Description of Colombage Construction

Figure 1 found on Facebook (and presumably taken by) Gwenn Goodale Mangine within 24 hours of the earthquake clearly shows a building with its upper story constructed of “colombage” (the French word for “half-timber” or known in Turkey as “hımış” and in Kashmir as “dhajji dewari”) construction. The lower floor appears to be unreinforced stone masonry. The infill in the timber framed upper story is rubble stone. It is damaged – but it successfully resisted collapse, not unlike similar construction in the damage districts of the 1999 Marmara earthquakes in Turkey, and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake in Pakistan and India. Since colombage is a common French construction, found particularly in Normandy – it will be important in any reconnaissance of the Haiti earthquake to include its manifestations in Port au Prince. It will be valuable to see if other examples exist to examine how well the buildings fared in the earthquake, and if any did collapse – and, if so, why. Since this is a pre-modern form of confined masonry construction, a study of it may be able to contribute to EERI’s confined masonry project, and RC confined masonry may also be considered as suitable for reconstructions in Haiti. It may also be a valuable alternative to the badly constructed cinderblock and reinforced concrete frame construction that has done so badly in the earthquake. In a country like Haiti, it is important to promulgate forms of construction that both are (1) derived from indigenous construction methods that can thus be easily understood by the general population, and (2) can be constructed by relatively untrained (and often illiterate) owner-builders with little engineering, quality control, or regulatory oversight.

Figure 1. Colombage construction.