world architecture

World Architecture

World Architecture is a art or practice of designing and constructing buildings.
61. English landscape gardens
Most of Englands apparently natural countryside is in fact contrived, the result of a revolutionary movement in garden design, the discipline first namedlandscape architecture by Humphry Repton 1752 1818. The English eighteenth-century landscape garden, which would be internationally imitated, was possibly Britains main contribution to European esthetics. Unlike traditional gardens, it was distinguished by asymmetry and informality. It incorporated artificial hills and free-form lakes redirected rivers sinuous pathways and drives strategically placed stands of trees in grassy fields and, of course, the great house, from which carefully composed and uninterrupted vistas opened to surrounding parkland. The movement was linked with the notorious Enclosure Acts, which allowed the English gentry to resume what formerly had been common land. Large landholdings brought profit as well as social and political power, displayed in the creation of expansive parks surrounding a country seat. In a 1713 essay the poet Alexander Pope 1688 1744 suggested that formal English gardens be replaced by theamiable simplicity of unadorned nature. He entreated,In all, let nature never be forgot.1/4 Consult the genius of the place. The challenge was taken up by three designers: William Kent, Lancelot Brown, and Repton, who within a century had banished geometry from the English countryside. Kent 1685 1748, calledfather of the English landscape garden, was trained as a sign painter and also worked as a coach builders apprentice. Although never a successful artist, for ten years he studied painting in Rome, earning his living as an art dealer. In Italy in 1715 he met Lord Burlington, who became his patron. Back to London in the 1720s, he worked with Burlington on Chiswick House before engaging in landscape design. The critic Horace Walpole declared that Kentleaped the fence and saw that all of nature was a garden. Inspired by the works of Lorraine, Poussin, and Rosa, and believing thatall gardening is a landscape painting, Kent regarded his gardens as classical pictures, replete with antique pavilions and composed to maximize the artistic impact of form, light, and color. In 1737 he was invited to Rousham in Oxfordshire to redesign the seventeenth-century house, as well as a garden laid out by the Royal Gardener, Charles Bridgeman d. 1738, in the 1720s. Kent added wings and a stable block to the house and made interior alterations, but the garden completed in 1741 is his best surviving work, thought by many to bethe jewel of the English landscape movement. It marks a transition between the great English Restoration gardens and Viscount Cobhams house, Stowe, in Buckinghamshire. At the end of the 1600s, Stowe had a modest Italian-inspired parterre garden. From about 1713 the surrounding park, designed by Bridgeman, was dotted with Baroque pavilions and monuments by the architect John Vanbrugh. Then, in the 1730s, Cobham appointed Kent and the Palladian architect James Gibbs to work with Bridgeman. Kent, convinced thatnature abhors a straight line, began to replace the geometrical gardens with winding, shaded paths and created a series of painterly views that unfolded on a walk through the landscape, the beginning of the most important early English landscape gardens. Bridgemans Octagonal Pond and the Eleven Acre Lake were given a free form. Other changes followed with the arrival of the greatest champion of thenatural landscape, Lancelot Brown. Brown 1715 1783 began his horticultural career as apprentice to Sir William Lorraine. After working for Sir Richard Grenville at Wotton, he moved to Buckinghamshire in 1739, and two years later he was an undergardener at Stowe. He remained for seven years as a disciple and eventually son-in-law of Kent and became immersed in the new English style of landscape gardening. Kent was still improving the garden, although he undertook other projects. Brown designed theGrecian Valley, a composition of landform and forest. Kent died in 1748 and Lord Cobham a year later. Brown left Stowe and in 1751 established a landscape practice based in London. He later became head gardener to the Duke of Grafton and in 1761 was appointed Master Gardener at Hampton Court Palace. During his time at Stowe, his employer had allowed him to accept commissions from a number of his friends, and Browns practice, thus established, grew rapidly. Because he would enthusiastically tell prospective clients of thegreat capabilities of their properties, he earned the nicknameCapability Brown His grand visions, realized in the gardens of about 170 of Englands stately rural houses, have been described as idealizations of the English countryside. They accentuated, readimproved the undulating natural landscape their asymmetrical compositions were enhanced with winding bands or clumps of trees and vast, rolling lawns, usually focused on a lake. At Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, often hailed as his magnum opus, he removed Henry Wises extensive parterre and brought the lawns right to the house, planting dark trees to frame the landscape beyond. He was later criticized for such wanton destruction of the works of earlier gardeners. A story underlines his enormous impact upon the English countryside: asked by an English lady to make a plan for her Irish estate, Brown is said to have replied,No, madam, I cant, I havent finished England yet. Humphry Repton, probably Englands greatest landscape theorist, was a minor landholder who had failed in business and at farming. In 1788 he took up landscape design when a family friend, the Duke of Portland, asked him to alter his garden. A key to his success was his skill as a watercolorist. He could produce attractive renderings of his schemesan important factor in his profession because clients needed to visualize what might not be realized for years. Repton freely admitted his debt to Brown and continued many of his practices. Because of the Napoleonic Wars, his opportunities were limited. He produced landscapes, seldom as extensive as Browns, throughout England, among them many for terraces or smaller gardens close to houses. After about 1790 Repton created a transition between houses and their grounds by means of steps, terraces, and balustrades, through anatural park to a distant composed view. His idealsutility, proportion, and unitywere best expressed at Woburn Abbey, where he augmented an existing landscape garden with a private garden, a flower garden, and what he called anAmerican garden. In some senses, he began the transition from the informal landscape garden to the formality of the Victorian era. In 1795 he published Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening. The esthetic mood in England was changing. From about 1770 Brown came under critical attack for, of all things, hisexcessive formalism and lack of
