Casa alpina in tronchi / Blockbau

This Notebook aims to document and make known to the general public of non-specialists a type of dwelling which is now obsolete and in danger of extinction, which has nevertheless had great importance in the history of human construction and is still - in the Alpine landscape - perhaps the most qualifying and significant. To understand the reasons for living in the log house (Blockbau) it is necessary to know the processes that have led over the centuries to the creation of the typical structure of the Alpine valleys, both morphological and anthropic, and which, although conservative (i.e. substantially now stabilized in its essential components), is however subject - like any territorial organism - to continuous and progressive transformations, hoping that this post-modern century does not completely overturn its cultural identity. We propose this ten-year university research (carried out in the 1980s in the first year design courses of the Faculty of Architecture in Florence) and the documentary material that resulted from it. Research which, revised, reworked and collected in this publication, returns, at a glance, the complexity of a building phenomenon (constructive and residential) not to be considered - as unfortunately happens today - in terms of mere folklore, but as a strongly integral part rooted in the typological DNA of Western architecture.