382 – Stöckli from Köniz Berne, um 1820
The half-timber building with basement, parlour and kitchen on the ground floor and rooms on the upper floor seems at first glance to be "traditional".
Architectural change
When craftsmen built this house around 1820 they partly followed old ways. The half-timber building with basement, parlour and kitchen on the ground floor and rooms on the upper floor seems at first glance to be “traditional”. However, the building materials and techniques were new. Until then, tree trunks had been split with wedges and then hewn with the adze to make timber for the walls. The timber for this Stöckli was precisely sawn, making possible well-fitted wood joinery without resort to wooden pegs. Mass-produced articles such as iron nails and hardware permit fitting without arduous handwork. The Stöckli from Köniz demonstrates the transition from the old carpentry to new rationalised construction.
New technology
The spaces between the timbers of the half-timber construction of Bernese Stöckli were seldom filled with the old wattle and daub; tuff, stone and broken tile with mortar were usual. In the Stöckli from Köniz the openings are filled with sandstone slabs – a rarity in half-timber construction. Where once only the better parlours were panelled in wood, here a simple but well-insulating new panel type styles the rooms. In the Morillen farm estate of the patrician family von Graffenried new ideas were welcome. On the noble domain before the gates of Berne the Stöckli provided dwellings for farmhands, maids and servants. It was so used into the 1940’s.
Home remedies from the herb garden
In the Stöckli from Köniz and at the Craftsmen’s House from Herzogenbuchsee BE (381) it’s all about naturopathic medicine and the history of the druggist's profession in Switzerland. The central feature is the herb garden in which many plants are grown, for use either in the production of natural fragrant essences and care products or as natural healing remedies, as has been the case since time immemorial. On several week-ends every year in the old chemist’s shop of the Küpfer family in the Stöckli from Köniz, the druggists demonstrate how home remedies are produced, using the old recipes.
Ballenberg
Swiss Open-Air Museum
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10 April to 2 November 2025
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