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ARCHITECTURE The Art of Shelter

Historic Treatises

The earliest surviving treatise on architecture is De Architectura - by the Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c.80 - c.15 BC). Vitruvius was a Roman architect, author, civil and military engineer. He used the proportions of the human body as a guide for architecture; we'll see this later when we talk about proportion, and this led to the famous self-portrait by Da Vinci called Vitruvian Man.

According to Vitruvius, a good building should have a balance of three things:

- Durability
- Utility
- Beauty
 

STRUCTURE

Post-and-lintel, arch, cantilever, bearing-wall, and skeleton frame.
 

POST-&-LINTEL

The Parthenon
Athens 432 BCE

England 1800-1400 BCE
 

COLUMNS

 

Illustration of the Doric (left three), Ionic (middle three) and Corinthian (right two) columns.

ARCH

1. Keystone 2. Voussoir 3. Extrados 4. Impost 5. Intrados 6. Rise 7. Clear span 8. Abutment

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri is 630 feet wide and 630 feet tall.

Identify these arches. The text is in white. Highlight the text to discover the answers:
 

Round Arch	Lancet Pointed Arch	Horseshoe	Tudor Arch

Stone has very good compressive strength, but it lacks tensile strength; it cracks easily when spanning too great a distance. The arch allows you to span a greater distance because it distributes stress from the center keystone outward and downward.

The round arch is less efficient. It distributes stress more to the side, and requires that the sides be supported by buttresses. The pointed arch directs more stress downward.
 

BUTTRESS

A buttress is really half of a gothic arch that supports a wall, and prevents it from buckling under the stress.

Notre Dame France

 

DAM
Arches Laying on their Sides

Daniel-Johnson Dam, Quebec, is a multiple-arch buttress dam.

 

Hoover Dam is an example of arches laying on their sides. These arches hold back the tremendous pressures of 9.2 trillion gallons of water, but it is the dept of the dam that  is responsible for the pressure - not the width.

The dam is located in Black Canyon of the Colorado River. Over one hundred lives were lost in the building of this dam - the largest cement structure of its time.
 

ARCADE

An arcade is a row of arches - side by side.

United States Capitol

The Roman aqueduct brought water to the city from the mountains, and was constructed with round arches.

TUNNEL VAULT
 

The tunnel vault, Also called barrel vault, is a row of connected arches back to back. This diagram of a pointed barrel vault shows the direction of the lateral forces.

BRIDGES

Gateshead Millennium Bridge England

Juscelino Kubitschek bridge in Brasília, Brazil

 

Natchez Trace Parkway Bridge
There are no spandrels supporting this bridge.

The Falkirk Wheel is a rotating boat lift located in Scotland, UK, connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal. Click here to see the video.

 

GROIN VAULT and RIB VAULT

Groin vaults and  rib vaults both consists of two tunnel vaults intersecting at right angles. The groin vault is made round arches while the rib vault is made of pointed arches.   

GROIN VAULT

 

RIB VAULT

Rib Vaults at Notre-Dame

DOME

The dome of the United States Capitol is 288 feet by  96 feet. It was designed by Thomas Walter - the fourth Architect, and constructed between 1855 and 1866 at a cost of $1,047,291 (over $240 million today). The dome is made of cast iron painted to look like the stone of the building. There are actually two domes - one inside the other, and the total weight is 14.1 million pounds.

 Apotheosis of George Washington

United States Capitol with Charles Bulfinch dome, 1846

	The dome of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome was designed by Michelangelo. A dome consists of arches joined at the top.
The Pantheon, Rome Giovanni Paolo Pannini or Panini (1691–1765)
The coffers for the Pantheon's concrete dome were poured in molds to lighten the load. The oculus admits light in the center.  learn more Brunelleschi's Dome

PENDENTIVE

Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) 537 A.D.  Istanbul, Turkey - Pendentive and Dome. The epitome of Byzantine architecture, it was the largest place of worship in the world - for nearly a thousand years until the completion of the Seville Cathedral in 1520.

A pendentive allows a circular dome to be placed over a square room - or an elliptical dome over a rectangular room. Pendentives are triangular segments of a sphere. They taper to points at the bottom,  and spread at the top. The pendentives receive the weight of the dome, and concentrate it at the four corners where it can be received by the piers beneath.

 

CANTILEVER
 

 

The cantilevered floor of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater House jets out, and overhangs. Cantilever construction allows for overhanging structures without external bracing.

Ministry of Transportation in Tbilisi, Georgia Designed by George Chakhava and Zurab Jalaghania

The wings of this B-25 Bomber are cantilevered.

LOAD-BEARING WALL
How to Identify Load Bearing Walls

Walls that support floors and roofs are called load-bearing walls or bearing walls.
 

