‘Steeling the undergraduate mind’
Teaching architectural structures to undergraduate students for 35 years.
Pieter Sijpkes
School of Architecture
McGill University
Let me do a little test that was an exam question in my course Architectural Structures recently
I’ve taught Architectural Structures for many years, and, over the years I’ve gotten more and more interested in the question of what forms the basis on which an architect chooses a structural system. Of course, the first variable that come s to mind is the one of economics. Make it fast and make it cheap is a driving force that was on the mind of Inuit building Igloos (too slow meant certain death by freezing) or African or Australian nomads throwing up skerms before the sunset to ward of wild beasts and to contain their herds.
Igloo
Adobe dwelling in adobe by the Musgum tribe in Africa
When settled living became possible other variables came into play: for instance fire proof stone construction in old Montreal or old Quebec versus cheaper but flammable, wood frame construction or, in more recent days fancy maintenance-free concrete block construction in West Africa versus traditional high maintenance adobe.
And, of course, stone versus brick is a big issue in different regions of the world. I come from Holland, a delta country, Holland that does not have any single native stone. As a teenager I went to Belgium to see real rock outcroppings for the first time, and when taking the bus on one of my first forays in Montreal after arriving there in 1966 across Mount Royal on Cote des Neiges, I loved seeing the live rock cliffs on both sides of the road on top of the mountain. Because it has only clay and sand- Holland is a country of brick. Some of the brick is laced with a smattering of stone, imported from Belgium or Germany to give the impression that owners are not just locals, but people of the world.
Iron came into building very late. Until the 1700’s it was a very rare and expensive material made by hand at great cost and in very small quantities. Arms, tools, small building elements like hinges and spikes were the main uses of the rare wrought iron that was made by the strenuouspuddling process that required huge masses of charcoalto make small amounts of the iron. Only when Abraham Darby managed to overcome the problems of replacing charcoal with coke did larger scale iron production possible, and the monument to that erais , of course, the Iron Bridge over the Severn River in Shropshire, constructed of heavy pre-fabricated elements erected on-site in 1779.
Iron bridge pic
Bessemer in 1956 patent.Explosion of possibilities. The science of making custom materials.
Eads bridge St. Louis and the Culemborgbridge in Holland in chrome steel.
The Eiffel tower:
Steel? Cast Iron?Wrought Iron?
In fact plans had been mde to build 1000 feet-up towers in all three materials; Even wood was considered! The cast iron ‘act tower of 1937, the wrought iron Centenary tower in Philadelphia..and the steel Shukhov tower of Moscow are all witness to this.’
The Gliwice Radio Tower is 118 m (387 ft) tall (including the 8 m (26 ft) long spire on its top), with a wooden framework of impregnated larch linked by brass connectors. It was nicknamed "the Silesian Eiffel Tower" by the local population.[citation needed] The tower has four platforms, which are 40.4 m, 55.3 m, 80.0 m and 109.7 m above ground. The top platform measures 2.13 x 2.13 m. A ladder with 365 steps provides access to the top.