Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry 0300124430, 9780300124439

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ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER A Study in Sibling Rivalry

Andrew Saint

YALE l JNIVERSITY PRESS NEW HAVEN AND LO N DON

aan lvVrvtj

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by sections l 07 and 108 of the US Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

Copyright ©

2007

Yale University

Designed by Sally Salvesen Printed in China through \VorldPrint Library of Congress C~ataloging-in-Publication l)ata Saint, Andrew. 1\rchitect and engineer: a study in sibling rivalry / ,\ndrcw Saint. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-300-12443-9 (alk. paper) 1. Architects and engineers. 1. Title. NA2;>43.E54S25 2008 720-dc22 2007016892

detail of Fig. 2fr.2 Cofft>r-da,n in construction for the Pont Royal, Paris. dnnving by Licvin Cruyl. 1687 FRONTISPIECE:

CONTENTS

Preface and acknowledgements

VIII

INTRODUCTION

I

1. 'IMPERIAL WORKS AND WORTHY KINGS' France 1660- 1789 2. Britain 1660-1730 3. America 166o--1900 1.

9

9 33 45

2. IRON

65 Europe to 1850 2. A Railway Interlude 3. Britain and France 1850 -1900 4.America 1.

65 106 I 31 171

3. CONCRETE Styles of Concrete 1800- 1914 2. Styles of Partnership 1.

207 207 231

4. THE BRIDGE 1. 'fhe Masonry Bridge 2. The Suspension Bridge 3. Propriety and after

28 I 281 3 14 346

5. RECONCILIATION 1. Britain 2. America 3. Wide Spans, Natural Structures, Broad Horizons

365 365 394 4o9

6. A QUESTION OF UPBRINGING School Culture 1750-1914 2. Shop Culture at Bay: Britain 175er-1914 3. Triumph of the 1\rt School 1.

43 1 43 1 456 469

CONCLUSION

485

Abbreviations Notes Index Illustration credits

494 495 528 54-2

T\vo contrary thoughts on \vriting about buildings:

The use of history mechanical is of all others the most radical and fundamental to¼ ards natural philosophy; such natural 1

philosophy as shall not varnish the sume of subtle, sublime or delectable speculation, but such as shall be operative to the endowment and benefit of man's life. Francis Bacon, The Advancement oj. Learning

Sind wir vielleicht hier um zu sagen: Haus, Bri.icke, Brunnen, Tor, Krug, Obstbaum, Fenster, hochstens: Saule, Turm ... aber zu sagen oh zu sagen so, wie selber die Dinge niemals . . . . 1nn1g me1nten zu sc1n. Rainer 1\-[aria Rilke, JVinth Duino Eleg)'

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is a very long footnote to another I -wrote a generation ago, 'The Image of. the Architect (1983). That book came out of the first full course I taught at a school of architecture, the Architectural Association. By way of anecdote and example, it sought to offer historical insights about the nature of the profession the students had elected to JOtn. T\velve years later I \vas appointed to a fuU-time post in the Department of 1\rchitecture at the University of Cambridge. Faced anew, as a non-architect, v.-ith the challenge of making history pertinent to would-be professionals, I chose a similar method to explore the tangled thickets of relations between architects and engineers. The course proved not specially popular. No doubt there were deficiencies in its presentation. But the main reason, I now sec, was that when you are learning to design, you need to have your confidence built up, not broken dov.'ll. That is often the effect of studies that treat architecture as part of a larger whole. Like human kind in general, budding architects cannot bear very much reality. Still, friends and colleagues encouraged me in the belief that the topic was worth pursuing further, not least in vie\v of excitements and controversies about relations between modern-day architects and engineers. Though much has been written about this last issue, it is seldom informed by deeper understanding; indeed there has never been, so far as I am aware, a broad and sustained historical enquiry into the architectengineer relationship. So I dropped the course but persevered with the book. The mass of material was overwhelming. I soon realized that I should have to choose, cut and shape severely. Rather than a continuous narrative or theoretical analysis, the notion of six discursive essays or case-studies ,vhich could be indi,-idually read or dipped into according to taste has been basic to the enterprise. The first is about the impact of military construction and organization, often underestimated. The second and third tackle the so-called 'new materials' of iron and concrete, since I believe (unfashionably) that a materialist slant helps to illuminate professional relations in construction. The fourth takes a building-type, the bridge, in which aesthetics play a part yet the nature of the architect-engineer relationship as commonly conceived tends to be inverted. The fifth looks into the seemingly closer relations between architects and engineers in the making of major projects since about 1930. Finally, the sixth study examines the training of the two professions. That essay is deliberately, some readers may find provocatively, placed last. It is often assumed, particularly in continental Europe, that the outlook of architects and engineers flo,vs from what the French call their formation. I have chosen to look through the other end of the telescope, and taken institutions, educational and professional, as the outcome of wider forces. A reader persistent enough to \-vork right through the chapters n1ay fl in v.·ant of a dear thread. So I have appended a conclusion that tries to dra\v out the pattern I bclie,·e I have found. It is not a simple pattern, but one exists. Anyone looking for ans\vers and philosophies is counselled to jump straight from the introduction to the conclusion. All the essays are about the western tradition in construction. In the main they address patterns of development since about 1660. ·rht>re are somt· references back to the Renaissance in Chapter I and indeed to thr Ron1ans in Chapter ~- but these an· brief