SKELETON FRAME

The building is supported by a framework while the external walls serve as a skin. When the frame is constructed out of metal, we call it steel-cage construction.  When the skeleton is made of wood, as in a house, we call it balloon construction.

BUILDING MATERIALS

STONE

Masonry is stone, brick, concrete block, glass block, or tiles joined with mortar. As I said earlier, stone has great compressive strength, but it lacks tensile strength. It cracks easily when supported only by the sides - as in post-and-lintel construction
 

TYPES OF STONE

There are three types of rock: sedimentary, Metamorphic, and igneous.

Sedimentary rock is formed by minerals and organic material (sediment) in bodies of water. It carves easily, but doesn't last long. Examples are: limestone, chalk, and sandstone.

Metamorphic rock was previously rock (protolith). Then it's exposed to heat and pressure. Examples are slate and marble. Marble carves well, and lasts a long time.

Igneous rock is formed by molten rock (magma). There are over 700 types. Intrusive is below the Earth's surface. Extrusive is on the surface. Granite is an example of this type of rock. It's very hard; it lasts a long time, but it's difficult to carve.

 

CONCRETE
 

 

 

 

Concrete, like stone, has strong compressive strength; it resists breaking under compression, but it's weak in tensile strength. The cement holding the aggregate in place easily cracks. Reinforced concrete has rebar (metal reinforcing rods, wires, glass fibers, or plastic fibers) pored into the concrete. This gives it the compressive strength of concrete - and the tensile strength of the reinforced material.

 

WOOD

The rings of a tree represent one year of growth. The wood of a tree is not actually living. Only the bark and leaves are alive.

STEEL

Steel is an alloy of iron and usually carbon (2%), but other alloys like tungsten, manganese, and chromium are used. Carbon hardens the steel. Increasing the carbon content will result in steel that is harder and more brittle.
 

SCALE

Skyscrapers were made possible by steel, welding, and the invention of the elevator. World's Tallest Buildings

Louis Henry Sullivan (1856 – 1924)

Sullivan was an American architect, and has been called the "father of skyscrapers", and the "father of modernism". He was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an inspired the Chicago group of architects called the Prairie School. "Form follows function" is attributed to him although we see this rule in treatise on architecture by the Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius. Utility was a main concern, and this means that the structure must be practical.

Prudential (Guaranty) Building by Sullivan
Church and Pearl Sts., Buffalo, NY

Sullivan used identified four different zones that had to function for different purposes as "form follows function". The basement was the mechanical and utility area. The ground-floor is the public shopping area - with the entrance and lobby. The third zone are office floors; identical offices are clustered around a central elevator shaft. The final terminating zone houses elevator equipment and utilities, and offices.
 

CONTEXT

The above Prudential Building by Sullivan shows that context isn't just aesthetic; it's also economic. The site was strategically located adjacent to the then County and City Municipal building, and close to a number of other institutions. The intention was to attract lawyers and other quality tenants.

FALLINGWATER - Frank Lloyd Wright's

John Wesley Kamas

 

SPACE

Leonardo Glass Cube by 3deluxe

 

SENSE STIMULI

Luis Barragan (1902-1988)

Photo by John Chiappone




Photo by Susleriel, edited by John Chiappone
 

Shell House: Architect - Javier Senosiain
 

STYLE

Pritzker Prize

Tadao Ando, Japan
Oscar Niemeyer, Brazil

The National Congress of Brazi
Photograph by Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz

Natal City Park Tower, Natal, Brazil
Photograph by Humberto Diógenes.
 

DYNAMIC DESIGN

Frank Gehry

Antoni Gaudí (Antoni Gaudí 1852–1926) was a Spanish architect.
 

Gaudí was a Spanish architect. His style is very individualized and distinct. His magnum opus is Sagrada Família:

Casa Batlló

 

ARTS and CRAFTS MOVEMENT

The movement began with William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896). He was an English textile designer, architect, poet, novelist, and socialist.
 

Tenants of the Arts and Crafts Movement:

1. Find joy in work.
2. Maintain integrity of space.
3. Stay connected to nature.
4. Live simply.
5. Discover balance.
6. Create well designed objects.
The American Craftsman style, or the American Arts and Crafts movement, concerns architecture, interior design, landscape, craft, and a philosophy of life.

 

William Morris' Jane Morris
Painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Designs

His Trellis wallpaper design (1862)

Snakeshead

David's Charge to Solomon, by Burne-Jones and Morris, Trinity Church, Boston, Massachusetts

Morris detail of Woodpecker tapestry, 1885.

The Gamble House in Pasadena, California, USA. It was designed by brothers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene of the architectural firm Greene and Greene and constructed 1908–09 as a home for David B. Gamble of the Procter & Gamble company.

Front porch of the Gamble House.

 

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Designed by Maya Lin.

CONTAINER HOLMES

 

WORLD ARCHITECTURE:

THE ADOBE OF Djenné

Building an Adobe Home