Montafonerhaus

Key takeaways

Montafonerhaus belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Montafonerhaus to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Montafonerhaus from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Montafonerhaus (or Montafon house) is a house type in the Montafon valley in Vorarlberg (Austria). It is built as a mixed construction of stone and wood. The Montafonerhaus was a popular type of house from the 15th to the 20th century. These spacious buildings characterize the landscape in the Montafon valley until today. In all of Austria and the entire Alpine region, the Montafon is the only valley that is so small that it has its own type of house. The individual houses differ depending on the wealth of the builder, the location and the architectural fashion at the time the barn was built.

History In the Montafon, the Rhaeto-Romanic stone house (which had its origins in Graubünden) and the wooden Walser house (originating in Valais) developed into its own form of house in a mixed stone-wood construction. Wood from local forests has always played a central role in the choice of material. Most Montafon houses have been built between 1670 and 1960. Settlement form The Montafon was not originally designed as a village structure. Instead, the valley consisted of single farm settlements. These were created at the time the forest was first cleared. A special feature of the Montafon valley is the lack of hedges in the entire valley.

The design The Montafonerhaus is a so-called Paarhof. This means that the house and the stable or other additional buildings (e.g., for equipment storage) are separated. In contrast to this, the Bregenzerwälderhaus is a Einhof (byre-dwelling) which means that the house and stable are both under one roof. From a functional point of view, Montafon houses were mostly multi-generational houses that also integrated the agricultural part.

Types There are two basic types, depending on where the entrance door is located: in type I it is in the valley-facing gable wall, in type II the entrance is on the side of the eaves sheltered from the wind.

The interior layout of the Montafonerhaus

From the outside, the whitewashed walls form a clear contrast to the black and brown wooden walls. The flat roof is a snow roof with a pitch of 23 to 25 degrees and was originally a clapboard. A snow roof is inclined so gently that the snow stays on the roof as heat insulation and does not slide off as a roof avalanche. The wall with the entrance door (usually in the form of a round arch) and the rooms behind it (front house and kitchen) are made of stone, the rest of the house has wooden walls. The house is heated by a central tiled stove, which is supplemented in the parlor (Stoba) by a brick bench, the so-called Kuschbank, permeated with the warm smoke by the stove. In the living room, there is usually also a so-called Herrgottswinkel (Jesus on the cross in the corner, to the right and left of it pictures of Mary and Joseph) with a Montafon table, corner bench and chairs. The living room often has a coffered ceiling and the walls are wood paneled. On the bad-weather side of the Montafonerhaus, there is a tuft of boarded half-timbering; it is often pulled forward to keep out drafts. Near the entrance, in a sheltered sunny spot, there is often a resting place with a bench, the so-called Bsetzi.

The Montafon table

The Montafon table was a typical piece of furniture in a Montafonerhaus. This has an inlaid octagonal (4 broken corners) table top with a slate inlaid in the centre and stands on sloping feet. The slate was used to put down hot pots and as a writing board for the card game Jassen. The Montafon table includes a corner seat, chairs and a Herrgottswinkel above the corner seat with a cross and two votive images. Montafon tables are one-of-a-kind pieces that are still, although rarely, made today by dedicated carpenters. Local woods such as pear, cherry, oak, beech, nut, elm and maple have been stored and air-dried for up to 25 years before being processed. More than 100 hours of work have gone into each of these unique pieces, whose wood decorations can be selected by the customer himself.

Additional buildings There is often a small herb and vegetable garden close to the house, which is secured with a fence against cattle and game. The hay barn, built almost entirely of wood, is 10 to 20 m from the house; both together they form a so-called pair farm (stable and house are next to or against each other, in avalanche areas also one behind the other). The barn is usually larger and more exposed than the house, so that the house is more sheltered from the wind and the hay in the barn can continue to dry with the wind. There is often a Selch (smokehouse) nearby, a small wooden shed for smoking.

Photo gallery

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Montafonerhaus

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Montafonerhaus claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Montafonerhaus before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Montafonerhaus ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Montafonerhaus

In research: Montafonerhaus appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Montafonerhaus in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Montafonerhaus is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Agricultural buildings, Buildings and structures in Austria by type, Farmhouses, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Montafonerhaus outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Montafonerhaus in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Montafonerhaus means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Montafonerhaus out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Montafonerhaus in simple terms?

The Montafonerhaus (or Montafon house) is a house type in the Montafon valley in Vorarlberg (Austria). It is built as a mixed construction of stone and wood.

Why does Montafonerhaus matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Montafonerhaus?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Montafonerhaus.