Vlll

PREFACE A:-IU AC:KNOWLEDGEME'.'ITS

escapades. In general the book 111ovcs gradually fonvard. 'l'he first two chapters run from about 1660 to 1goo; the third covers 1750 to 1939; the fifth runs from 1920 to slightly short of the present, while the other two essays range across the full chronology of the book. The other unifying principle is that I have consistently investigated just three countries: Britain, France and the United States. Those three states, I judged, had enough points of similarity and difference to warrant concentrating my efforts on them. Nevertheless episodes in other countries are drawn in as and when they seemed helpful: Italy and Germany feature episodically in this way, as also, less often, do Holland, Russia and Spain; Belgium and Portugal figure only in footnotes. Set out like that, the omissions seem flagrant. It is the same ,vith individual architects and engineers. tvlodcrnists may be disappointed. Why is there so little on ~1ics, and almost nothing on Nervi or Calatrava? fvly selections have naturally been personal. This is a long book. It has been said that the trouble with Bruckner's symphonies is not that they are too long but that they are not long enough, because he never has the space to develop his gradually un,vinding themes. I have been very aware of that. There could easily have been more chapters. 1,vo themes I specially regret having to omit: the distribution of jobs bet\veen architects and engineers in the making, extending and 1naintaining of cities, on which I have confined my ren1arks to a few sentences and footnotes in Chapter 1; and their respective roles in the design and manufacture of public structures in series, such as electricity pylons, underground stations, phone-boxes and street furniture. Though it has been long and hard work \\Titing this book, it has also been fun. Best have been the trips to see things, bridges above all. Unavoidably, I have written often about buildings I have not seen. When I did see things, they invariably appeared in a fresh light and changed my perceptions. If there is one piece of advice I would tender to students of architecture and engineering at every level, it is to limit their study of photographs, drawings and documents, and to go and look. In gratefully recording debts, I would like to begin by thanking the many scholars and enthusiasts on to ,vhose backs I have crawled. This book is not the outcon1e of primary research, in the \\'ay that is understood today. I have done little work in archives but a lot in libraries, filleting other people ·s discoveries. In such synthetic work covering a broad field there will be misinterpretations and mistakes, for which I am of course ,vholly responsible. Of the libraries I have used, I should like to single out the London Library and the Faculty Library for the l)epartments of 1\rchitecture and History of Art at Cambridge under :\-laddie Bro,vn; also those of the Institution of Civil Engineers under the beneficent and learned Mike Chrirnes, and of the RIBA. Little about the history of the built environment cannot be found in one of those four places. Among friends \.vho have been outstandingly generous and forbearing to n1e over this project's long life I should first mention Charlotte Ellis. ~-f art in l\feade and ,\nne-1\·larie ( ;hatelet in Paris, and ~losette Broderick in Ne,v York. In London, Robert Thorne has patiently encouraged and gently tcst.t"d rne. So has Jules Lubbock, ,...-ho read a good deal of the text. Other readers and chastencrs of chapters or sections included Tim Benton, Si111on Bradley, Steven Brindle, Nick Bullock, r\lan (~nt,,-~urd, Gillian Darley, Ed Diestclkamp, Adrian Forty, Elain Han,,ood, ~eilJackson. Sophie Le Bourva , Robin :\licldlcton. :\Ian Po\\'111racts in this offict', 1111d{'r till" i11111wdiatc dir and Ground:-. f 1he .\ rtll) E11gi111·er ca1nc in10 lwing. ,vith all the fed-

AMERICA I 660-

1goo

61

43. First plan for reordering central \\Tashington and the Mall, by Colonel Theodore Bingham of the Corps of Engineers, 1900. Most of the land freshly reclaimed from the Potomac- is destined for military encampments and parade grounds.

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RF.~t:H\' O IN.

era] lands within the District of Columbia in its purvie,v. Frorn that developed the Corps of Engineers' share in shaping \.Vashington as a whole. Until the city acquired its own elected government, a member of the Corps ahvays sat on the three-man board, appointed by the President, which governed the District of Columbia. ½s a direct result', notes Albert Cowdrey, 'the Army Engineers acquired an unprecedented role in the regular, peacetime government of an American city'. 195 l\'aturally it was the heart of \Vashington that became their special stamping ground, particularly the l\,lall, confused and chopped up since L'Enfant's time, though his monumental idealism had never quite been forgotten. Engineers completed ~fills's \Vashington l\,lonument in 1877- 84 and built Bacon's Lincoln l\.1emorial in 1914- 22. !\,fore important \Vas the preliminary work, often ignored or reviled, that set the scene for the l\.lcl\.lillan Commission and the full-throated L'Enfant revival of the early t\ventieth century. It began with the Corps' strength, water management. Bet\veen 1882 and 1900 the engineers reclaimed more than six hundred acres of tidal flats and marshes fron1 the Potomac at the west and south-west end of the :\fall. The effect was almost to double an area of already perilously large open urban space, and to provoke rival clain1s as to how it 1night be filled in honour of the capital's centennial. Having done the spade\vork, the engineers \Vere keen to n1ake suggestions fr a nt'w unified layout for the whole area. So it was that Colonel ·rheodore A. Bingharn, head of the Office of Public Buildings and (;rounds. ca1ne up in the spring of 1900 ,vith the lirst viable plans for a 'centennial a,·rnue' along a restored l\lall (ill. -tJ). ()n the evidence of architects, Bingham has been dis,nissed as ·apparently a1nbitious. irnpulsi,·t'. and rather impressed with his 0\.\'11 kno\'.-·lt~dgl'·. 1' 11; In fi1ct his plans ,n-rc not half had. though thry

fr2

IMPERIAL WORKS AND \.YORTHY K I NGS

44. Perspective of Union Square at the cast end of the NJalJ, made for the Senate Park Commission, 1902. The monumental language imposed upon \-Vashingto n by the Commissio n's architects wa.~ far more ponderous than that conceived by the city's early architects and engineers.

