Industry and Modern Architecture: From Carbon Modernity to High-Tech
Industry and the Evolution of Modern Architecture
The study of industry in architecture involves more than just building typologies; it encompasses the systemic effects of industry on design, specifically mass production, prefabrication, and the introduction of new materials.
Key material innovations throughout history include:
Plate glass (developed and expanded in the nineteenth century).
Steel (not common until the end of the nineteenth century).
Reinforced concrete (practically non-existent until the beginning of the twentieth century, with the exception of Roman use approximately years ago).
The Functional Tradition and Early Industrial Buildings
Jim Richards and Eric de Maré:
Jim Richards was the editor of the Architectural Review in the mid-twentieth century (s and s).
Eric de Maré was a renowned photographer who collaborated with Richards on the book The Functional Tradition in Early Industrial Buildings.
The book popularized the aesthetic value of late Georgian and Victorian industrial architecture, which was unfashionable at the time.
It celebrated utilitarian, practical architecture found in warehouses, wharves, railway stations, docklands, and canal-side developments.
Sheerness Boat Store:
Located in the naval dockyards, this building was documented through de Maré's black-and-white photography.
Richards appreciated these for their simple composition and lack of "pretense to style" (shunning Neoclassical or Gothic Revival styles in favor of pure factory and warehousing functionality).
The Birth of the Industrial Revolution in Britain
Coalbrookdale and the Iron Bridge:
Located in Shropshire, west of Birmingham.
The bridge, credited to Thomas Telford, was a staggering piece of construction for the late eighteenth century ().
It is described as spare and elegant, representing a breakthrough in metal construction.
Shift from Rural to Industrial:
The nineteenth century saw a "mushrooming" of growth as the population moved from rural agriculture to city-based factory production (notably cotton mills).
Power Sources: Early mills relied on water power (requiring locations near running streams), but the industry eventually shifted to coal-powered steam engines, allowing industry to be located anywhere coal could be delivered.
Carbon Modernity:
Writer Barnabas Calder uses the term "carbon modernity" to describe the era of modernity defined by burning coal and releasing "moxie spoons" (emissions) into the atmosphere.
While the twenty-first century questions the sustainability of digging up and burning carbon, this paradigm shaped the majority of the current built environment.
Schinkel and the German Industrial Influence
Karl Friedrich Schinkel:
The leading Prussian Neoclassical court architect in early nineteenth-century Berlin.
He visited Manchester (not London) to observe the industrial boom and sketched Lancashire mills.
Architectural Observations:
Schinkel was fascinated by the "utilitarian building"—simple brick structures with uniform window punctures.
He also meticulously documented construction details, including how roofs and walls were braced.
The Bauakademie (Berlin):
A rational, utilitarian building designed by Schinkel as an architecture school.
It was destroyed during the Second World War and recently rebuilt using original plans. (Note: A full-scale poster often serves as an awning during German reconstruction projects).
The Altes Museum (Berlin):
A Neoclassical "stoa" structure.
Schinkel practiced the rational deployment of expensive materials: carved dressed limestone was used only on the front facade, while the sides and back remained unadorned brick boxes.
Glass, Iron, and Botanical Architecture
Technical Glass and Iron Projects:
The British Museum Reading Room: Designed by Sidney Smirke, featuring cast-iron ribs supporting a central dome (clad in plaster internally). Note: The British Library later moved to St Pancras, and Norman Foster reimagined the British Museum skylights in the late twentieth century.
Belper Mill (Derbyshire): Originally water-powered. It looks like brick, but the brick effaces a cast-iron internal frame. Cast-iron columns support shallow brick arches for fireproofing.
Stanley Mill (Derbyshire): Demonstrates the shift to mass-produced textiles via looms, replacing cottage industries.
Bridges and Aesthetics:
Pont des Arts (Paris): Spans the Seine toward the Louvre; a beautiful skeletal bridge.
Horticultural Industry:
J.C. Loudon, a landscape architect, applied industrial techniques to greenhouses/conservatories in Victorian England.
These structures allowed for the "forcing" of non-native species brought from the Indian Subcontinent and the Caribbean, marking a globalized culture linked to the British Empire.
Loudon used his own home as a testbed for domestic horticulture using massive glass frames.
The Legacy of Joseph Paxton
Innovative Construction:
Paxton developed greenhouses/conservatories on spec, manufactured as kits of parts that could be reassembled or dismantled.
Example: The Great Conservatory at Chatsworth (for the Duke of Devonshire) and the Palm House at Kew Gardens.
Kew's environments are artificial; they require massive boiler houses and cast-iron pipes fueled by carbon to maintain heat.
The Crystal Palace ():
Conceived by Prince Albert (the Prince Consort) for the Great Exhibition.
A massive barrel-vaulted, glazed cast-iron structure in Hyde Park.
Typological similarity to a cathedral with a central nave and transepts.