62. Erechtheion
Athens, Greece
The Erechtheion, built on the site of ancient sanctuaries on the Athenian Acropolis, is so unlike every other Greek temple that some have dismissed it as an aberration. Rather, it is the result of its architect, probably Mnesikles, applying inventive skill to accommodate a complex web of religious relationships. The Erechtheion provides evidence that the craft tradition of architecture, hobbled by convention, was giving place to a new creative approach to design. That was a great step forward. The city-states of Athens and Sparta and their respective allies fought the Peloponnesian Wars between 431 and 404 b.c., interrupted by the six-year Peace of Nikias, from 421. Although their popular strategos elected general Perikles had died in an epidemic in 429 b.c., the Athenians took occasion of the cessation of hostilities to complete his fifty-year plan to restore the glory of the Acropolis. The last phase of the work was the Erechtheion, commenced in 421 b.c. and finished around 406 b.c. The building was a brilliant response to both spiritual and practical problems.First, the building, unlike other temples, was to be dedicated to more than one deity, and its precise location, because it was connected with several other important spiritual themes, was especially significant to Athenians. The temples primary purpose was to provide shrines for both Athena Polias and Poseidon. The sanctuary was also to include the graves of Erechtheos a mythical king of Athens with the sacred snake, and of Kekrops, another fabled Athenian ancestor. Moreover, there was the place where Poseidons trident or Zeuss thunderboltthe mythology was ambiguoushad struck the ground, theErechtheis Sea. and the thalassa, a saltwater spring. The altars of Poseidon, Erechtheos, Zeus Hypatos, Hephaistos, the Boutes, Zeus Thyechoos, and a reliquary for an ancient wooden statue of Hermes were to stand within its temenos sacred courtyard. Besides all that, the building had to accommodate a sacred olive tree in the precinct of Pandrosos, which also included the altar of Zeus Herkeios. The difficulty of laying out the Erechtheion was compounded by the irregular terrain. Eventually, the north and west walls would stand about 9 feet 2.7 meters below the south and east. The architect satisfied all these conditions, combining great imagination with pious deference to tradition to produce a spatially ingenious temple that must have at once bemused and delighted his clients. The plan of the Erechtheion was very complicated in comparison with the simple rectangular forms of all earlier Greek temples. It consisted of three almost independent sections the rather traditional main temple, the north porch, and the famous caryatid portico, each with its separate roof. Because of the steep slope across the site, it was built at four different levels. The naos was separatedonce again, a major departure from conventioninto two main parts, the east cella devoted to Athena Polias and another, whose roof is divided by a huge beam, to Poseidon-Erechtheos. Underground rooms housed the statue of Hermes and Erechtheoss tomb. Ionic orders employing three different proportional systems were incorporated, and graceful statues of korai draped female figures supported the entablature of the caryatid portico. The building was extravagantly decorated. Although it never seems to have had pedimental sculptures, relief carvings filled the frieze of Eleusinian stone. Fragments survive, but the general theme is not known. The ceiling coffers of the caryatid portico are almost entirely intact. Some scholars think all the portico ceilings were paneled and painted dark blue with gold stars, others that they were inset with colored glass panels. The unique temple was converted into a church during the Middle Ages, and later it was used as a harem for the ruler of Athens during the Turkish occupation. In 1801 the British ambassador, Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin, took a caryatid which he later sold to the British Museum, replacing it with a plaster cast. The Erechtheion was partly rebuilt by the American School of Classical Studies. Now it again suffers depredations, this time from atmospheric pollution and the increasing pressure of tourism.
63. Erie Canal
New York State
The 363-mile 585-kilometer Erie Canal between Lake Erie and the Hudson River, New York, was opened in 1825. Compared with earlier U.S. canal projects, common since about 1785 none was over 30 miles long, it was a colossal enterprise, incontrovertibly the greatest public works project in the young republic. Despite criticism at its inception, when complete it was acclaimed as the worlds greatest engineering marvel. But great engineering achievement that it was, the social significance of the Erie Canal outstripped that feat by far. Before its creation the Allegheny Mountains were the Western frontier. Beyond them, virtually inaccessible to the European settlers, lay the resource-rich Northwest Territorieslater to become Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. The canal made westward migration possible, and within fifteen years of its opening it turned New York, formerly the fifth-largest harbor in the nation, into the busiest seaport and greatest commercial center in the United States. In that same period the value of the citys real estate quadrupled, and mercantile activities multiplied five times. As early as 