took up n1uch of the reclaimed land with military parade grounds and the like. Given the professional politics of the centennial , they stood no chance of adoption, but they offered a guide for much that follo,..,ed. Having accepted partnership with a landscape architect, ,..,hose scheme ,..,as rather worse than his o,vn, Bingham finally cooked his goose ,vith some clumsy plans for extending the White House. He was certainly no architect. All this played into the hands of Glenn Bro,vn, the secretary of the An1erican Institute of Architects, who had been lobbying all the ·while, looking into L'Enfant's pla n and making his o,vn equivalent. It \Vas through Brown's 111anoeuvring that the Nlc.l\{illan Con1mission eventually fell into the hands of those vete rans of the Chicago World's Fair, Daniel Burnham a nd C harles ~1cK.im, along ,.,vith Frederick Olmsted j unior. In the end it ,vas the civiJ architects and landscapists of the City Beautiful m ove1nent who revived L'Enfant's vision - with an imperial pomposity that the milita1-y engineers, bent on tasks before them, had ne, ·er thought to ape. And so a wearying Beaux-Arts version of \Vhat it was supposed the capital ought to have been carne to be la id over Washington in L'Enfant's na,ne (ill. 44). Though much revised , the so-called Senate Park C:on1mission plan ,vas essentially carried through. lts frigid , authoritarian classicism has continued to define the city in the minds of the public a nd its rulers ever since. A

LA ST WORD

The story of construcLion in the hands of the Corps of Engineers could be extended on,-vards: to the inflaLion of its numbers and acti,·ities in response to the institutionalized violence of the h-ventieth century; to its pcacctunc role in building dan1s a nd infrastructure, forcshado\,'ing the much-publicized activitirs of the Tenn essee Valley Authority; or, back in the \ Vashing1on area, to th e gigantic project for the Pe-ntagon, hastily drawn up by army engineers in 19+1; a nd LO the tra nsfr·r of Colonrl Lt'slic ( ;roves frorn building tha t behe n1oth to a brand-new section of the Corps. tht' ''.\ lanhatta n District', charged ,vith creating a secre t nc,,· co111111uni1y 10 dc,·l'lop a10111 ic rncrgy as a "'capon of \var. 197 1

AMERICA I

A few of these topics find a later mention in this book (pp. 358, 395). But even the loose time-limits of this chapter have been exceeded, and its narrative must stop. The one thing left is to remind the reader that its theme has been not so much military construction and constructors as the way in which the policies and ambitions that beget them have engendered techniques, institutions and ideas useful to architecture and the entire public realm. So it seems right to end ~ith France and leave the last emotions to an Englishman, Arthur Young, responding to the sight of the Canal du Midi: Leave the road, and crossing the canal, follow it to Beziers; nine sluice-gates let the water down the hill to join the river at the town. A noble work! The port is broad enough for four large vessels to lie abreast; the greatest of them carries from 90 to 100 tons. Many of them were at the quay, some in motion, and every sign of an animated business. This is the best sight I have seen in France. Here Louis XIV thou art truly great! Here, with a generous and benignant hand, thou dispensest ease and wealth to thy people. Si sic omnia, thy name would indeed have been revered. To effect this noble work of uniting the two seas, less money was expended than to besiege Turin, or to seize Strasbourg like a robber. Such an employment of the revenues of a great kingdom is the only laudable way of a monarch's acquiring immortality; all other means make their names survive with those only of the incendiaries, robbers and violators of mankind. 198

660- I 900

63

2

IRON 1.

