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If I approximated this type of house in the Sims, which I could do by deploying all sorts of objects made for other purposes, the observer would be easily forgiven for thinking I was just being silly. I'm going to describe it before linking the pictures, because I want you to take a moment to try to picture it from my description before you look at it. When you first look at it, you won't see what's really there: no, because I have warned you, you'll look very closely and see it.
Right, so picture this: it is a blocky house in outline, with a moderately steep roof. Including the space under te roof, there are three stories. The ground floor, what Americans call the first floor, is lined with arches set with their backs flush to the wall. In the open ings of the arches you can see that the walls are made of squared-off horizontal logs, painted a dark red, brown, cream, or white. Sometimes the arches match the logs, sometimes they are painted to contrast heavily. The next floor (second floor to Americans, first floor to Europeans) is either more horizontal squared-off logs, sometimes with the caulking painted a contrasting color, or else a smooth white plaster, or it can be half-timbered. Sometimes it also has those bas-relief arches. The walls under the peaked roof are usually covered in vertical siding, or they might be half-timbered. The vertical siding might be quite rustic or it might be fine. There might be a decoration on this top section. There may be dormers and there may be a bay window or a balcony.
Now you can look at the page where the pictures come from. Look carefully, before you read the machine-translated text with them. Do you see that the arches are functional? The text explains it, or I might not have gotten it. The arches are to carry the weight of the roof away from the walls. I imagine it is to defend the house from collapsing in heavy snow. I've seem big blocky Central European farmhouses before but not like this, with these details of construction right there to be contemplated.
What I don' know from reading this is whether, a hundred years ago, very poor country people would live in house like that. I guess it doesn't matter much, as the villages around the old castle are not poor at the beginning of the novel.
Right, so picture this: it is a blocky house in outline, with a moderately steep roof. Including the space under te roof, there are three stories. The ground floor, what Americans call the first floor, is lined with arches set with their backs flush to the wall. In the open ings of the arches you can see that the walls are made of squared-off horizontal logs, painted a dark red, brown, cream, or white. Sometimes the arches match the logs, sometimes they are painted to contrast heavily. The next floor (second floor to Americans, first floor to Europeans) is either more horizontal squared-off logs, sometimes with the caulking painted a contrasting color, or else a smooth white plaster, or it can be half-timbered. Sometimes it also has those bas-relief arches. The walls under the peaked roof are usually covered in vertical siding, or they might be half-timbered. The vertical siding might be quite rustic or it might be fine. There might be a decoration on this top section. There may be dormers and there may be a bay window or a balcony.
Now you can look at the page where the pictures come from. Look carefully, before you read the machine-translated text with them. Do you see that the arches are functional? The text explains it, or I might not have gotten it. The arches are to carry the weight of the roof away from the walls. I imagine it is to defend the house from collapsing in heavy snow. I've seem big blocky Central European farmhouses before but not like this, with these details of construction right there to be contemplated.
What I don' know from reading this is whether, a hundred years ago, very poor country people would live in house like that. I guess it doesn't matter much, as the villages around the old castle are not poor at the beginning of the novel.
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As for style, this is in the area where fachwerk (do we call that half-timbering in English) is prevalent, and a lot of umgebinde houses also have fachwerk on the upper stories, so I'm thinking that stylistically, it may present to the eye as a curvaceous variant or counterpoint.
Another stylistic note. In Prague a lot of buildings have a plaster facade that is ruled horizontally like that with incised arch shapes around the windows and doors: it's totally not structural, it's just lines and curves carved in the plaster. I had thought they were smoother versions of the imitation sandstone buildings which are also common, but now I'm thinking that the lack of stippling and the lack of divisions within the horizontal spaces is not ultimate simplification of the imitation sandstone, but in fact it's imitating the umgebinde style. It's kind of thrilling to see it, and I wish I could be certain that what I'm seeing is really what's there!
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P.
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P.