1724, a surveyor named Cadwallader Colden speculated on the potential value of a direct water link between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Sixty years and the War of Independence later, a bill proposing improvements to the navigability of the Mohawk and Onondaga Rivers, with an eventual link, to Lake Erie, was put before the New York State legislature. It was defeated, but the idea was revived in 1791. Legislation was passed, feasibility studies undertaken, and two companies established toopen a navigable waterway from Albany to Lakes Seneca and Ontario andimprove navigation between the Hudson and Lake Champlain, respectively. Little came of it. Between October 1807 and April 1808 a miller named Jesse Hawley published several essays in the Genesee Messenger that advocated the construction of a 100-foot-wide 30-meter, 10-foot-deep 3-meter canal from Buffalo, at the southern end of Lake Erie, to Utica, where it would join the Mohawk River to Schenectady, allowing cargoes to be taken over portage to Albany. His idea was widely derided, even labeledthe effusions of a maniac, but New York Citys mayor De Witt Clinton publicly agreed with him. The proposed canal was promptly dubbedClintons Folly. Others sided with Clinton. State legislator Joshua Forman successfully moved in 1808 that the best route be surveyed. The report was made in 1810 and the issue was kept alive until a law supporting the project was passed the following year. Public pressure to start the canal continued until Clinton became state governor in 1817. When President Thomas Jefferson, believing a national waterway to belittle short of madness, vetoed the proposal, the estimated construction cost of $7 million became New York States responsibility. Clinton persuaded the legislature to authorize the expenditure, to be funded with bond issues. Much of it was raised from the savings of new immigrants wealthy, more conservative investors took no risks until the first section of the canal was completed. The builders of theGreat Western Canal struck out westward from Rome, New York, on 4 July 1817. Untrained gangs ofcanawlers, many of them Irish immigrants from New York City, were paid fifty cents a day and worked under the general superintendence of the chief engineer, Benjamin Wright. Existing streams and lakes were not joined by the canal, which followed an independent course. The 80-mile 128-kilometer middle section was cut in light soil across level terrainwhere locks or aqueducts were not neededbetween Rome and Utica, built by Wrights assistant engineer, David Stanhope Bates. It opened in October 1819. Separate contracts were let for various parts of the huge undertaking. A month later the 63-mile 100-kilometer Champlain branch canal was opened, joining Troy with Whitehall, at the southern end of Lake Champlain. In July 1822 the section from the Genesee River to Pittsford was navigable, although several miles of overland connection were necessary until the Irondequoit Valley embankment was completed in October, also under Batess direction. In the same month a 180-mile 290-kilometer stretch was opened between Rochester and Little Falls. The eastern section through the Mohawk River valley was finished a year later, allowing uninterrupted navigation from the Genesee River to Albany and Lake Champlain. The last leg, between Brockport and Albany, was completed in April 1824. On 26 October 1825 Clinton set out down the Erie Canal from Buffalo in the Seneca Chief with his wife and a party ofdistinguished citizens two other canal boats accompanied them, carrying products from the Midwest, and even a bear and two eagles. Traveling at an average of 3 mph 5 kph, they arrived in New York Harbor nine days later to a boisterous welcome. Clinton poured two barrels of Lake Erie water into the sea, ceremonially marking themarriage of the waters. The great waterway, disrespectfully rechristenedClintons Big Ditch, was 40 feet 12 meters wide and only 4 feet 1.2 meters deep and carried vessels of 90 tons 76.2 tonnes displacement. It had cost $700,000 over budget, but the outlay of almost $8 million was recouped from tolls within ten years. Only the human cost was not recoverable. Neither was it recorded: many died from malaria, others from smallpox others were maimed by accidents. Inland shipping now found its way across eighteen aqueducts and through eighty-three locks, falling 570 feet 174 meters between Tonawanda and Buffalo, on the eastern shore of Lake Erie, and Troy, on the Hudson. There were ninety-three continuance bridges, where draft animals crossed the water. Travel time between the Great Lakes and the East Coast was halved, and freight costs fell from $100 to $10 a ton. Wheat tonnage carried on the canal increased a staggering 140-fold between 1829 and 1837, and by 1841 the figure had doubled again. Two more important branch canals were later built: the 24-mile 38-kilometer Oswego 1828, connecting the Erie with Lake Ontario and the 27-mile 43-kilometer Cayuga and Seneca 1829, linking the Erie, west of Syracuse, with Cayuga and Seneca Lakes. The entire system was enlarged in 1835 and again in 1862 and 1895 to cater for heavier traffic. Another modification was undertaken in 1904,canalizing the Mohawk, Oswego, Seneca, Oneida, and Clyde Rivers and Oneida Lake and abandoning large sections of the original canal. When the 525-mile-long 845-kilometer, 12-foot-deep 3.7-meter new system, renamed the New York State Barge Canal, was opened in 1918, it comprised the Erie and all the former branch canals. The Barge Canal can carry 2,400-ton 2,032-tonne vessels. After about 1850, burgeoning railroads competed with canal transportation, but the Barge Canal was not made redundant until the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway a century later. Within a decade or so, mercantile traffic had dwindled to the point of insignificance. However, recreational traffic was growing, and in November 1991 the people of New York rallied to save the canals. In 1996 the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development announced grants totaling $131 million for the Canal Corridor Initiative, a program to rehabilitate the Erie Canal and its branches as arecreationway.