Europe to 1850

ARCHITECTS AND FABRICATORS

It would be idle to try and pinpoint the first structural occurrence of iron in building. \Vhat can be done is to qualify the uses to which iron has been put and place them in the hierarchy of construction. Cramps, straps, bolts, nails, hinges and ties: such products of the forge were as old as the iron age itsel( Plain in comparison with weaponry and armour, farm tools or even domestic ironmongery, they were subordinate features, added to supplement timber joints or masonry openings and so secure the grosser elements that bore the brunt of the struggle against gravity and decay. The conspicuous elements in construction do the most to define architectural style. So though iron had contributed to structure since antiquity, and it \vas familiar to the great mediaeval builders, it was always regarded as supplementary. 1 lvluch of it lay hidden. Yet it could be bold and naked too, as in the open ties across the vaults of Sancta Sophia, or sinuous and ornamental, as in the door hinges of great Gothic churches - features that warn us not to simplify the division between structural and other uses of ironwork. As \vith weapons, gearing and utensils, so also with construction, the wider availability of forged iron from around the time of the Renaissance intensified its use at almost all levels of western building.2 At the loftiest level, there was growing recourse to iron in the peripheral 'chains' or continuous ties hidden ,vithin masonry to counter the lateral thrust of wide-span vaults and domes. Perhaps in emulation of the ancients, Brunelleschi's famous dome at Florence Cathedral included a measure of these 'catene di ferro', in the form of rods, clamps and bolts. 3 In the 1520s or 30s Sansovino repaired one of the domes at St Mark's, Venice, with a girdle of seemingly continuous iron,4 \vhile the dome of St Peter's, Rome, raised at the end of the sixteenth century, contained yet more iron in its chains. By 1682 Filippo Baldinucci, contributing to long-running arguments about cracks in the dome of St Peter's, could claim that 'there ,-vas never an architect, feeble though he might be, who did not know it \Vas impossible to raise a structure of such a form and size without reinforcing it with chains in many places'; and the response of the experts who finally tackled its structural problems in the 1740s was to add more chains \vith more iron. 5 The dome of St Paul's in London (1704-7) like\vise conceals several series of iron chains (ill. 46).6 From time to time further examples of chains binding domes, steeples and other features come to light. 7 In the same way, Perrault's Louvre colonnade of 1667 · 74 rene,-ved the Hellenic use of hidden iron ties to support classical entablatures with \vide intercolumniations (ill. 47). That technique was to help neoclassical architects who favoured trabeation over the arch when using the orders on a rnonumental scalc. 8 In another usagt', \Vren employed hidden iron hangers to help truss ,vide-span floors - in vertical form at Hampton Court (ill. 48) - as diagonal straps at Trinity Library, Can1bridgc. 9 From early in his architectural career \Vren ,vas manifestly at ease ,vith iron reinforcement. Asked to report on the stability of Salisbury C:athedral in 1668, he noted that the original 'Artist' had braced the great spire ,vith 'tnany large bandes of Iron \\'ithin and without, keyed together ,vith rnuch industry and exartncssc'. '!'hough critical of' the

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1:J· .-\ glimp~(' of thl' H allt: au RI,\ Pari,. .-\ masonr·y fro111 to the .-ii\' prl'fon·s thl' latl'r iron dnnu· Ix-hind. Clu·,·ojon phntograph prohahh· 1akn1 shonly h..t,irr the n•n)11s1n11·t i, >11 111' 1HBII (JO .

66

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46. Isometric drawing showing pan of the iron 'chain' sysl'cm over the peristyle of St Paul's Cathedral, drawn by Robert Bowles. One of several such chains in the dome of St Paul's. Hidden iron bracing of this kind and complexity was common by this date (1704- 7).

----·

47. Iron reinforcement of Pcrrault's Louvre colonnade, from Pierre Patte, Alfmoirt sur l.t.s oijtLr Les plus importans dt /'arc/1iterture (1769). The hidden iron increases the width of span feasible with imcrcolumniations of limestone ashlar.

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48. Sect.ion of \\lrcn's south range at Hampton Court drawn by Daphne ..o rd, showing various uses of hidden iron tics. otc the hange r helping to stiffen the 30-foot span of 1.hc top floor by linking it to the roof truss. SOUTH

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procedure because of the uneven quality of the old iron and its susceptibility to ru st, Wren had no compunction in recommending furth er iron bracing, so long as it was fabricated 'at some port towne \-vhere they \-vorke Anchors and othe r large worke for shipps, for I have found by e>..1)erience that la rge worke cannot be wrought sound with litle fires and small bello\-ves.' 10 No thing seems ro have been done i1n 1n ediately at Salisbury. But \.Vhen a re\v years later Wren buill the tower of his first n1ajor London church, St ~1ary le Bow (1671- 3), an 'anchorsmith ' supplied the ring of iro n cramps and wedges over the n1ain tower arch. 11 The great cha ins al St Pau l's rollo,-v on logically. ;\!ready \VC have drifted inlo discussing the use 111ade of iro n specifically by architects. At the Lou\Te, for in tancc, Rowland ~lainstone believes that the decision to use iron rested with Pcrraull, " ·ho had 'a lively interest in the usc of metal in architecture'. 12 But in al l this. there \Vas no qucslion of showing or t'Xprcssing lhe iron\vork. The chains, ties and h:tll,({l' r s r£ LA NOU YELLE SALLE DE L" OPBR.,A

•

M. Ango in the 1780s. Both were publicized and soon had successors. Ango may have been predated by Souffiot, \vho before his death in 1780 had been experimenting on the strength of iron, and design ed a small \.vrought-iron roof ,-vith top-light for a sta ircase in the Louvre. J ust before the Revolution, the first pa rt of the Lo uvre adapted to sho,v pictures acquired a much larger experimental truss-cum-rooflight. 55 But the rnost telling extension of the technique came in a theatre. Pierre-Lo uis Moreau's short-lived Opera at the Palais-Royal in Paris (1764 g) had already built iro n into the boxes and used long hangers dropped from the roof trusses to help suspend the ceiling span (ill. 60).56 "fhe burning-do,vn of this auditorium in 1781 prompted Victor Louis to employ even more iron in its successor, the Theatre Franc;ais (1786-g). A sectional dra ...ving of its roof, published by Rondelet in 1817, has often been reproduced (iU. 61 ).57 It sho,vs a fram e,vork of \\'fought iron spanning the full 25 metres of the auditorium by means of ingeniously linked shallo,v trusses. The theatre's galleries and floo rs, along ,.vith the rest of the rebuilt Palais-Royal, were also, \.Ve are told , fran1ed in iron with light 'hollow pot' filJing - the o ther French advance in fire-protectio n a nd fl oor-technology during the t\vilig ht of the Ancien Regime. 58 In her study of French iron architecture Frances Steiner leans to ...vards credit.ing the technique or a ll this to f\ngo.59 But Charles Eck, ,-vriting in 1836, asks us to hono ur not only 'the artist' (Lo uis) but 'also the constructor, ,vho has remained a nonymo us, fo r putting those ,vho ha\·c followed them on the road to innovations of this type'. 60 By this he n1ust n1ean the unkno,vn ·crrurier, critical to undertakings of th i kind. As v.,ith masonry re inforcement, none of this iro n\\'Ork ,,·as exposed. portions of the Lou,-re rooflights cxceptr d.fi 1 :\'or " ·a~ it belie,·ed th;-it it should hr . D !vlackenzie indicated to the Horticultural Society, "·ith illustrations, how the glazed surfr1ccs of hothouse.~ ,nigh t he cu,ved to gt't better ligl1t and

