revival styles
The German half-timber route: where to find half-timbered village and town houses in Germany (map)
Website of The Timber Framers Guild
Website of The Carpenters Fellowship
A German tourist route showcasing many historical timber framed buildings
TRADA: Timber Research And Development Association
History & Construction of Medieval Timber-framed Houses in England & Wales

Category:Building engineering Category:Structural system Category:medieval architecture Category:Building Category:Woodworking