64. Fallingwater
Pennsylvania
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed Fallingwater 1934 1937 for the Pittsburgh department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann and his wife Liliane, on Bear Run, Pennsylvania, in the mountains southeast of Pittsburgh. The spectacular house cantilevers over a 20-foot 6-meter waterfall amidst a wilderness. Widely admired for over sixty years, Fallingwater has been calledthe most famous residence ever built in 1991 the American Institute of Architects hailed it asthe best all-time work of American architecture. It is probably the most beautiful house of the twentieth century, some say of any century. Bear Run Nature Reserve, the 5,000-acre 2,000-hectare area surrounding Fallingwater, and the house itself are now owned, maintained, and protected by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Throughout the 1920s and well into the next decade, Wright had little work. He publicized himself through writing and a traveling exhibition he called itThe Show in the United States and Europe, but despite the efforts of his friends, his poor financial management put him deeply in debt. In 1932 he established the Taliesin Fellowship in Wisconsin, a residential apprentice system in which aspiring artists and architects paid for the privilege of working for him. Among them was Edgar J. Kaufmann Jr. Impressed with what he saw during a 1934 visit to Wrights Wisconsin home, Taliesin, and by his sons enthusiasm, Kaufmann Sr. commissioned Wright, who was then sixty-five years old, to design a mountain retreat for his family. The waterfall on Bear Run was a favorite spot of the Kaufmanns, and they wanted to build nearby. There is a tradition that Wright made the final design after only one visit to the site: the surprising idea, accepted by his clients, was that the house should sit over rather than face the waterfall. Fallingwaters four levels are progressively set back to lie low against the forested hillside their terraces, apparently suspended in space, echo the form of the waterfall. Wright built the house around a core containing a kitchen on the lowest level and bedrooms on the others it also housed the service ducts. The houses horizontalityWright called it the line of domesticityis juxtaposed against a four-story sand-stone chimney. The lowest floor, a huge living room, is carried on four stub walls and provides the widest views of the site one of its cantilevered terraces faces upstream the other projects over the great boulders framing the waterfall. From the living room, a short flight of stairs leads to a platform just above the creek. It serves little practical purpose, but in summer air from the running water cools the space above. The bedrooms on the second level each have a narrower terrace, and the roomsanother bedroom and a studyon the third level also open to a terrace. Wright used the stairs, terraces, and windows full height on three sides of the living room to integrate exterior and interior, house and site. Architectural historian Spiro Kostof comments that Wrightsends out free-floating platforms audaciously over a small waterfall and anchors them in the natural rock. Something of the prairie house is here still
65. Fera Thera
Santorini, Greece
Feraa town where no town should beis an architectural feat for just that reason. It has been achieved largely without architects, and its builders have developed a remarkable symbiosis with their dangerous host, an active and restless volcano. Fera, a comparatively modern town of about 2,000, picturesquely clusters at the edge of a 900-foot 275-meter cliff above its harbor. It is the capital of Santorini, the 28-square-mile 73-square-kilometer main island of the southernmost group of the Cyclades. The other islands in the volcanic group are Therasia, Aspronisi, Paea Kameni, and Nea Kameni. The latter two were created by eruptions since 197 b.c., and the others are fragments of Stronghyle literally, the round one after a cataclysm in the middle of the second millennium b.c. It is estimated that this so-called Minoan eruption spewed about 42 billion tons 35.5 billion tonnes of volcanic material 23 miles 36 kilometers into the air, blanketing the remaining islands in pumice and ash to a depth of 100 feet 30 meters. The consequent earthquakes and tidal waves destroyed buildings on the south coast of Crete, 100 miles 160 kilometers away. Santorini has been inhabited since about 3200 b.c. In 1967 the archeologist Spiros Marinatos excavated the city of Akrotiri from the volcanic ash its culture bore many similarities to the Minoan, and its seafaring people evidently traded throughout the Mediterranean. About 1000 b.c., the island was colonized by migrating Dorians, who built the first Fera and from there founded the colony of Cyrene, Libya, in 634 b.c. Santorini was taken by Athens in 426 b.c. and subsequently by Egypt, Rome, and Byzantium. The island fell in a.d. 1207 to the Venetians, who named it St. Irini, from which Santorini is derived. From 1537 Santorini was occupied by Turks liberated in 1821, it became part of modern Greece. During the Minoan eruption, the removal of so much magma caused the volcano to collapse, producing a caldera 32 square miles 83 square kilometers in area. In places its sheer walls soar to nearly 1,200 feet 350 meters above the sea and plunge nearly 1,300 feet 400 meters beneath its surface. Despite a recent history of eruptions1866 1870, 1925 1928, 1938 1941, 1950, and 1956the town of Fera has been continually rebuilt on its precarious perch, the very rim of an active volcano. Most of the housesthe world-famous white-and-blue architecture is a medley of Cycladic and Venetian styles standing cheek by jowlwere built in the nineteenth century after the old Venetian capital of Skaros, immediately to the north, was devastated by earthquakes. Much of Fera was destroyed in the 1956 earthquake, but phoenixlike, it rose again, quite literally from the ashes. Once, the inaccessible location on the calderas lip offered security from seaward attack. And the ancient volcanic deposits have provided a rich source of building material and a richer opportunity to improvise. Feras indigenous architecture, in houses and public buildings alike, responds to the multiple constraints of volcano, earthquake, shortage of timber, and the heat and glare of summer. The abundant volcanic material is used in the lightweight vaults and domes so common in the town. The gleaming white walls reflect the summer sun, generations of layered lime wash making the lines of the structures fluid. Most of the cliff-clutching houses have cool, lofty, vaulted inner rooms carved from Santorinis soft rock mantle only the sala front room is built up. This inexpensive way to enlarge a house gave rise to an architecture and an urban design in which one houses courtyard is the roof of the house below it. More importantly, this widespread building technique has created a town of sweet integration: no collection of competing buildings, this, but a place with an overwhelming sense of community.