Later dismantled and moved to Sydenham (South London) before being destroyed by fire in .
Interior Design (Owen Jones):
Jones, author of The Grammar of Ornament, designed the interior with intricate geometry and color.
He featured the "Alhambra Court," reflecting a fascination with Islamic/Moorish patterns and Victorian Orientalism.
Tectonics and Technology Transfer
Technology Transfer: The process of taking a form from one material and transferring it to another (e.g., Greek stone temples mimicking previous timber structures).
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc:
A French writer and theorist interested in nineteenth-century technological possibilities.
He advocated for mimicking nature, arguing that structural members do not need "consistent cross-sections" (like an I-beam).
He looked at animal skeletons and femurs, suggesting beams should be thicker at the joints and thinner where loads are lighter.
Oxford Museum (Deane and Woodward):
A Natural History Museum featuring a skeletal cast-iron structure.
Natural world analogies: Roof glazing is laid like overlapping scales (reptilian/fish) rather than in square frames, reflecting mid-nineteenth-century Darwinian evolution debates.
The Rise of Reinforced Concrete and Modernism
Auguste Perret:
Part of a family of contractors/engineers.
25bis Rue Franklin (Paris, ): A reinforced concrete frame that allowed freedom from the "tyranny of the flat facade" and masonry constraints. It used decorative faience (glazed terracotta) and expressed the frame through the cladding.
Architectural Philosophy: Perret engaged in a debate with Le Corbusier regarding windows; Perret favored the "portrait format" window (human-scale), while Le Corbusier favored the "horizontal strip window."
Otto Wagner (Vienna):
Metro Stations: Prefabricated cast iron, wrought iron, and alabaster panels.
Postal Savings Bank: Clad in thin marble panels held by iron rivets with aluminum caps. It represents proto-modernism through the use of functional "lay lights" (glass ceilings with skylights above), glass floors to light the basement, unadorned light bulbs, and aluminum air-handling units (described as "aluminum Daleks").
Le Corbusier:
The Dom-Ino House (): An idealized concrete frame system where the staircase is pushed to the end to avoid interrupting the structural slab.
British High-Tech and Late Twentieth-Century Industry
Norman Foster and Richard Rogers:
Both were fascinated by technical detail, components, and the "well-tempered environment" (as defined by critic Reyner Banham).
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (Norwich):
Designed by Foster; adopts a "hangar" or "shed" typology.
It offers clear spans for flexible curation and integrates maintenance into the structure (hollow walls allow technicians to change lights or fans without gantry equipment).
Pompidou Centre (Paris):
Designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano.
An exoskeleton with massive deep trusses allowing for clear internal spans.
Influenced by Cedric Price's Fun Palace (an unbuilt utopian project for flexible events in East London).
Archigram:
A group including Peter Cook and Ron Herron.
Concepts included "Plug-in City" (mobile units on a permanent infrastructure) and "Walking City" (menacing, science-fiction-inspired structures moving across the earth).
Industrial Expression in Modern Specialized Buildings
James Stirling:
Leicester Engineering Building: Highly expressive with a sawtooth roof and a "Paternoster" lift (an open-car system for jumping on and off).
Cambridge History Faculty Library: Shaped like an open book with quadrant-style book stacks for supervision.
Industrial Infrastructure and Propaganda:
AEG Turbine Factory (Berlin): Peter Behrens used a portal frame construction where columns rock on joints; the gabled front mimics a classical temple.
Fiat Works (Turin): A multi-story factory with a racetrack on the roof for testing cars.
Brynmawr Rubber Factory (Wales): Features saucer-shaped concrete domes designed with engineer Ove Arup.
Post-Modernism and Ruins:
James Wines (SITE Architects) designed Best Supermarkets in various states of "ruin," suggesting that contemporary buildings are ephemeral.
Contemporary and Future Tectonics
Environmental Tectonics:
Yasmeen Lari: Bamboo community centers represent "local" tectonics using non-globalized materials.
Michael and Patty Hopkins: Schlumberger Cambridge Research Centre utilizes ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene) cushions under pressure, moving away from heavy concrete.
Data Centers:
The "architecture of information" consists of faceless, high-tech warehouses housing servers (the cloud).
These require immense heat handling and energy, posing the question of whether this heat should be reused for district heating.
Q&A and Student Logistics
Seminar Groups: Respectively at or depending on the group.
Next Week: The theme will be "Public Buildings."
Recording: The lecture was being recorded, and students were reminded to be mindful of dialogue.
Recommended Bibliography
Barnabas Calder: Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency (re: Carbon Modernity).
Jim Richards: The Functional Tradition in Early Industrial Buildings.
Sigfried Giedion: Space, Time and Architecture.
Reyner Banham: The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment.
Kenneth Frampton: Studies in Tectonic Culture.
Victor Hugo: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (specifically the chapter "Ceci tuera cela"/"This will kill that," regarding the book killing the building).