f'ACINC. PAGE

78. Royal Op1·ra Housl' and Floral Hall, Covcm Garden. F.. ~I. Barry. architect. with Henry Grissdl or the Regcm's Canal Ironworks, 1ll57 8. Iron. rritical to thr l'Ons1ruction or both buildings, was exposed in the hall but hidden in 1hc- thl'atrc. 79. Palm House· at Binc.111 Park. r. 18:.1~>· ( :onj1·1·1urrd 10 ha,·,· lwcn made· by\\'. & I>. Baik·y 11,i11_i.: tlw I .oudon bar.

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.., 80. Ca,1-iron eonsendlOI"\ addt'd In C,111!011 H ma-c· '" Thomas H opper. archi tect. 1807. I'll(' ~l\ l1m in, rt·r i\hbl'y, i, :1dop1c·d.

E U ROP E T O I 850

secured by cast-iron glazing bars. Loudon "vas among those who took this up, producing specirnens of a curved ba r in \vrought (not cast) iron for the Society's examination a nd 'acuminating' (othen .vise, pointing) the resultant structure's profile. This simple-seem ing component required research and development, and the erection of experimental hothouses in Loudon's suburban garden at Bayswater. In 1818 in1provements on the original bar \Vere patented by the ironmaster \\"illiam Bailey of the fu-m of W & D. Bailey, to \vhom Loudon made over his rights. The Loudon and Bailey bar was the key to a revolution. It led the \-Vay to the curvilinear school of hothouse design a nd hence to a specifically British school of curved iron-and-glass roof in other building-types. By 1824 Loudon could point to t,,venty-four such structures by the Ba ileys, of \.Yhich the great domed conservatory at Bretton H all with a base diameter of a hundred feet was the most spectacular. A survivor is at Dallan1 To\ver, while a sitnila r structure at Bicton is attributable to the Baileys (ill. 79). 121 eithe r Loudon nor any other a rchitect is known to have designed them. They \Vere ordered direct from the Baileys, \Vho understood the ideas well enough to vary their shape and design to the site, usually with the backing of a \¥all. To the n1odern eye they a re, quite simply, beautiful - perhaps the first indepe ndent iron structures apart from bridges for which that can be said. Here elegance came by working from the compone nt outwards. Architects began by tackling hothouses from the other e nd of the spectrum, the \vhole building and its setting. "fhe fu·st stab at an alJ-iron conservatory is a dra,ving in the royal archives for a pitch-roofed and square-planned structure, high a nd open, no\¥ thought to be a speculative design made in 1798 by Nash for the Prince of \!Vales. 122 In time the Prince did build a cast-iron conservatory a t Carlton House to the designs of T homas Hopper (1807). 123 A tour de force of Gothic a rchaeology (ill. 80), it may have made for atmospheric promenading, but as a place to gro,v things in it was an absurdity. Most horticulturaJ architecture was less dogmatic. An exainple of creati\·e co111promise bet\veen architect and gardener was the ca111ellia house at Wollaron Hall (1822), designed byJ effry Wyatv ille a nd made by the Baileys' main rivals. J ones and Clark of Birn1ingham (ill. 81). Without masonry backing of any kind, it may be the earliest surviving all-iron building. But it is not curvilinear; it resembles earlier ora ngeries, only \vith thinnecl-do\.Yll piers and stylized sash bars mbc~vecn. The architectural conservatory soon came to a n accomn1odation \Vith the curvilinear, horticultural type. 12·~ The main arena for this compro1nise was the aristocratic garden. The Earl of Shre,,vsbury's Alton 10 \•vers, the Duke of Northu1nbcrland's Syon House, and the Elector William H's \!Vilhelmshohe, Kassel, all spa\vned grand conservatories of balanced , symmetrical design, in •.vhich masonry piers ,ied ,,·ith n1e tal-and-glass or timber inftll, roofs and domcs. 125 Anlong the fin est was the Syon H ouse conservato1y by C harles Fo\vler (1827- 30). Its Bath-stone casing chimes ,vith the g-reat house nearby, ,vhiJe its cast-iron columns and high dome or gunn1ctal ribs defer tu the hothouse re,·olutiun \vith a nod (ill . 82). But only a nod: ·so fa r as plan t culture alone is concerned, no

IO I

81. W'ollaton Hall, interior or thr camellia house by J cffi·y \•Vyarvillc. architect, 1822. An early example of a free-~tanding iron and glass struc1urc.

