Category: technology and theory.

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Notes taken in the course Architecture Science and technology taught by Antoine Picon at Harvard University. These are notes and were taken quickly during class, beware of the writing style!

Peters T.-F., Building the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, Massachusetts, The M.I.T. Press, 1996, Chapter 6, Patterns of Technological Thought: Buildings from the Sayn Foundry to the Galerie des Machines pp. 205-279.

Like most other prefabricated systems, the Crystal Palace (British) designed by Paxton and Fox in 1851 and destroyed in 1936 was a composite of iron cast and wrought iron, wood, and glass. Its name was due to the fascination of the public for the glass and the light.

One most fascinating antecedent to the Crystal Palace was the Sayn Foundry created in 1830 by Althans made of Iron with neo gothic detailing.

Another iron structure (before the Crystal palace) that did not need masonry walls for stability (unsupported iron building): the Kew Palm House by Turner in 1846-1848. It was entirely wrought iron except for the columns and the brackets, it was prefabricated in components and there was simplification and standardization of connections. Turner thought about the hierarchy of structural members and their relationships (advancement in technology in building) with the idea that the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

New approach to systems: Turner had to think of his building as a complete shape and the dissect it into parts of prefabrication. Open system are then more flexible but need two levels of design: the design of the structural system and the design of the building form. The leap into mathematical literacy between the middle of the 18^th century and the beginning of the 19^th changed the way technologists thought.

The new method of computing liveload on a bridge desk exemplified the change. In 1825, the suspension bridge pioneer Dufour insisted that there is no sense in over designing a bridge, e.g. The maximum overload does not need to be if the context of use of the bridge did not necessitate it, however one can want to compare similar bridge structures of different plan. Engineers developed models, architects appropriate design, manufacturers: means of production and builders: strategies in construction.

The crystal palace frame was then a modular assembly with standardized interfaces. Also, Fox thought the building in 3 dimensions whereas most structural designers think primarily in two dimensions. Durand developed his incremental and modular design method around 1800 in France to control architectural form and scale, the Brompton Boilers is one example.

The conflict between cultural standards for facilities and for works of architects became sharper, e.g. The Eiffel Tower. Competing for superlative height was typically a 19^th century preoccupation. And Eiffel found some form of logically ordered thinking process to develop a simple sophisticated catalog of wrought-iron parts and connection rules. The Eiffel tower uses only nine basic connection gussets that are generator of his construction system defining the system geometry. Eiffel designed an open system to build any iron structure. This kit-of-parts approach to construction has been adopted by Mecano in 1904 and engineering construction toy for boys.

The Eiffel Tower and the Galerie des Machines (by Dutert, 1889) was showing this approach to construction design.The Galerie des Machines was said to be the most appropriate use of Iron in the exhibition of 1889. It was not the first iron frame in which structure determined formal expression, but it did mark the point at which the analytical engineering model, the material, and the manufacturing method became the form.

In 1851, the Crystal Palace had expressed the open system by default because there had not been time to cover it appropriately. Thirty-eight years later, the Galerie des Machines expressed system and structure by choice.

Nineteenth century iron construction: from Ironbridge to Crystal Palace

The material and its evolution
Iron is the first industrial material even though it existed before. Iron is light compare to a pyramid structure but it requires the engineer to calculate more because of the snow, the wind. It is also the first modern material that makes people happy (modern) and unhappy (artificiality is criticized. At the beginning people were fascinated by the artificial, now we are surrounded by it):

1- Cast Iron (a lot of carbon), from a furnaise. It is easy to get and resist to compression (it is 60 times the resistance of stone) and limited in term of tension. It is used for arches
2- Iron proper. Easy to get too and resistant to compression, but big problem: it rusts. It is use for trusses (type of framework with joined usually fixed)
3- Steel (between the two). Mechanically the most sophisticated, can avoid rust to a certain extent, resist compression and tension

Evolution and techniques of assemblage
The production of iron results from innovations: starts with the production in cast iron and the idea is to make cast iron construction cheaper. By the end of the 19s they decarbonate iron by burning carbon.1^st they are inspired by carpenters then in the 19^th they invent the rivets, then bolting with steel and welding.

Constructive poetry
Iron is linked to a new sociability, and allow collective gathering. It is seen as a material to overcome problems in society . Iron will produce a visual crisis.
In the late 19^th century they begin to understand that tubes are to be used for compression and other bridges members in tension (structural poetry)

How does a material develop?
Abraham Darby 2 produces cast iron. It starts in engineering then in architecture where the bridge is a strange compromise. In 1830, England produces half of the production of iron and France produces half of what England produces. Later it generalizes. In Paris, Napoleon authorizes two cast iron bridges: le Pont des Arts (in front of le Louvre) designed by architect Cessart and the Austerlitz bridge that will be demolished because of vibration coming from cars that ruin the bridge. Telford proposes the construction of the London Bridge.

