Timber Buildings

While English yew Taxus baccata L. has become extinct or rare in many parts of Europe, Britain contains a large population of very large and old yew. We analyse 2,760 records of live yew trees to document this unique population and categorise by girth: 717 Veteran (5–6.99 m), 204 Ancient (7–8.99 m) and 55 Exceptional (≥9 m) yew trees. Individual trees are mapped, and both areas and habitats of the highest proportions are detailed. The loss of 223 notable trees from churchyards highlights a need for better safeguarding a unique habitat of the world’s largest yew trees.

The paper lays out a number of historiographical and epistemological bases for the study of early medieval timber constructions, an issue that is still largely underdeveloped in Italy.
Moving from two basic assumptions (the subject has to find its "institutional" position within the well-established discipline known as Archaeology of Architecture and, at the same time, it has to be strictly tied with the many research lines developed at a European level), we try to unfold the cognitive potential of timber buildings as an important archaeological indicator, able to give an original contribution to more general socio-economic issues.
The central part of the paper is focused on methods and tools with a detailed description of the SREA project (Rural sites and buildings in the Early Middle Ages), based on an exhaustive digital cataloguing of published evidence. In this case, the analytical process aims to combine a basic quantitative approach with more traditional speculative/experiential interpretative readings.
With these premises, particular importance is taken by the sample reliability analysis, which shows a relative deficiency in the quality of specific publications (often not allowing to deduce construction techniques details). An unevenness in the spatial location of the evidence, clearly concentrated in northern Italy, also derives from statistical readings of collected data; it is interesting to note that such concentration does not appear to be tied only to factors related to the distribution of excavations, but seems to be of a more structural nature.
An important section of the article is devoted to the drafting of a research agenda, based on general spatial and chronological distribution patterns of the main building types which clearly show the generalization of the phenomenon in early medieval Italy. It becomes therefore essential to suggest a series of targeted questions, closely related to the broader archaeological and historical debate.
The last part concentrates on the Grubenhaus in the Italian Early Middle Ages, a particular subject which distinctly shows the potential of the proposed methodologies. The analytical arguments come to establish a very manifest link between the arrival of germanic populations and the appearance of this particular building type.

""La tesi si inserisce nell'ambito di ricerca della storia delle tecniche costruttive e analizza l'evoluzione tecnologica e tipologica delle coperture lignee in Italia nel periodo che va dall'inizio del XIX alla metà del XX secolo.
Dopo una parte di inquadramento delle condizioni tecnologiche, del contesto socio-economico e produttivo generale e delle teorie e pratiche costruttive delle coperture lignee italiane della fine del XVIII secolo, la ricerca ne analizza i progressivi mutamenti cercando di individuare alcune "fasi omogenee" e di rintracciare i nessi tra i processi evolutivi del contesto e quelli che interessano le coperture lignee.
Particolare attenzione è attribuita allo sviluppo delle tipologie costruttive delle capriate e alla diffusione di altri tipi di strutture lignee di copertura (cavalletti centinati, archi, portali a due o tre cerniere, ecc.), rapportati ai vari aspetti del contesto tecnico-culturale e produttivo: livello e tipo di formazione culturale e tecnica dell'ingegnere e dell'architetto; sviluppo e diffusione delle teorie della meccanica delle strutture e della resistenza dei materiali; cambiamenti nei modi di produzione e lavorazione dei materiali edilizi; variazione dei prezzi della manodopera e dei materiali; invenzione di nuovi sistemi di connessione dei legnami.""

