Fighter window

Fighter window or skylight (pl. Skylights or skylights ) are called windows that are attached above the fighter of a door or a window .

Fighter in the architectural historical sense refers to the top stone of an abutment on which an arch or vault rests. In the meantime, the term is mainly used for the wood or the stone warrior, which, as continuous horizontal bars, separate the upper area of ​​a window or door from the main wing below. The fighter in this sense can be seen as a connecting bar between the fighter stones in the original sense and can also be referred to as a cross stick .

Skylights over a front door and windows: the wooden frame of the front door has the house number in its center . The transom of the windows can be seen as strong crossbars between the main wing and the skylight (Dreifensterhaus, Marienstraße, Cologne-Ehrenfeld)

The transom thus forms the lower stop of the skylights and can be designed as a second, higher-lying window sill . It was originally a stone beam, in more modern constructions the spar is integrated as a horizontal bolt in the appropriate material in prefabricated door or window frames .

Basics

Fighters (right and left) highlighted as a profiled cornice

Cantilever arch as a straight arch with a transom

Fighter (lat. Incumba ) is called originally any special cantilevered from the wall, load-bearing stone ( abutment ). A lintel or arch must be attached over a window or door opening, which dissipates the load of the masonry over the wall opening. A stone fall is at risk of breaking, as mineral building materials can hardly absorb tensile forces: it must therefore not be too long. To run a door or window opening yet as widely as possible, letting the left and right cantilevered two fighters from the masonry bearing a fall that now shorter than the inside diameter may be ( Kragsturzbogen ) . This results in a typical, offset door or window shape that can be found in historical buildings around the world. Even in the case of a vault that spans a doorway, the fighter forms the support and attachment point for the vault arch. In order not to have to fit the door or window into the irregular or arched opening, the two-sided battlement stones were also replaced by a continuous stone or wooden bolt, above which a separate light opening or a brick wall was provided.

When the fighter-lintel construction was gradually abandoned, this bolt took over the name of the fighter, and the skylight window is named after it, regardless of whether it sits rectangular above the fighter or semicircular or otherwise shaped in the stitch of the vault.

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  Window on the market square of Locronan, Brittany - ancestral form of the fighters window, clearly recognizable the two fighters and the fall

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  House of Kelk, Jerusalem - The relationship to the tympanum and the lunette is still legible.

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  Main portal of the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office in Liebefeld , Köniz, Switzerland - imitation fighters on a stick. The skylight is purely aesthetic.

Fighter windows at doors

The fighter windows are mostly permanently glazed or tiltable windows over doors . In historical architecture, they can be used to direct light into the otherwise generally windowless hallway or from adjoining rooms into a corridor . Fighter windows can be found both on front doors , where they were originally kept small and barred, and on interior doors, where they take on enormous dimensions in old buildings of the 19th century with room heights of over 3½ meters, and then take on the character of a glass room divider.

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  Skylight over a door ( Hindeloopen , Netherlands)

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  Mighty fighter window above the house gate, both clear glass (Rathaus Wetter , Germany)

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  Front door: skylight with colored house names, fluted glass below ( Handel House )

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  Fighter solution with side glazing (Hotel La Parra Ctra.Balneario, Archena , Murcia )

Skylights on windows

In the case of a window, the skylight (upper window) is a window that is attached over the sash, which can usually be opened. It can be permanently glazed, rotatable / tiltable or just tiltable or rotatable. The hinged or pivoting windows are less common. By increasing the window opening, daylight can get deeper into the corresponding room, the entire window area can be made larger without having to oversize the window sash.

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  The wider, middle window is crowned by a skylight.

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  Skylight of an arched window (chapel in Deilingen , Germany)

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  Simple window with upper window ( Weillen , Belgium)

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  Fighter window as a four-pane lattice casement window ( Pötzleinsdorf Castle , Austria)

Others

In French, fighters ' windows are called “Vasistas” , pronounced like the German sentence “Was ist das?” . This also explains the origin of the word: at the end of the 18th century, German visitors to France saw fighters' windows for the first time and asked the landlord this question. In 1798 the word finally appears for the first time in a French dictionary.

literature

• Hans Koepf , Günther Binding : Picture Dictionary of Architecture (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 194). 4th, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-520-19404-X , p. 261.

Web links

Commons : Fighter Windows  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Éditions Larousse: Définitions: vasistas - Dictionnaire de français Larousse. Retrieved November 9, 2018 (French). 
2. ↑ What is Vasistas? In: Lausitzer VerlagsService GmbH, Cottbus, lr-online.de. August 1, 2007, accessed April 1, 2020 .