66. Firth of Forth Railway Bridge
Scotland
Nine miles west of Edinburgh, Scotland, the mouth of the River Forth is spanned by Europes first all-steel, long-span bridge. Completed in 1890 it was then the longest bridge in the world. Until 1917 it was also the largest metal cantilever, and at the beginning of the twenty-first century it remains the second largest ever built. It was a major accomplishment of Victorian engineering. The extension of the railroad along Scotlands east coast, to complete the direct route between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, was hampered for most of the nineteenth century by two broad inlets of the North Sea: the Firth mouth of Tay and the Firth of Forth. The River Forth rises near Aberfoyle and widens into its firth about 50 miles 80 kilometers from the ocean. Vessels up to about 300 tons 270 tonnes could navigate as far as Alloa, about 16 miles 26 kilometers inland those up to about 100 tons 91 tonnes could reach Stirling, a little further on. After earlier aborted proposalsa tunnel in 1806 and a bridge in 1818for crossing the firth, little more was attempted for fifty years. In 1865 an act of Parliament sanctioned a bridge across the Queens-ferry Narrows, where the river passes between steep banks at the neck of the firth. Four railroad companiesNorth British, North Eastern, Midland, and Great Northernformed a consortium in 1873 and commissioned Thomas Bouch, engineer for North British, to design the bridge. He proposed a suspension structure with twin spans of 1,600 feet 480 meters. The project was delayed for five years because of lack of funds by spring 1879 only one pier had been started. When the much-vaunted Tay Railway Bridge, also designed by Bouch and less than two years old, collapsed in a gale on 28 December 1879 with the loss of seventy-five lives, work on the Forth bridge was immediately suspended by another act of Parliament. In January 1881 a British Board of Trade inquiry found that the Tay disaster was caused by inadequate design and poor supervision. Bouchs Firth of Forth scheme was abandoned. Within months the engineer died, a broken man. The engineers of the Forth consortiums member railways, Thomas Harrison, William Barlow, John Fowler, and Benjamin Baker, had to develop a new design. In May 1881 Fowler and Baker submitted a plan for a continuous girder, or balanced cantilever, structure. In July 1882 yet another act authorized construction. The Tay bridge affair had so undermined public confidence in railroads that the legislation insisted that the Forth bridge shouldenjoy a reputation of being not only the biggest and strongest, but also the stiffest bridge in the world. There was to be no vibration, even as trains passed over it. Consequently, it was greatly over-engineered. Before 1877 steel bridges had been banned by the Board of Trade because the Bessemer conversion process produced steel of unpredictable strength. The Siemens-Martin open-hearth process, developed by 1875, bad changed that, yielding material of consistent quality. That kind of steel was used in the Forth bridge, heralding the transition from cast and wrought iron in such structures. A smaller steel cantilever bridge had been built in Germany, but the Scottish project was on a larger scale than had been seen before. There is little doubt that its designers owed much to a U.S. model of several years earlier. Between 1869 and 1874 James B. Eads had designed and built the worlds first steel bridge, over the Mississippi at St. Louis, Missouri. Its three-arch superstructure, with a center span of 520 feet 156 meters and side spans of 502 feet 150 meters, supported by four massive limestone piers, carried a railroad and a road for other traffic on two levels. Other pioneering features of Eadss bridge were adopted by the British: the use of pneumatic caissons large diving bells fed with compressed air to excavate the foundation, tubular steel structural members, and a balanced cantilever design that allowed construction to proceed without temporary supports that would have obstructed the waterway. In December 1882 the contract for the Forth bridge was awarded to a consortium led by Tancred Arrol, an experienced and respected company headed by William Arrol, which already had contracts for the Caledonian Railway Bridge over the Clyde and the replacement Tay bridge. At the height of building activity, there would be 4,600 Britons, Italians, Germans, and Austrians working shifts around the clock. The construction of the foundations and piers took until the end of 1885. Each of the bridges three cantilever towers stands on four 70-foot-diameter 21-meter granite piers, founded on the bedrock. Eight of the piers are in water, and their foundations were excavated by men working in wrought-iron pneumatic caissons, sunk up to 90 feet 27 meters below the river surface. The massive cylinders were prefabricated in Glasgow, then dismantled and taken to Queensferry, where they were reassembled. Once excavation was complete, the air shafts and the working spaces were filled with concrete, and the granite piers rose above them. Work on the superstructure began in 1886 using 64,800 tons 54,860 tonnes of steel from two steelworks in Scotland and another in Wales, fixed with rivets from a Glasgow foundry. All the structural members were fabricated in on-site workshops, pre-drilled, test-assembledexact dimensions were needed in a riveted structureand then dismantled to be painted and carried to the site for erection. Each of the 331-foot-high 99.3-meter cantilevers consists of two inward-sloping trusses fabricated from huge, internally stiffened tubular members up to 12 feet 3.6 meters in diameter. They support 680-foot-long 204-meter cantilever arms that are linked midspan by suspended girders of about half that length, making the distances between the towers about 1,700 feet 540 meters. The length of the bridge between the end piers is about 5,300 feet 1,600 meters. Together with the approach viaducts and arches at each end, the bridge carries the double-track railroad for 2,765 yards 2,490 meters, 150 feet 45 meters above the surface of the Firth of Forth. The central gap was closed on 14 November 1889, and the Prince of Wales ceremonially opened the bridge on 4 March 1890.
