I'm building a barn. And I need some feedback. This barn will be built in a traditional Bernese Swiss style -but I'm looking for feedback on which one. Not because I can't figure it out myself, but because I hope to involve others in this project, and am trying to cultivate interest, knowledge, and admiration for these traditions.

Also, while this project is ongoing, I hope to host a number of workshops, hold demonstrations, and use it as an example for teaching -as well as a project for a book on one of these methods.

This barn is going to be either Blockbau, or log building in the tradition of the Bernese Alps, or timber framed according the the Lowland Bernese -or Berner Mitteland- customs.

One involves some impressive and heavy logwork, with straightforward structural design and simple roof geometry, with a gently sloping roof. The other involves timber framing with a fairly basic wall system, but some rather complex roof geometry involving the Liegender Dachstuhl roof system, and the 'Viertelwalmdach' or the half-hipped roof (yes, the German term literally means 'Quarter-hip roof'), all executed on a rather steep roof (12/12 or greater pitch)

So I'd like to hear from you -where is the most interest. What project would you all like to see?

Looking forward to responses.

David, I'm not familiar with the barn building styles of Indiana, but if I was in your shoes, I would try to connect the local building style and ideas of farm operation back to the homeland. I happen to live in southern fringe of the so-called Pennsylvania barn domain. Most of the old local barns are forebay bank barns, the majority are Pennsylvania barns with maybe a 15% to 20% minority are the steeply sloped Sweitzer barn. Very few but some have cribbed framed features. Most of the barn stock seems to have timber frames that have American evolved framing systems. The southern part of the county, Jefferson WV, lost a large portion of the barn stock during the Civil War, so it is common to see replacement barns built after the war in a German style on English plantation type farms.

So my point is, see if you can tell something about the local history and development even if gets a little mixed up.

Thanks for the feedback

'Local' framing traditions are varied over a very short distance around here. Settlement of this region was very late, and from a few different sources.

For the most part, there are 3 main types of barns around here. The oldest is the Pennsylvania Barn, or the Swiss Barn as it is sometimes called around here. Second is the canted purlin barn, a common midwestern style. Last is the round barn. Indiana has quite a few of these.

I also understand the idea of connecting to local history. But the thing is, that's hard to do. Local history in a large part depends on who you are. Go an hour away, for example, to the town of Berne Indiana and you will find old buildings built in Swiss and Alsatian styles by the Mennonite and Amish immigrants who settled the region. Come to Howard County, where I live, the oldest buildings are all log cabins built around the 1840s and 50s. The earliest barns were all torn down to make way for bigger ones, and the oldest extant barn is a Swiss Barn built in 1871, by German Baptists.

This project, however, requires the use of traditional Bernese Swiss styles.

I'm surprised there haven't been more opinions offered up -

I for one, having seen a few in PA, would find it hard to resist the opportunity to help build a Liegender Stuhl roof system, and how someone who had made study of regional varation and methodology would approach the execution of such a system.

Well if you find it so hard to resist, you'll just have to come to Indiana next month!

We're building this barn (This, Stöckli) And it will have the Liegender Dachstuhl in it.

I'd like to see the examples in PA, with information on just who built them.

It varies a lot with region, a German approach is different -people accomplish different things with it, for example the double pitch roof of the Emmental, compared with the slightly smaller and single pitched roofs of my own Gürbetal.

The barn I designed started out as an Emmental style, but I had to go back to my roots and now it is more of a Gürbetal style.
I realize that means very little to most of you, not being familiar with the geography of the Canton of Bern (where, by the way, all the rivers flow North)

The different roofs of Europe would be a fascinating subject. There are just so many ways to do them. I took some beautiful pictures of some in the UK too.

Just the different roofs of Switzerland alone would be enough to spend a lifetime studying, let alone all of Europe!
Bernese Lowland, Oberland, Jura, Aargua, Zürich, Appenzell, Central Swiss, Walser, Bündner, Ticino, Basel, Geneva, Neuchatel, should I go on?