102

IRON

82. Conservatory at Syon House by Charles fowler, architect, 1827 30. C lassical interior encasing interior with cast-iron columns and a dome with gu nmetal ribs. 83. Shop in construction next 10 the Hu ngerford ~larket. London, showing iron stanchions between the windows: drawing by George Scharf, 1834. Charles Fowler, architect, Grissel! and Peto contractors.

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arrangem ent can be more unsuccessful ', j udged a horticuhuralist. 126 Architectural enthusiasm for open iron in the run-up to the raihvay age should not be exaggerated. Fo,vler is a case in point. H o,,.vard Colvin calls this able constructor ' one of the fe,v nineteenth-century architects who , like the engineers Telford and Rennie, were able to handle structure and form "vith equal assurance'. 127 But he was never obsessed with displaying iron,,vork. Most o f the rnarket buildings that ,von h im reno,vn were sturd y • classical buildings in stone, with open colonnades and timber roofs. In his great London markets, Covent Garden (1828- 30) and H ungerford (1831- 3), the original portions were of granite, brick and timber, ,vith some 1;.: , .. ,.' ; . h idden iron girders. Only in afterthoughts to the t~vo - :1. :. ,. .....; .• proj ects did the iron e1nerge, notably at the Hungerford !vl arket, ,vhere shopfronts to,varcls the Strand \vere constructed in 1834 ,.vith ingenious stanchions (ill. 83), and an independent shelter ,vith cantilevered roof added next yea r for the fish stalls. 128 That latter piece of brio h as ,von Fo",,ler a place in histories of architectural iron,vork, but it ,vas not typical. The iron roofs ar C ovent G arde n date fro1n the 1870s and '80s, ,vhen all such 1narkets can1e to be co,·ercd. At that juncture, Fowler 's son statc-d that he- a nd his father both believed 'Lhat iro n is n ot the h1 11 :1, i11 ;ill , i111.11i1111s \\IH-r•· ., ,d,. ·11111 r.111,,r, ,,tJ; -r c11111pk11· ·packages· for

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the d esign and execution of elements in a building, his po\.vers ,-vere limited. That is \.vhy Barry's management of the Houses of Parliament was remarkable. The alternative, commoner as iron structures proliferated, ,-vas to hire an engineering expert to work out the structure under the architects before a contractor ,vas chosen. The working dra,vings could then be put out to tender among the growing number of firms able to tackle iron construction. At Ke,\.', things turned out well enough for Turner. The one other firm that competed, J ones and Clark of Binningham, sent in a design of their own that ,vas soon rejected.

86. Kew Palm Houst· erecting, 18+7. 87. Kt·w Palm House today.

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·rhe Turner-Burton design ,vas then put out to tender bet,vcen the two firms. So as to ht' impartial, Burton employed an outside engineer to prepare the working dra,"-ings - a procedure ,vhich exasperated 1urner, as his details ,vere altered and, so he felt, misconstrued. But he won the tender and was able to substitute his own intentions as the ,vork ,vent along. In the primary agreement of August 1844, Grissell and Peto ,vere appointed n1ain contractors, no doubt on the strength of their managernent experience; Turner, by no,"' overextended financially, became the iron subcontractor under them. l'his is not the place to rehearse the innovations in \\-TOught-iron construction embodied in the Palm House (ills. 85, 86, 8j). Suffice it to say that the changes in structural detail and planning ,vhich took place during construction sprang from Turner, '"'orking ,vith Hooker. Burton's role, as it had been from the start, ,vas to act as the front man and keep the confidence of the government payn1astcrs. Persuasion is ,vhat an architect is partly there to do. Presumably the sparing Greek ornament of the Palm House iron,vork is his too. Perhaps his biggest contribution to the pr~ject ,vas the high Italian campanile built as a chimney for the flues, a full 500 feet a\\'ay in distance, light years a\\'ay in style. And yet Diestelkamp concludes:

It is evident that Decimus Burton was responsible for the styldess character of the Palm House and it is very likely that the controlled restraint of the elevations ,vas due to his Neo-classical taste and predilection for "·hat ,vas in this case a sin1plificd forn1 of repeating elements. 1:rn

:\s for Turner, the construction of the Palm House ,vas an engineer's passion; reason and emotion ,vere bound together in it. \\!hen all was over in 1848, Burton could report that ':\tr Turner is a loser to a very serious extent on the contract'. Turner explained this as a consequence of the ne,v I-shaped deck bcarn he had used in order to achieve 'beau~; utility and stahili1y•. 1:1•1 It ,vas the first of these \\'ords that cost the 1110s1.

2.

A Railway Interlude

'fuE EARLY RA11.,..,·AY S TAT10:-So ,·ital arc the raihvays to our story that they rnerit space for thc1nsclves. In Englishspeaking lands they represent a step-change in elevating those masters of the iron road , thc engineers, to heroic status. Surely in such relationships as they afforded bcnveen engineers and architects. the forn1cr enjoyed absolute s,vay? Taking rxamplcs from the- annals of iron raihvay architrcture. this section argues that architects took their share of the spoils and honours. Locon101ion aside. tht' priniary job in building a raih,·ay ,nay be defined as civil engillt't'ring - that of dt'tt'nnining. designing and constructing the line and level of the track. In that sph('r or llu· 1>111T n>111pl'lli11g than 1ha1 of the ad('quary of tht' structural system conceived in tilt' ( ;ot11ir 1-r;1: it hardly rna tt. Eiffel ro~(' to Lili~ chalh-nge " ·ith a counter-proposal. but cou ld no t beat the n·,lean1 engine!-> fcJr pn\\ 1-ring ,,·,111-r,,·ork~. rnill, or boat~. For a ll h is talents he could ne,'t·r control tht·ir prorurcnwnt. In tilt' 11i,l';h1111a r ·rhat had n1uch to do \,·ith 1