67. Florence Cathedral dome
Florence, Italy
The dome of the cathedral church of Santa Maria del Fiore St. Mary of the Flowers in Florence, Italy, was designed and built by Filippo Brunelleschi 1377 1446 in the beginning of the fifteenth century. Towering over the immediately surrounding buildings and still visible, almost 600 years later, from any part of the city, it is one of Europes greatest architectural and engineering achievementsa masterpiece of structural ingenuity. Brunelleschis dome completed the building, which had been started in September 1296 by the architect Arnolfo di Cambio. Arnolfos original design, which included a much lower cupola, went through many changes, although it is probable that his general plan was retained. Work ceased when he died in 1310, and did not resume until 1331, when the powerful Wool Merchants Guild assumed responsibility for construction. In 1334, simply because he wasa very great man, the painter Giotto di Bondone was appointed capomaestro to Florence Cathedral, and he designed the freestanding 278-foot 85-meter bell tower near the southwestern corner of the church. Not finished until two years after his death in 1337, the characteristically Florentine building is facedas is the church itselfwith geometric patterns of red Siena, green Prato, and white Carrara marbles. It was later enriched with relief panels by Luca della Robbia and Andrea Pisano. The cathedral was beleaguered by further delays caused by political intrigue, a capricious economy, and not least, in 1348, an outbreak of plague that halved the citys population. The following year Francesco Talenti was appointed to oversee the work. Apart from completing the bell tower, he continually revised the design, working in conjunction with Giovanni di Lapo. Talentisfinal scheme evolved by 1366 1367: the nave, flanked by single aisles, was articulated in four square bays leading to an octagonal sanctuary, from which four chapels radiated. Construction work was well in hand by 1370 the nave vaults were finished in 1378 and the aisles a year later. Important in Talentis design was a huge octagonal dome over the sanctuary, and construction of its drum had been commenced. In 1417 a committee, the Opera del Duomo, was charged with the monumental task of building the dome. In 1418 Brunelleschi, who had been recently engaged in bridge building in Pisa, was commissioned to act as adviser. But soon after that the project again lapsed. The dome presented a seemingly impossible problem for the builders because not only did it have to span 135 feet 41.5 meters, but it also had to begin nearly 180 feet 55 meters above the floor. Nothing of the kind or size had been built since the Roman Pantheon about 1,300 years earlier. A competition was announced, and at a March 1419 meeting, solutions were offered by invited master masons from Italy, France, Germany, and England. None was satisfactory. It was impossible to construct scaffolding to support traditional centering at such a height. Supporting permanent masonry piers were out of the question because they would clutter the sanctuary, blocking the view to the high altar and defeating the purpose of the cathedral. Someone even suggested that the sanctuary should be filled with a mixture of earth and coins to enable the erection of scaffolding then, when the dome was complete, the citizens of Florence could remove the soil as they dug for the buried treasure. Brunelleschi asserted that he could build the dome without confronting any of these problems. At first, the committee was skeptical, and when he excitedly defended his position, he was forcibly removed from their meeting. Given another chance to present his proposal, he was reluctant to reveal details. His biographer Giorgio Vasari recounts a delightful anecdote: producing an egg and a thin marble slab, Brunelleschi challenged anyone there to balance the egg on the slab. No one could, and the items were returned to Filippo. He cracked the egg, and stood it upright. To the protestWe could have done that! he replied,Thats what you will say if I tell you how I will build the dome! He was given the commission. What qualified this sculptor, who trained as a goldsmith, studied science and mathematics, and dabbled in clock making, engineering, and architecture, to confidently undertake such a daunting project? It has been suggested that, because his father was closely connected with the management of the cathedral, Filippo had known of the problem of the dome since 1402, making his first designs as early as 1409. In the intervening years he had studied classical architecture in Rome, developing his own theory of architecture from about 1410. When his model of the dome was accepted in 1418, Brunelleschi returned to Rome to investigate ancient structures, including the Pantheon. Back in Florence a year later, he built a smaller version of the dome in the Ridolfi chapel in San Jacopo sopr Arno since destroyed, perhaps to convince his doubters, perhaps himself. He would repeat the process six years later in a chapel built for Bartolommeo Barbardori in the church of Santa Felicita. Also in 1419, Filippo reluctantly accepted the appointment of his old rival, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, as coarchitect of the dome. Work began in 1420, and the project occupied Filippo for the rest of his life. Ghibertis incompetence was soon exposed not without Brunelleschis connivance, and in 1423 Filippo was given complete charge. Besides his genius for design, his success was ensured by his management of the construction site. He personally undertook the quality control of materials he designed the plant needed to efficiently raise those materialsall 27,000 tons 24,500 tonnesto the dome he resolved industrial unrest by convincing the workers of his own capabilities he communicated with the masons by modeling details in clay, wood, wax, and even carved turnips he ensured good working relationships and he increased productivity by providingvendors of wine and bread and cooks in the heights of the dome. Strictly speaking, Filippos dome is no dome at all, but a double-shell cupola formed by completely self-supporting rings of diminished diameter, built ofherringbone brickwork originally stone was intended but was soon abandoned because of the weight, and stiffened by a frame of eight steeply pointed arches built on centering supported from the drum. Between these ribs, Brunelleschi and his eight assistantsthe masters of the trowelconstructed a double vault, on which a movable light shuttering supported the brickwork during construction. The finished structure was light, strong, and extremely stable. To ensure against spreading, Brunelleschi tied the bottom of the cupola with a massive chain of ironbound oak. Several reasons may be suggested for its hybridized structure. First, Brunelleschi was, quite naturally, unable to divorce himself from medieval precedent second, while he showed great inventiveness, he did not fully understand the structural issues involved and therefore, third, he took measures to ensure the stability of the dome. Fourth, he may have included the ribs simply to convince his clients that it was stable.Shrewd is how Vasari described him. The dome was not a Renaissance building. It did not even herald the Renaissance. It drew upon Brunelleschis study of ancient techniques from both East and West, principally upon the engineering practice of the Middle Ages. In ingenuity it surpassed them all. The cupola was completed in 1434. Two years later the huge lantern was placed, and the cathedral was consecrated by Pope Eugene IV on 25 March 1436. The four hemidomed tribunes were completed in 1438. The decorations to the lantern were finished by 1446, when Brunelleschi was dying, and the great copper sphere crowned it all in 1474.