Selvitys tarkastelee asukaslähtöistä puutilaelementtirakentamista asuinympäristön, asuinrakennuksen ja asunnon tasoilla. Asukas-lähtöisyys käsitteenä asuntorakentamisen yhteydessä tarkentaa käyttäjälähtöisyyden käsitettä. Puutilaelementtikerrostalorakentamisen tuotannosta johtuvat erityisominaisuudet vaikuttavat pääosin asuntojen  ja asuinrakennuksien suunnitteluratkaisuihin. Kun asuntoon sisältyy mahdollisuus mukautua käyttäjien tarpeisiin, on rakennuksen todennäköinen käyttöikä pidempi ja käyttöaste parempi. Siksi selvityksessä tarkastellaan joustavan tilaelementtirakentamisen mahdollisuuksia joustavan vyöhykkeen periaatteen sekä kolmen tilaelementtien sijoituslogiikan avulla. Tarkastelua tukee kirjo tutkielmia, jotka käsittelevät puutilaelementti-kerrostaloasuntoja sekä niiden joustavuusvariaatioita.
Selvityksessä tavoitellaan myös – tuotantotavasta riippumatta – asuinympäristön arvostuksien parempaa ymmärrystä sekä tulkintaa siitä, miten rakennettua ympäristöä voidaan kehittää asumispreferenssien pohjalta. Lisäksi tarkastellaan, mitä potentiaalista etua puutilaelementtirakentamisessa voisi olla asuinympäristöpreferenssien toteuttajana.
Selvitystyössä yhdistyy käytännön suunnittelutyö ja teoreettisempi tarkastelu. Selvitystyöhön liittyy kaksi tapaussuunnitelmaa, joista esitellään Kokkolan keskustaan sijoittuva puukerrostalokortteli.Selvityksen tavoitteena on sekä kartoittaa tilaelementeistä koostuvan puukerrostalorakentamisen tarpeellisia kehitysosa-alueita arkkitehtuurisuunnittelun näkökulmasta että toimia idea- ja tietopankkina tilaelementeistä koostuvan puukerrostalokorttelin suunnittelussa.

A Basilica dedicated to Saint Michael was first built in the Longobardic period (6th-8th cen-turies), however the present building dates back to 11th-12th centuries. The church was built in Romanesque style and it is unanimously considered one of the masterpieces of the Lombard architecture of the period. During the subsequent centuries, the building underwent several changes and restoration works. Dealing with the roof of the central nave, the rebuilding of the vaults (1488-91) was the most relevant work. Traces of the pre-existent vaults are still visible in the attic; they were much higher than the present ones and thus they were in-compatible with the structural organisation of the existing timber roof structure. Therefore the conception of this structural system probably dates back to that period. In 1860–75 the building underwent works of stylistic restoration and since the 1930s many preservation in-terventions were done in order to consolidate the decayed sandstone of the façades; however, these interventions did not affect the roof structures. In 1942 two reinforced concrete wall plates were built on the top of the longitudinal walls of the central nave and the timber trusses now lay on them. Since the early 19th century the church has been studied by many art and architecture historians, and many surveys and drawings have been done, both before and af-ter the stylistic restoration works. However the historians’ attention has focused mainly on the formal features of the building and on the construction phases of masonry structure. In many of the drawings the roof structures are not even represented; in the others, they are only sketched out schematically. Therefore, the knowledge of the timber roof structures of the church is still very poor. In this situation, the study of archival documents and the survey and in situ investigation of the timber trusses play a fundamental role in the historical knowledge of this important but neglected timber structural complex. The structural complex is com-posed of a sequence of seven quite different trusses supporting the upper layers of timber elements (i.e. purlins, joists and laths) and the roof tiles. The paper advances a hypothesis about the dating of each of the trusses, based on the matching of the archival data with the critical interpretation of the surveyed signs: structural type of the truss, type of joints, signs of woodworking tools (e.g. axes, saws, hand drills, chisels), assembly marks, signs of reutiliza-tion of timber elements, type of iron reinforcement elements, etc.