Le Pont des Arts
The English mills
The British start to explore cast iron columns and later beams. People are surprised by these buildings because it is so utilitarian, so this is an aesthetic shock.

Early American developments
30 years after the development in England, it goes to the US. James Bogardus develop cast iron elements in Soho: prefabricated buildings + decoration.

Between utility and pleasure
Iron will be then found in leisure and pleasure places such as parks, new urban life, passages coupled with glass. Iron is then collective gathering and identification of the individual. Other examples, the glass house in the Jardin des Plantes or la Coupole des Halles in Paris by Belanger, le Pont du Carroussel by Pelonceau (now destroyed but it was in front of Le Louvre).

The glass house – Jardin des Plantes

The most spectacular is the Britannia Tubular Bridge by Stephensen who used tubes and consolidated them which became an emblematic of British engineering. British seemed more inventive than French when French are more into the arc bridge when British as more interested in new lenticular structure-like forms.

Britana tubular bridge
Technology and memory
New materials can be associated with the total inverse: memory and nostalgia

The development of suspension bridges
Iron being accepted as a material is the most essential step. It existed in China for pedestrians but a suspension bridge starts in the US for scale and prices reason then it goes to England. The idea is to suspend deck on chains, the Finley system. In the early 19^th century this invention made by Finley became popularized. Telford made the Menai Bridge which is a record. Then it goes through France via Navier and in the mid 1820’s suspension bridges are widespread in France and everybody wants these bridges because it is cheap. There is an anecdote about a catastrophe that happened. The army marched on a bridge and it collapsed. However the resonance problem came from the wind and not from the army.

Menai bridge by Telford

Why are suspension bridges important?
It is the first truly calculated structure that raises the idea of trust of the material (resistance and standard quality). The Seguin Brothers did a survey before launching the suspension bridge. It is the 1^st non vitruvian structure (the pyramid type of structure) so they fakely used columns to make the bridge look visually solid until the mid 19^th century.

The crystal palace
1851 it is the first structure of this size, it is international but there is a national identity; it uses cast iron, wrought iron and carpentry techniques

The use of iron in architecture
the problem emerged on how to use iron in architecture. Monuments of iron based: Bibiotheque st Genevieve by Labrouste with cast iron, not revolutionary because cast iron had been around.

Oxford: the university museum as the bone and skeleton metaphor. The association between gothic and wood is a very british tradition and Viollet le Duc discusses the problem of iron in architecture: Iron is too gothic for architects and it does not ‘look’ solid.

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As part of ARCHITECTURE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, AN INTRODUCTION, course by Antoine Picon, Harvard University.Picon A., French Architects and Engineers in the Age of the Enlightenment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, Chapter 9, “A Productive Countryside,” pp. 211-255.

as in
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRIDGE BUILDING AND THE SPLIT BETWEEN ARCHITECTS AND ENGINEERS

Notes
This chapter studies the country in term of cartography, look at the productive aspect of the country and introduce the effect of the state.

The map was the most important tool for the engineers. Maps could indeed ‘reduce a considerable space to a very restricted space’ and allowing an overall perspective, offer a theoretical approach to the problems raised by the land. Learning to draw map was the deal of the engineer profession: referred to the topography but also learning of the landscape, its logic.
The ecole des ponts et chaussees organized its instruction around the drawing of maps and until the 1750’s 1760’s maps were linked to the problems of road construction. Then the cartography took another form and were not about real situation anymore but about ideal territories imagined (more symbolic, colors, etc…). The maps drawn by the pupils from the Ponts et Chaussees resembled the art of gardens, due to the scale and the qualities of the relief. Learning to draw a map involved learning to read nature and it signs and involved the use of graphic codes: to represent the grass, one used a pale green. The cartography at the Age of Enlightenment oscillated between the need for conventions and the desire to imitate nature. They introduce some dissymetry into their axial compositions. And whereas the garden in the French style had been an image of plenitude for Blondel, for the engineers it became a simple repertoire of means. The engineer was primarily concerned with physical communication. To link up province by means of roads and canal, to throw builds or build ports. To avoid arbitrariness, the engineer had to proceed rationally and the territory acceded to a programmatic dimension.