68. Foundling Hospital
Florence, Italy
The Foundling Hospital known in Italian as the Ospedale degli Innocenti stands in the Piazza SS. Annunziata, Florence. As its name indicates, it was a refuge for abandoned or orphaned children. Around 1419, over a century after the foundation of the institution, the powerful Guild of Silk Merchants and Goldsmiths Arte della Lana funded a new building to house refectories, dormitories, infirmaries, and nurseries, all joined with cloisters and porticoes. Designed by the ubiquitous artist Filippo Brunelleschi 1377 1446, the new ospedale was a seminal achievement, representing a change not only in how architecture looked but also in the way in which the building industry was structured. Some scholars hail it as the first Renaissance building and its author as the sole instigator of those changes, the pioneer of a new phase in western European architecture. The humanism of the Renaissance should never be confused with humanitarianism. Neither should accounts of urbane courtly life be thought of as accurately reflecting the entire social structure. On the contrary, the Renaissance was socially divisive at many levels, even within the family, regardless of class. Children, especially, were victims of a value system that often counted them as chattels whose sole reason for being was to perpetuate a particular dynasty or expand social and political power by strategic marriages. If they could not be put to such use, they were at best ignored at worst, they were literally abandoned. Although little was done to overturn the attitudes that created this problem, many institutions were set up to care for foundlings. But in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, throughout Italy and most of Europe the orphanages could hardly provide for the number of rejected children. The Foundling Hospital was one such refuge that took them in, raised them, and taught them a trade. Although he was trained as a goldsmith, a series of events in his native Florence early in the fifteenth century caused Brunelleschi to decide to go to Rome, where for about three years he made a detailed archeological study of ancient monuments. After dabbling in clock making and civil engineering, he turned toward the art of architecture. Untrained in the building profession like the contemporary mason-architect, who was the inheritor of medieval traditions and who to some degree physically built what he designed, Brunelleschi was an artist-architect, independent of long-standing trade and craft conventions. He was therefore able to devise, largely through his own intuition, different ways to build. Moreover, producing his oeuvre several decades before the formal architectural theories of the Renaissance had developed, he was also independent of the unbendingcorrectness of later philosopher-architects. In the right place at the right timethe fertile intellectual seedbed of quattrocento Florencehe was free to create a beautiful amalgam, a culturally appropriate new architecture, by reinterpreting classical elements within the graceful tradition of Tuscan Romanesque. Given the Florentines admiration for anything of classical Rome, it is hardly surprising that the Foundling Hospital is replete with classical motifs. The loggia, doubtless the most familiar aspect of the building, is drawn from the porticoes that surrounded the Roman forum like most Roman temples, it stands on a platform above the general level of the piazza. Slender columns, with Brunelleschis version of Corinthian capitals, support a light, cross-vaulted arcade incidentally, constructed without scaffolding. Classical moldings abound, and there is an entablature of shallow classical profile. The rectangular upper-story windows have triangular pediments, and the facade is crowned with a classical cornice. The elements of the loggiaindeed, most of the buildings exteriorare defined with the beautiful gray-green stone known as pietra serena. The round-arched loggia was a familiar element in fourteenth-century Florentine buildings, including hospitals, and Tuscan architecture had long been characterized by the emphasis of structure through the use of darker bands of stone: for example, in the Pisa Cathedral group or San Miniato al Monte in Florence itself. The interior spatial articulation of the Foundling Hospital is based upon a porticoed courtyard. It is Roman-like, its larger apartments and service rooms symmetrically disposed about an axis. The outer loggia unites it all as well as tying the whole building to the piazza. In the spandrels between arches, Andrea della Robbia 1435 1525 later added colored faience medallions portraying babies in swaddling clothes. Although he used a Roman architectural vocabulary, Brunelleschis syntax to continue the analogy was decidedly un-Roman. The rigor of archeologically correct classical grammar would emerge in the so-called High Renaissance, whose architects would never carry for example an arch on a column, because that had not been the Roman way. In fact, the delicately proportioned esthetic of the Foundling Hospital owes as much to medieval precedent as to classical models. Brunelleschi may have confused his chronology, because his contemporaries had a skewed view of history. The architecture of ancient Rome was not republican as the Florentines wanted to believe but imperial, and Romanesque was certainly not Roman.
69. Frederick C Robie House
Chicago, Illinois
When it was completed in June 1910, one neighbor described the Frederick C. Robie House as abattleship another said it was adisgrace. But in 1957 its architect Frank Lloyd Wright, never known for his modesty, accurately claimed it to be thecornerstone of modern architecture. Many critics agree, and the building has been recognized by the American Institute of Architects as one of Wrights major architectural contributions to the United States. In 1963 it was designated a National Historic Landmark, and a Chicago Landmark in 1971. The Robie House is the fullest expression of the dwellings known as Prairie houses. It is no exaggeration to say that, as a decisive, even shocking, contrast to traditional contemporary houses, it revolutionized domestic architecture throughout the world. Wright and others developed the Prairie stylenamed for WrightsHome in a Prairie Town published in the Ladies Home Journal in February 1901mainly in the Chicago area, asa modern architecture for a democratic American society. The Prairie house was designed to blend in with the flat, expansive midwestern landscape. What characterized it? Wrightsorganic architecture philosophy is difficult to define in few words, but simply, it was this: the house was a single living space, and everything about it grew from a plan that expressed the owners individuality that is, the house fits the family, not vice versa. The openness was achieved by exploiting technology: central heating defied the harsh prairie winters. Through sensitive use of materials, the spaces became a whole whose external masses, expressing what was within, existed in harmony with each other and the earth itselfthe building grew out of the site, so to speak. In 1908 Frederick Carlton Robie, a bicycle and motorcycle manufacturer, decided to build a house for himself and his wife, Lora. He purchased a city lot at the corner of East 58th Street and Woodlawn Avenue in Chicagos Hyde Park because Lora wanted to live near her alma mater. Robie knew exactly what he wanted: a house with large eaves, broad vistas, andall the light [he] could get avoidingcurvatures and doodads, it would be a house whose rooms werewithout interruption. A number of architects advised him to consult Wright, who then had a mostly domestic practice in the suburb of Oak Park. Because of the affinity