Drywall partition walls are susceptible to damage at low-level drifts, and hence reducing such damage is key to achieving seismic resiliency in buildings. Prior tests on drywall partition walls have shown that slip track connection detailing leads to better performance than other detailing, such as fully-fixed connections. However, in all prior testing, partition wall performance was evaluated using a unidirectional loading protocol (either in-plane or out-of-plane) or in shake table testing. Moreover, all details are susceptible to considerable damage to wall intersections. Two phases of the test have been performed at the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Lehigh Equipment Facility to develop improved details of drywall partition walls under bidirectional loading. The partition walls were tested alongside a cross-laminated timber (CLT) post-tensioned rocking wall subassembly, wherein the CLT system is under development as a resilient lateral system for tall timber buildings. In the Phase 1, the slip behavior of conventional slip-track detailing was compared to telescoping detailing (track-within-a-track deflection assembly). In the Phase 2, two details for reducing the wall intersection damage were evaluated on traditional slip-track C-shaped walls. First, a corner gap detail was tested. This detail incorporates a gap through the wall intersection to reduce the collision damage at two intersecting walls. Second, a distributed gap detail was tested. In this approach, the aim was to reduce damage by using more frequent control joints through the length of the wall. All walls were tested under a bidirectional loading protocol with three sub-cycles: in-plane, a bi-directional hexagonal load path, and a bi-directional hexagonal load path with an increase in the out-of-plane drift. This loading protocol allows for studying the bidirectional behavior of walls and evaluating the effect of out-of-plane drift on the partition wall resisting force. In the Phase 1, the telescoping detailing performed better than conventional slip track detailing because it eliminated damage to the framing. In Phase 2, the distributed gap detailing delayed damage to about 1% story drift. For the corner gap detailing, the sacrificial corner bead detached at low drifts, but the wall itself was damage-free until 2.5% drift. Bidirectional loading was found to have an insignificant influence on the in-plane resistance of the walls, and the overall resistance of the walls was trivial compared to the CLT rocking.

This meeting is organised by Lab2Pt and the University of Minho, and will take place in Braga from 15-16 April. It is focused on the study of wood and charcoal from archaeological, archaeobotanical, ethnographic and historical approaches. Wood was in the past a key material and was used in many different ways in the day-today life. Domestic, artisanal and ritual tools, weapons, structures, buildings, log-boats, ships, carts, etc. were made of wood. It was also crucial for the developing of rituals and ceremonies. One of the main goals of this Meeting is to give visibility to this ephemeral material that made part in the past of all the spheres of life. The approaches to the study of wood –and also to charcoal-would be made since disciplines such as Archaeology, Archaeobotany, Ethnography and History with strong interrelations between them. The Meeting would include conferences lectured by recognised experts besides to short-communications and a poster-session, ending with a round-table.

Timber housing sector has several features and is essential for civil construction and forestry chains. In Brazil, the economy related to timber housing is still an unprecedented topic. Thus, the paper aimed to estimate scenarios to delimit the annual volume of this sector. Three years were studied from rare data available in the literature. From these national outcomes, projections for next years were developed. Multiple case approaches composed the literature-based methodology. As a result, the sector endured distinct internal and external economic instabilities, whose associated factors compiled political and sanitary crises, specially, with negative influences. The economy of timber housing reached an average about 500 million Dollars in 2014, being halved in 2015 due to the government crisis marked by the impeachment of the Brazilian president. From 2016 to 2019, small improvements were verified for this sector. In 2020, this favorable scenario was stagnated by the global Covid-19 pandemic. After 2021, a sectoral recovery is forecast based on positive expectations on the Brazilian economy. The two-year period of domestic presidential impeachment was more economically catastrophic than the current three-year phase of sanitary pandemic with global implications. From our economic forecasts, it was possible to attest that the Brazilian sector of timber houses is economically perceptible.

