19th C / Technology
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Alfred Hardy: the odyssey of a constructional entrepreneur
Iwan Strauven, Department
of Architecture and Urban Planning,
Ghent University
The evolution of scientific research on materials and their application
in building practice have rarely been a central theme of study in architectural
historiography. This is particularly evident for twentieth-century achievements
in the field of reinforced concrete, the material par excellence of
this period. Despite the interest paid to technical innovations by prominent
modernist architects like Walter Gropius or Ludwig Hilberseimer as well
as eminent authors like Sigfried Giedion and Reyner Banham, the work
of pioneers in the field (Hennebique, Perret, etc.) has only recently
been studied in extenso. There has never been a thorough or systematic
study of postwar achievements, the decades after World War II in which
the possibilities of new techniques and innovations (prestressed concrete,
malleability) were opening up.
The proposed paper aims to clarify the position and the technical
achievements of Alfred Hardy (1900-1965), a postwar Belgian pioneer
in the field. Although he is one of the rare Belgian designers of this
period, whose work has gained some international recognition through
publications in magazines and through the 1964 Moma exhibition “Twentieth
Century Engineering”, nothing is known about Hardy’s work
except for his aircraft hangars, built in Grimbergen in 1947. These
two circular buildings were conceived as elegant mushroom-shaped shell
structures in reinforced concrete with an impressive cantilever.
The paper will present the results of empirical research based on a
study of the archives of Alfred Hardy, which first came to the surface
in January 2002. Attention will be drawn to the basic constructive principle
certified by Hardy in 1946 as well as to the variety of projects in
which it was applied, ranging from mass housing projects (approved by
the French ministry of construction in 1961) to agricultural buildings,
skyscrapers and high-rise parking lots.
A Force for Urbanism and National Identity: nineteenth-century Australian
international exhibitions and their domestic exhibits
Kirsten Orr, University of
Technology, Sydney
When the international exhibitions came to Australia in 1879, 1880
and 1888, exhibits of items for the home were the most popular. Exhibitions
fostered occasions for nations to construct and present images of national
character. Domestic exhibits, in particular, linked design with nationality
in a manner capable of interpretation by a wide cross-section of the
population. They provided an important interface between needs, wants
and interests of ordinary people and visions of society promoted by
power elites. Elites, interested in ideas of progress and civilisation,
used photographic images of Australian cities to represent colonial
advancement, and promoted exhibitions in Australia for their refining
values. They believed that the home, a fundamental unit of the city,
was an index of, and an agency for, civilisation and moral order.
This paper explores how exhibits gave visitors opportunities to engage
with ideas about similarities and differences between peoples; national
and non-national imperatives; local and non-local influences and characteristics;
and perceptions of modernity and progressiveness compared to Old World
traditions. Exhibits of a domestic nature provided an impetus for ideas
beyond the exhibitions themselves and contributed to shaping the development
of the cities of Sydney and Melbourne in the years leading to Federation.
The Idea of Empathy in the Architecture of Louis Kahn and Frank Furness.
Peter Kohane, Faculty of
the Built Environment University of New South Wales
The paper argues that Kahn’s 1971 drawing, The Room, invokes
one of the historical sources for his thinking about the body analogy,
Frank Furness’s University of Pennsylvania Library (Philadelphia,
1889). Kahn based The Room’s window, structural frame and curved
plan on the apse-like reading room of Furness’s building. The
discussion of formal themes in works of Kahn and Furness also highlights
a shared interest in the idea of empathy. Initially formulated in the
late nineteenth century, this theory influenced Furness: he would have
known of Leopold Eidlitz’s views about the body’s perception
of a ‘tendency to motion’ in structure. Furness’s
library and The Room both exemplify such an idea. Kahn even shows how
the two figures have assumed distinctive poses by imitating the shape
of their respective sides of the window. This is necessary for their
empathetic appreciation of an animated, life-like presence in built
form. By focusing on The Room, I will offer a new interpretation of
Kahn’s understanding of an architectural frame. This questions
the prevailing account by scholars like Kenneth Frampton, who emphasize
the relevance of the French rationalist tradition. I will place The
Room, and the mature theory of space it illustrates, within a different
historical context, one that includes Furness’s powerful architecture
and the theory of empathy. For Kahn, structure is not only valued in
terms of an inherent logic, but also because it ultimately is a frame
that shelters, indeed embraces, the human body
The Iron Duke’s West Indian Barracks
Pedro Guedes, Queensland
University of Technology
Wellington’s Uniform Barrack System crystallized a complex vision,
imprinting an 1820s type on generations of military builders for over
a century.