between client and architect, the design was soon resolved, and construction started in March 1909. The Robies moved in just fifteen months later. Wright designed the building as two abutting elongated cuboids, separating the living areas from the service areas. The smaller was at the back, and its lower level contained a three-car garage and the main first-floor entrance above it were the servants quarters, a kitchen, and a guest room. The front part, with stairs ascending through it, had a broad central chimney. A semibasement housed a billiard room and childrens playroom, opening to a long, narrow courtyard. Wrighteliminat[ed] the room as a box by making the living and dining areas into a single space partially divided by the chimney the living room gave on to a terrace, defined by low walls. The bedrooms were above, in the center of the house. In a 1918 critique, the Dutch architect J. J. P. Oud praised the functional planning the plan-generated, three-dimensional form and the way in which Wright exploited modern materials and technology in the spirit of the age. He pronounced the design asource of esthetic pleasure for the practised critic. The Robie Houses low-pitched overhanging roof-at the ends it extended 20 feet 6 meters beyond the walls, supported by steel cantileversand the long wall of flat Roman bricks with flush finished joints combined with balconies lined with planter boxes and continuous limestone copings to emphasize horizontality, what Wright called the line of domesticity, the line of repose. The overhang also created a micro-climate, in summer shading the glass-walled southern exposure of the house and in winter protecting the windows from rain and snow. Besides that, it provided a sense of shelter and privacy for those within. Almost 180 patterned lead-light glass windows, screens, and doors add to the fluidity of the inner spaces and serve to coalesce the interior of the house and its surroundings. Wright designed more than a househe created an environment. He designed rich interiors, glowing with natural oak finishes, patterned glass, furnishing textiles, loose and built-in furniture also of oak, and carpets. He also carefully integrated the mechanical and electrical services with the over-all design. Sadly, the Robies were soon obliged to sell their wonderful house because of financial difficulties. It remained a residence until 1926, when the Chicago Theological Seminary bought it and used it for a dormitory. When it was slated for demolition in 1957, Wright himself then ninety years old led the campaign, to save it. The development firm of Webb and Knapp purchased it and six years later donated it to the University of Chicago. Neglect and vandalism including alterations took their toll. In 1992 the university began negotiations with the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation now renamed the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust about jointly undertaking a restoration program. In January 1997 the two institutions entered an agreement with the National Trust for Historic Preservation under which the foundation became responsible for the house. Currently, it is planned to spend more than $7 million on a ten-year conservation project. The house has been nominated for inclusion on UNESCOs World Heritage List.
70. Galerie des Machines Gallery of Machines
Paris, France
The Galerie des Machines was designed for the 1889 Paris International ExhibitionLExposition Tricoloreeby architect Ferdinand Dutert 1845 1906 in collaboration with engineer Victor Contamin 1840 1893. It was remarkable for its vast exhibition hall, made possible by exploiting a new structural innovation, the three-pin hinged or portal arch. Although used previously in bridge construction, this was the first application of the arch on such a large scale. The concept of exhibiting to the world a nations resources and achievements in art, science, and industry has its origins in ancient times. According to the Bible, the fifth-century-b.c. Persian king Xerxes I showed the riches of his kingdom for five months. More recently, fine art exhibitions were mounted, but such shows gradually added inventions. Following the Industrial Revolution and the consequent rise of mechanization, expositions demonstrating industrial progress were held regularly. Before 1900, no fewer than thirteen were organized in the manufacturing centers and capitals of Europe. They were popular events and buildings were purpose-built for them perhaps the most renowned was Joseph Paxtons revolutionary Crystal Palace, built in London for the Great Exhibition of 1851. In turn, many of those structures became showpieces of structural and technological advances. Following the celebrated success of the Great Exhibition and Britains abandonment of such shows after 1862, the French seized the opportunity to take center stage, so to speak. Between 1855 and 1900 five international exhibitions were presented in Paris, boasting of the progress of French industry and the countrys rapid transition from a predominantly agrarian to an industrial economy. By 1889 when LExposition Tricoloree commemorated the centenary of the French Revolution, the size and variety of machines and other items offered for display were so great that a range of special exhibition spaces was needed. A formal entrance structure was builtthe famed Eiffel Towerand two long galleries were dedicated to the fine and liberal arts and a third to clothing and furniture exhibits. Beyond them and behind the Dome Central that terminated the long axis of the showground rose the vast and impressive Galerie des Machines. Built principally of iron and glass, the structure employed a three-hinged or portal arch spanning a phenomenal 375 feet 114 meters the widest previously achieved was 242 feet 74 meters in the train shed of St. Pancras Station, London, about 25 years earlier. The display hall was 1,270 feet 380 meters long, and its colossal proportions provided the largest unobstructed floor area of any building in historyan ideal setting in which to show the world the massive engines, transformers, dynamos, and other wonders of the age. The 20 prefabricated wrought-iron trusses of the main span comprised two half-arches, hinged at their meeting point 143 feet 45 meters above the floor. They curved and tapered to a slender wedgelike base, where their loads were distributed to the ground through a hinged joint. The apparent lightness with which they touched the ground defied the conventional, rational notion that the base was the principal load-bearing component of any structure here that role was seemingly reversed. The hinges allowed small movements between the foot of the frames and the foundation but made the arches statically determinate. Thus, stresses and reactions at the supports could be calculated beforehand and were only slightly influenced by movements of the supports or thermally induced dimensional variations. The iron frame of the galerie was exposed at each end in a frank display of its construction system. The walls were generally glazed, in part with colored glass. Paintings, mosaic, and ceramic bricks also formed part of the cladding. Elevated tracks on each side of the long axis carried mobile walkways above the exhibition space, allowing visitors to travel in carriages and to look down on the machines. The interior was lit by electric lights, invented only some seven years earlier. The galerie was more than just a place for displaying machinery it was in itself, as one historian has observed, anexhibiting machine. It was enlarged for the 1900 Paris Exposition but demolished in 1910, because so the reason was given it spoiled the view of the church of Les Invalides. By then, the three-hinged arch was in wide use.