Abstract

The Siegen industrial region, an area with around a fifteen kilometre radius centred on the eponymous city in northwestern Germany, is renowned for its timber frame houses, dating from the late middle ages to the early-twentieth century. Among these, the houses that were constructed between 1870 and 1920 are noteworthy for their thin timber posts and the omission of short horizontal bars between the posts, known as rails. Starting in the 1960s, Bernd and Hilla Becher photographed roughly three hundred of these houses and, in a publication dating from 1977, selected and arranged them to create a kind of imagined, virtual place. Until now, these houses have received little theoretical or architectural historical interest concerning their origin and the importance of their construction. The new research presented in this article provides insight into their development and meaning, revealing how external forces of modernization interacted with local building traditions to produce a notable regional architecture at the onset of the twentieth century.

摘要

锡根工业区以德国西北部的同名城市为中心，半径约 15 公里，以建于中世纪晚期至 20 世纪初的木结构房屋而闻名。其中，建于 1870 年至 1920 年之间的房屋以其细木柱和柱子之间省略了被称为栏杆的短横杆而著称。从 1960 年代开始，Bernd 和 Hilla Becher 拍摄了大约 300 座这样的房屋，并在 1977 年的出版物中选择并安排了它们，以创造一种想象中的虚拟场所。到目前为止，这些房屋的起源及其建造的重要性几乎没有受到理论或建筑历史的关注。