Vernacular forms of Caribbean building with deep verandahs had influenced
the design of 18th century barracks and hospitals. Lord Combermere used
his authority as Commander-in-Chief, Leeward Islands to highlight certain
features of this tradition, giving them official blessing. He also mused
upon the economies of using iron and called upon medical opinion for
scientific backing. The use of galleries was mandated for all Caribbean
military buildings by a circular from the Secretary for War and the
Colonies, Lord Bathurst, narrowing the options for fine judgements in
design further still.
Wellington as Master General of the Ordnance saw the use of iron for
colonial military buildings as a method of imposing absolute uniformity
and central control. Under the influence of Combermere and Bathurst,
Colonel Sir Charles Smith provided the dimensional templates. Edward
Holl’s ideas embodied in naval buildings were plagiarised for
ideas and solutions. These were translated into building components
by Lieut. Brandreth’s collaboration with ironfounder William Bailey,
under the watchful eye of General Gother Mann, Inspector General of
Fortifications.
Buildings could henceforth be issued instead of designed, implemented
rather than built. Iron castings, multiplying identical assemblies,
would remove the uncertainties and waste of thinking through similar
problems again and again. The norm replaced the specific or ideal response
with the assurance that not all solutions to a problem could be equally
satisfactory.
“Reading Giedion Backwards”: Walter Benjamin’s
reception of Building in France
Mark Hiley, Department of
Architecture, University of Queensland
In “The Enticing and Threatening Face of Prehistory”, Detlef
Mertins discusses “a detail” from Walter Benjamin’s
reception of Sigfried Giedion’s Building in France from
1928. Benjamin wrote to Giedion in February 1929, expressing his excitement
at receiving a copy of Giedion’s book and indicating that he had
begun reading the last section of the book first. Mertins draws on this
account of “reading it [Giedion] backwards” in order to
lead into an analysis of the utopia of glass. Following on from (or
rather preceding) Mertins’ analysis of the utopia of glass, this
paper proposes to illuminate what a “backward reading” of
Giedion might entail.
In order to distinguish between Giedion and Benjamin’s reading
of Giedion, the paper contrasts Giedion’s appropriation and Benjamin’s
critique of the 19th concepts of “spirit” and “progress”.
In Building in France and Space, Time and Architecture,
Giedion implicitly uses these concepts to describe architecture’s
relation to history and culture. The development of iron construction
by engineers in the 19th century and the development of ferro-concrete
by architects in the 20th century is thought to embody the spirit of
the age and mark the progress of history. Writing at the same time as
Giedion, Benjamin was extremely critical of the use of these concepts
in the 19th century. Paradoxically, Benjamin described Giedion’s
book as “prolegomena to any future historical materialist history
of architecture.” The paper argues that rather than a misreading
Benjamin’s “backward” reading of Giedion provides
a useful insight into the role of material technologies in conceptualising
modern architecture.
A Rough Trade: how artisan ironworkers mediated architectural modernism.
A case study of early steel framed architecture, The 1897 Wesleyan Church, Darwin.
Kevin Green
In 2001 the former Methodist church at the corner of Knuckey and Mitchell
streets in Darwin NT, was dismantled, refurbished and re-erected on
a new site in the Darwin Botanic Gardens. As well as being the oldest
surviving church building in Darwin, it is a unique example of nineteenth
century prefabricated steel framed building. The building was first
erected at the Knuckey St. site in 1897. It was manufactured at a time
when artisan craftsmen worked new materials of iron and steel with highly
evolved handicraft skills, but had begun to make increasing use of machine
tools. This continuation of artisan production into the late machine
age, places it at odds with the process of modernisation Giedion describes
in Mechanisation Takes Command and raises questions about the
manner in which the application of the steel frame 'modernised' architecture.
Striving Towards an Ideal: high style mansion planning in Australia
Kerry Jordan, The University of Melbourne
The planning of houses always reflects not only how they were used
but contemporary social ideals. Nineteenth century mansion houses in
Australia developed from British models, which reflected particularly
British attitudes to privacy, gender and social hierarchies. The characteristic
features of British domestic planning are made apparent when compared
with French and German houses during the same period. Australia’s
high style mansion houses of the nineteenth century largely emulated
British planning principles, despite the more informal nature of Australian
society, which was often compared to that of the United States at the
time. Changes in society should lead to changes in form, but while domestic
planning in the United States diverged significantly from that of Britain,
the planning of the grandest mansions in Victoria differed little from
British models. The new rich in Australia continued to build the sorts
of houses associated with high status in Britain, however they did adapt
these to serve their own purposes. One of the most important of these
was to establish their owners’ status in a new and rapidly changing
society. This paper will examine the planning of several representative
nineteenth century mansions in Victoria, as a local interpretation of
the standards of ‘home’.
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