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177

154, 155, 156. Harper and Bro1hcrs· Building, 185+ 5. J ohn B. Corlics, ard1itrrt and builder. with J amcs Bogardus. invcntor-lcling: 111is-.ion n,ay \\'di bl' disniuntt'cl, a long ,vith son1e of its pce,·ish deta ils. But 1110..,l of it i~ ,thoul his y1Jt1lh. and on dH' arnhicncc of 1870s Chirago its voice is per~ll il"i,·t·. l1 de pictrn·, an· iIHTit;d,k and pro_grc·s,in·. Tht'ir rigour must be ;uc1-r>1cd ,111d 1·,r11 1cli-l1r;11l'Vere the making of the l'vlid '"'est. H e arrived in Chicago in 1881 aged seventeen, having attended what he called ' the government school of mining a nd civil engineering in the Saar Basin' and passed a polytechnic entry examination.99 H e \>vorked at first ,vith a succession of architects, engineers a nd iron and steel companies, getting expertise in the new style of big building. Then he lifted into smarter circles. In 1886 he was hired by Adler and Sullivan as an engineering assistant on the Chicago Auditorium, acting as Dankmar Adler's right-hand man. H e quickly became 'fore1na n of the whole office' and stayed till 1892. IOO Wright's autobiography dra,\IS an affectionate sketch of Mueller, all beard and guttural accent, exercising a n earnest, youthful authority. l'vlueller was the first person \"1right met ,\/hen he applied to join Adler and Sullivan late in 1887. The t\vo hit it off. In a published plan of their office atop the ne\vly con1pleted Auditorium, just four private rooms are indicated: those of Adler, Sullivan and their respective personal assistants, Mueller and \ Vright (ill. 219). Both men preferred to learn by doing. At the start of his career, v\'right had spent months \Vorking on and off for the architect-e ngineer Allan Conover in M adison, and 1

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219. Adler and Sullivan onicc on top of the Auditorium , 1890. i\.dlr r and Mueller at one end of the o!Ticc, S ullivan and Wright at the other.

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l.,,vkin Administration Building. Bulla.lo. Frank Lloyd Wright, archi1ec1, Paul ~1uellcr, engineer-builder, i9o4- 5. 220.

Larkin Administration Building, interior. The piers and beams are of steelwork encased in pla~ter. 22 1.

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then enrolled for two semesters in Conover's engineering course at the University of \Visconsin; but the formal side, he said, 'meant nothing so much to him as a vague sort of emotional distress, a sickening sense of fear' _IOI No doubt he picked up a lot about iron and steel structures and about foundations chez Adler and Sullivan, in part via Mueller. l'vlueller's weightiest job there ""as on the Auditorium Building itself. A lengthy '"itness statement he \\/rote years later, in connection ,-vith a la,"suit over settlement, lays out in ra re and rich detail the manifold interests and responsibilities that Adler and l\tlueller had to co-ordinate. It offers an antidote to any view of architecture as a n individualistic art. And yet the pair certainly understood their structural-managerial role to comprise the making of conditions wherein Sullivan (and perhaps his assista nt Wright) could be creat-ive. Looking back, l'vlueller felt there had been too much consultation over the Auditorium. 'I am sorry to say that Adler & Sullivan were so solicitous of the opinions of others', he wrote, having in mind Sullivan's old teacher \,Yilliam Ware, '"ho insisted that t\\lO extra storeys be added to the tower after its foundations '"ere already in . 102 The testimony says little about Mueller's exact contribution. But his grasp of detail some thirty-five years after the construction contrasts \\ltth vVright's loose, romanticized memory of past projects and struggles. That complement of temperaments ""as to be needful. .-'\Iler Adler and Sullivan, Mueller joined a big construction firm and supervised many of the structures built for the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, before turning independent contractor-builder. He erected large buildings of all sorts, including churches, but seemingly not houses. So there '"as no reason for \,Yright and Mueller to \\/Ork together until the formcr's practice grew beyond its early suburban scope. Then, the picking-up of old threads amounted to a shift from the in-house fello\vship of Adler and Sullivan to a version of the same thing ' in the field ', a nd from the challenge of big steel buildings to middlingsized ones in reinforced concrete. The renewal of the link is bound up with project5 for \,Yright's early clients, the Martin brothers. Probably Wright and Mueller's first collaboration was the celebrated Larkin Administration Building, Buflalo, started in 19 0 4 (ills. 2 20, 221 ) . Though Littered with novelties in planning and servicing, the Larkin Building was conservative in structure; '"hat looked like concrete 'vvas in fact a steel frame, obscured in a nd out behind thicknesses of brickwork. There was plenty of money for Larkin, so perhaps the economy of concrete did not need to be invoked. Furthermore, architect and builder alike had been brought up with steel and as yet kne\V little about reinforced concrete. Well-embedded steel '"as their natural response to Darwin ,0 . Martin's brief for 'absolutely fire-proof construction'. 103 Like others, Wright had been toying with ideas for designing in concrete since at least 190 1. 104 But the first of his buildings constructed with a reinforced-concrete frame was the E-Z Polish Factory between Chicago and Oak Park, built by Mueller for W E. Martin (ill. 222) . Its lower storeys were put up in 1905 while Larkin was under construction, the rest being added later. Delays on the original portion caused a blistering row between Wright and his client a nd obliged Mueller to sho..v the saintliness required of Wright's collaborators: 'Nlr Muelle r is ground bet\vecn the obstreperous miJlstoncs

25 1

E-Z Polish Factory. Frank Lloyd vVrigh t, architcn, Paul Mueller, builder. Lower storeys, 1905, uppe r ones added later. \Vright 's lirst 1' xccuted building in rdn forccd concrete. 222 .