The confrontation between engineer and territory was violent: the engineer was supposed to ‘level the mountains, join up the seas and render the uninhabited mountains fertile’. Country and garden were linked also in the instrumental sense. Then country and garden differed as for instance geometry was no longer derived from the art of architecture, this took on the form of a crisis of representation on .
The bridge then reconciliated the engineer and nature as it impose continuity upon a fractured terrain. It represented then the fault but also expressed a regularity as much as the road linked the logic of territory and the need of society. There was a convergence between what territory revealed and what the design required. Bruke then discussed the aesthetics of the sublime in 1757. The notion of sublime always reposed on the divided nature, and was independent from any notion of beautiful. Bruke: ’sublime is whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger’ Since the bridge was born from the suffering of the engineer and his workmen, and since the danger in braving the river, it was then regarded as sublime. The bridge helped to express a duality and a conflict: the duality of the engineer (inspired by nature in order to combat it) and a conflict between the ideal landscape revealed by planning and the real landscape with faults.

The picturesque was intimately linked to painting an the bridge through the sublimity of its origin became picturesque and lost it sanguished character. The maps of the pupils of the Ponts et Chaussees took then a narrative character.
As Kant puts it: ‘the sublime resided primarily in the mind of the spectator, who had to have an aptitude for the sentiment of (practical) ideas, that is to say, for the moral sentiment. For the engineers, this aptitude was their concern with social utility.
Preoccupations with territory or with landscape involved a persistent encounter with technology, economy and society, thus Trees on the edge of canals helped to combat deforestation played a big part in the solution of serious problems. The territory was the natural soil in which both experiment and calculation were rooted. The territory in some sense gave rise to planing as the realization of his deepest aspirations.

By contrast with the town, the country was natural (planning there to perfect it). It was also a tool for both the conception and the execution of the design (which helped to unify these two moments). Finally is represented a catalog of products of every kind, the necessary conditions for economic progress.

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Context
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Eighteenth-century bridge building and the split between architects and engineers

Engineering becomes a profession with ideals and professional organizations in 1747: the first engineering school (civil) in the world.
Bridge becomes a network thing as a continuation of the road and engineer becomes ambitious by knowing the world.

Change in conception of bridges in the 18^th century
Before they were massive, semi circular arches, pillars ex: the pont neuf in Paris. Then oval arches in bridges, piers much thinner, and general line of bridge is more tense, more tansparent as possible and bridge becomes intimately linked to circulation on the deck, linked to what is transported along it. In the 18^th century idea comes about that circulation is good: birth of economy in a sense and bridges are part of this mobility. Flattening of the bridge arches brings more lateral force. There was this idea that redundancy should be avoided and the idea of infrastructure emerges purely to support circulation.

The bridge transforms itself:
1- prolongation, a support of the road, bridges used to be isolated parts on the passage
2- destroy houses on bridges: houses block air movement . It was part of the urban sequence and it becomes a pure infrastructure. Architects want to make bridges no longer a place, but a circulation.

Perronet and his pont de Neuilly: The decoration becomes minimum as the beauty of the bridge comes from function alone

Dessin du pont de Neuilly – Projet de Jean-Rodolphe Perronet en 1768
© Coll. Ecole nationale des Ponts et Chaussées – MS9(1)2

Concord Bridge: non standard because it has a slope relation with colonnades

Concord Bridge

Ideal bridge: chinese bridge as described by travelers, say that ideally brdige should be a colonnade in the water.
The bridge becomes then the colonnade in the water and becomes a circulatory device very similar to architecture

Engineering versus architecture
Longing for autonomy from art and see bridges as pure utilitarian element by refusing linguistic connotations. The dimension of calculation is important too as engineers have aspiration to be better in math using calculs of variations. There is a desire for a new engineering science apart from architecture and proportion. It is a dynamic process where engineers have a new obsession of process in space and time, and we begin to see the relation between labor, construction, pleasure and pain. There is an obsession in the 18^th about process and progress, e.g. Charlie Chaplins ‘modern times’.

Territory
The bridge is a part of the territorial system because it is part of the road and engineers merges the territory and nature, and the contraction of distance with this idea that the whole planet can become a garden. There is an implicit disorder that the geometry can’t order the world. Engineers become synonymous with a flight against nature and the bridge is nature redeemed by technology where the bridge is sublime. The structure has an organic relation to the body as the interiorization of being part of the structure. In the 18^th century it is the last time the architect and the engineer share the same culture. There is the wealth agriculture mass in which connecting and integrating the wealthy with the rest of the city is done through the infrastructure. Even today technology is meant to pacify things. Architecture has to reason what it is doing and lends towards technology. Transparency is also always about what is shown and what is hidden in that it must hide something in order to reveal others.