English yew (Taxus baccata L.) is a slow-growing, long-lived (>1000 years), shade-tolerant species that is able to withstand full sun. In a continental climate it is typically an isolated understorey tree, but in oceanic climates it can form dense stands (Thomas and Polwart, 2003). Over-use in past centuries, combined with unsuccessful regeneration, browsing pressure, illegal cutting and lack of appropriate management strategies (Svenning and Magård, 1999; Dhar et al., 2006), have contributed to English yew being catalogued as a rare and endangered species over Europe (Hageneder, 2007). In Britain yew is widespread, although yew woodland is restricted to the south and, to a lesser degree, the north of England, occurring on shallow, dry soils, usually on chalk or limestone slopes. Thomas and Polwart (2003) show the distribution of English yew in Britain. The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/) lists thirteen yew woodlands of Special Areas of Conservatio...

The paper will show how modern structural engineering has been applied to a field of construction before ruled by empiricism and static intuition: timber trusses.
Since the late 18th century, the development of steel industry led to profound changes in the production and processing of building materials. This allowed the use of metallic members in substitution of timber ones and the development of trusses made entirely of steel.
Until mid-19th century timber trusses were designed on empirical basis, with redundant members and with static scheme difficult to be analyzed. In absence of specific building traditions, the spread of metal trusses required the development of appropriate structural analysis methods; the theory of statically-determinate trusses was therefore elaborated. However this theory couldn’t be used with timber trusses because loads weren’t applied in the joints, hypothesis required to ignore the static indeterminacy.
Since the 1860s many engineers expressed the need of structural assessment in traditional structures to optimize the use of materials. Structural analysis method for timber statically–indeterminate trusses were developed, considering rafters as continuous beams on rigid supports. Not considering the deformation of the intermediate supports, such analysis didn’t satisfy constitutive and strain–displacement equations and were gradually excluded from the structural mechanics manuals, but remained common in technical handbooks until 1940s.
In the 1870s, theoretical studies of Castigliano allowed the exact calculation of statically-indeterminate structures, technical papers were then published to apply this theory to various types of wooden trusses. The complexity of the calculations, however, relegated the use of these methods to sporadic examples; in most cases engineers still resorted to empiricism, simplified formulas, tables and nomograms.
In the early 20th century the production of new steel elements for timber connection (screws, bolts, spiked plates) allowed the experimentation of new timber trusses made mainly of boards; these trusses could reproduce the steel truss schemes due to the simplicity of the joints and to the slenderness of members, thus allowing the use of the theory of statically–determinate trusses.

The Terramara Park of Montale was founded in 2004 starting from the excavations conducted between 1996 and 2001 and from the comparison with European models, which was adapted to the territorial reality of the site, a partially urbanized area, and to the estimate, which later turned out to be realistic, of a large turnout of visitors.
The identification of Bronze Age dwellings during the excavations provided substantial information for the life-size philological reconstruction of two houses, made using mainly attested materials and carrying out some work with tools faithfully reproduced from original models.
The methodology followed for the reconstructions however necessarily had to adapt to criteria determined by safety, accessibility and economic sustainability, which in some cases limited the application of a strictly philological criterion in the design and building of structures. In this sense, over time it has been necessary to carry out a series of maintenance interventions that found a compromise between philological aspect, economic sustainability and guarantee of enduring.
To favor a systematic and targeted approach to maintaining safety conditions of the structures, we proceeded to their constant monitoring and improvement with the methods of technique and technology of wood construction.
With this paper, we therefore intend to present an example of management of structures made with potentially perishable material, partly built experimentally but mainly for educational and dissemination, through interventions aimed at maintaining them over time respecting a certain conformity with ancient buildings and without altering the evocative impact for the public.

The main component of the Surrey Dendrochronology Project is the accurate dating of 177 ‘dwellings’, nearly all by tree-ring analysis. The dates are used to establish date ranges for 52 ‘key features’, which cover many aspects of timber-framing from building type to details of carpentry. It is shown that changes of method and fashion were in many cases surprisingly rapid, almost abrupt in historical terms. Previous dating criteria for timber-framed dwellings in the county have been refined and new criteria introduced. Clusters of change from the 1440s and the 1540s are shown and some possible historical links suggested.