Call For Papers
Abstracts can now be submitted for the conference "The Challenge of Wide Span: Timber Structure 1500-1900 in Switzerland and Beyond" on 27 and 28 June 2019.
Anything beyond 60 feet (approx. 18 m) can be considered a very wide span for any historic timber structure. While some medieval roof trusses reached or even surpassed this limit, it was far more often challenged during Early Modern times. Driving forces were post-free spaces required for churches with increasing importance of sermons both in protestant and catholic contexts, general architectural developments, and simultaneous preference of ever lower roof pitches. Among other countries, Switzerland became very well-known for its mastery of wide-span timber structures in the 18th century, not only in roof trusses, but also in bridge building.
Our conference will bring together experts from all over Europe to discuss the medieval origins and the early modern development of “proto-engineering” timber structures bridging large spans in Switzerland and beyond, i.e. in a European perspective. Results from an on-going research project on wide-span Swiss timber roofs (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and presented in 5 lectures) will be confronted with the appropriate international context.
Call For Papers
We ask for proposals of contributed papers in the form of an abstract (max. 4000 chars including spaces, and 1 image), to be submitted until December 31, 2018, via e-mail to (pdf with image included in the text). Languages welcome include German, English, French, and Italian.