Black Forest House Architecture

The Black Forest house, German Schwarzwaldhaus, is a byre-dwelling combining living quarters, work areas and animal housing under a single roof, found chiefly in the central and southern Black Forest region of southwestern Germany. It is distinguished by a long hipped or half-hipped roof that descends nearly to ground-floor height, a form suited to the region hillside terrain, heavy snowfall and strong winds, since the wide roof shades the walls in summer and lets in low winter sun to warm them. The building typically rests on a natural stone basement carrying a timber-framed superstructure above, and individual farmhouses of this type have remained in active use for more than four hundred years, exemplifying vernacular agricultural architecture closely adapted to local climate and topography.