Wood was and is an important natural resource – the annual worldwide demand is still increasing. Building with this material has a long history. Even in primitive times men most likely not just lived in caves, but also in housings built from twigs and branches. In monumental architecture stone became an important construction material, but in areas rich in forest wood remained the predominant resource. This can not only be seen in block houses built from wood but you also find this natural material in ceiling- and roof constructions of buildings made out of stone or bricks.
The “Waldviertel”, an area rich in forest in eastern Austria, is a basal complex with up to 1,000m elevation above sea-level. It is characterised by spruce-fir-beech-forests and spruce forests on acidic soils. Up to now there was not much research done on the building fabric of this region , for the representative and sacral buildings as
as well as for rural objects.
The aim of the project is the inventory, survey and dating of the historic building fabric. Students of “LFS Edelhof” will therefore reconnoitre their personal environment to find suitable buildings and trees which they sample by themselves later on. Students of “HTL Krems Sanierungstechnik” will survey and measure some of these buildings (respectively their wooden constructions), map their static systems, analyse jointing marks and rafting wedges. Based on the compiled data, on the one hand tree-ring-chronologies will be developed for the “Waldviertel” for dendro-provenancing (a method to determine the origin of a wooden object). On the other hand the craftsmanship of the carpenters, types of construction (of roof constructions, walls etc.) of this region should be documented and displayed. This research will be possible thanks to the access of the students to rural constructions and will help to spotlight a topic not yet worked on (with exception of open air museums).
Wald-Holz-Viertel is a project supported by "Sparkling Science", a program of the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy
