Evaluation of the constructive material features of a medieval timber framing in Arquata Scrivia 'Gothic House'

The “Gothic House” of Arquata Scrivia is located in “via Interiore”, that is what remains of the “decumano” of the old town centre of Arquata, in the North-West of Italy in Piedmont Region. This house represents what remain of a more significant presence of these buildings, today more than ever a rare case of timber framed constructions with a stone and brick infill for the area of Southern Piedmont. The conservation of this almost unique example through a careful restoration, left us a testi-mony of the craftsman’s culture and an unusual construction’s technique for this area that has not been followed later on, replaced with most common techniques such as loadbearing structures in masonry with wooden horizontal elements and wooden roofs. This represents also a rare case in which knowledge has followed and not preceded the res-toration. In recent years the building is a matter of studies at the University of Genoa and a research carried out on a structural model of the “gothic house” has been presented at the recent International Conference H.Ea.R.T.H. 2015 in Lisbon. For this work researchers from other Universities has been involved. The present study pays attention to the constructive technologies, the definition of the con-structive elements, the characteristics of the materials, bear in mind the restoration interven-tion, with a detailed study of the connections between the different elements and their condi-tion through a cognitive survey developed mainly with non-destructive tests.