well I have certainly developed a philosophy of my own! And surely it will evolve over time as well.

I think America is at an important point, and what we do right now will likely have significant effect on the course of our future. I think we are in desperate need of some cultural and economical introspection. We need to thoroughly review ourselves and look at what it is exactly we are doing wrong; I think we can all agree that we are indeed doing a lot of things wrong. I also think we as a people need to be willing to step up and take responsibility for our own mistakes, or else this current mess is just going to keep getting worse. We need to stop expecting everyone else (i.e. the government) to take care of our problems, but rather we need to step up and shoulder some responsibility.

I think that in any culture, including ours, home building is an effective microcosm of cultural values. What we value in our houses reflects what we value as a whole.

And what does our culture value in this regard? Fast, flashy homes that go up fast and start rotting away as soon as they are built. Houses built for the short term, with little concern as to what they will be 10, 20, or 30 years down the road. We prefer to build flashy houses for the wealthy, that in 30 years will have to be re purposed because no one with any money would want to live in it any more.

So that's a major part of my philosophy. We need to change.

But we can't expect that change to happen in the alternative remains so far out of reach.

By building timber frames to be showpieces,, to be 'works of art' we in the end are really just making ourselves a part of the problem. we so often are not selling people on quality and endurance, but rather on flash and pomp.

Perhaps we should step back and ponder, not every timber frame has to be a show piece. Maybe we shouldn't always be building a timber frame merely for the purpose of building a timber frame. We seem to have made it an end unto itself, and in so doing we have betrayed the heritage that we so cheerfully uphold.

Personally I have been in a number of old buildings -around here that would be church houses- that I did not realize were timber frames at all until perhaps I went into the basement. They were built that way because that was what worked, and then the frame was immediately plastered over, never to be seen again. Not to say we should plaster over our frames and hide them, just to illustrate that some times a timber frame is a thing of function first and foremost.

I have been working for some time to develop a system that fits my goals. I aim to create a system that can be affordable, be beautiful, adaptable, and efficient. I want a system that can work using natural materials, but also can make use of modern materials equally well. I have been trying to work around the inherent difficulties of a timber frame, such as thermal bridging of timbers. I have come up with a system, surely with flaws that need to be worked out (I am indebted to members of these boards who pointed me in the direction of the german clay walls systems, and plan to use the collected knowledge and wisdom here again!)

One major thing I did was to look at the frame itself, and how it is built. My system, as a result, is designed around a frame that has more in common with frames of the middle ages than with modern American timber framing. To further my research into this I plan on traveling to Germany and Switzerland to see the buildings themselves. I think we would do good to consider other forms of the timber frame. Many have done much work to introduce the Japanese frame, and I think the same should be done for the German frame. It I think it is an inherently far more adaptable and free form than bent framing, and I think if it were executed with local timbers its almost exclusive use of smaller timbers (both in cross section and length) and timbers with rectangular rather than square sections could potentially make it far cheaper, which is part of the reason it developed that way in the first place. Furthermore, I think this building style has effectively proven itself, with examples standing firm from the 1300's at least, some of which stood proud against the assault of 2 devastating world wars. (Ironically, the only major thing that has threatened these buildings has been the use of modern cements to repair the infills, which were incompatible with the original materials and caused frame damage and rotting)