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Cnity Temple. Oak Park. Frank Lloyd \\'right, architect, Paul J\1 ucller, builder. 1906- 8. The front has doubtless been creeper-clad to mitigate the unsightlines~ o f the bare concrete. 223.

U nity Temple, plan Oefl) and section (right) of the wall~, from Co11crtu E11gimm11g, September 1907. The wa lls are dearly shown as lightl y reinforced both ho1·izonta lly and vertically. To an extent this prefigu res \\'right's later practice. '..!24.

and s1niles and smiles, attributing no prepo nderance of blame to either party, an1iable and well-poised gentleman that he is'. I OS E-Z Polish \ Vas a d ecent , disciplined 'd aylig ht factory', to use Reyner Ba nhanl' tenn , but in no \Vay ' precocio us', as Frampto n has labelled it. 106 It had a brick-faced front o,·er a concre te fran1c of \Vhich ,ve know no thing. Probably v\'right a nd 1\11uelJer had to wo rk it out in ta ndem ,vith one of the specialist concrete fu-rns. H ere at any rate ·w as so mething to learn from. Concrete carne into full play only ,vith their next collaboratio n: Unity Ten1ple, Oak Park (1906- 8), a proj ect that has been full y studied by J oseph Siry. 107 That a nlaiJ-orde r building in a dim neighbourhood of Buffalo could look s1narter than a church in the c hic suburb of O ak Park sho,vs ho,v fa1· old prio rities and proprieties \vere dying by this date. J ust as Larkin ,vas extravagant, so u nity ·r emple had to be cheap, the congregation having little to spend. As ever in the early days of concrete, the o nly ratio nale for sho,vin g it as ,veil a using it ,vas economy: no one thoug ht it could look as good as masonry, least of all in northern cl imates. At first it ,vas hoped that the T'" f "'#'""".A, ,4..... church n1ight be of brick. But by early 1906 conT- ~ • - - 1-crete had been d ecided upo n and Wright ,vas .. .." --... ,..... talking to ~1 ueller. \i\'hen bids ,vere called fo r, ~ .... l\ [ueller' pro, ·ed much the low!"st. ./ ~ IL is a rn easure both o f v\'right's appre ntice,. ~/ :: .... ship ,vith concrete and of his personality tha t he " ~ • '() ncYc r proposed a fram e {o r Unity Ternple. The .\ ~ .,\ 'It ., \:\,' e nclosure a nd we ig ht of ,~,a lls aJ,vays matte red "' ro hirn. In hi. eyes the key to saving n1oney .,.,,as ~ ..' •: standa rd izing the fc>rm,vork and sin1plifying Lhe -· • 1/4.. • pro files. ·r hcse ~r udlt-r a nd he could n1a na ge ; , '/ !Ill' sl'it·111 ilic de,.ign u f' concrete they co uld no t. I I So at lin,t not onh the f Facto':·, Ronc rda m, ge neral vic-w. J. A. Brmk~an a nd L. C. van dcr Vlugt, archllc-C'ls, J C:. \Nicbe nga, cnf},'i ncer for the main block. 1926- 30. 2 '.

education in the art disciplines on a more and more extensive scale, ,,vhereby they rightly hope to restore the honour of the title ' Bou,-vkundig l ngenieur', ,-vhich it has missed for too long. 146 Evers has been described as 'a fervent anti-rationalist'. 1'17 That does not mean that he was impractical or ignorant of consu·uction, but that he inspired his students to belieYe in a rchitecture as an art-form. When he ernbarked on the great work of his career, Ronerdam ~fown Hall (1913- 20), he hired Bijvoet and Duiker as assistants. Their professional aspirations had been set, but not yet their sty le. They began their career in the early 1920s by designing good brick houses in suburbs of The Hague for an enlightened speculator-builder. 1+8 On the engineering side at Delft along with Duiker ""asJ . G. vViebenga. 1+9 For a while their careers interlocked. They worked together on Zonnestraal, the Nirwana Flats in

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267

The Hague a nd some other projects, including an entry for the League of Nations Competition. To label Wiebenga the technician and Duiker the creative force ,vould be to oversimplify. Their relationship ,-vas fluid and unstable. Wiebenga too ,-vas an architect-engineer, but belonged to a generation that often repressed artistry under a cloa k of obj ectivity and efficiency. A good musician (Duiker was musical too), a photographe1; someone ,,vho could quote Robert Frost at the opening of one of his buildings, he had wanted to be an architect but his father steered him towards engineering. Restlessness ,vas his Achilles heel. In 19 12, straight after Delft, \tViebenga took a job in one of the construction firms specializing in reinforced concrete, Stulemeijer a nd Co. The licensing systems for the material were breaking down j ust then in Holland, as else,vhere. Few architects yet knew enough about concrete technique to take tn uch advantage. For those building engineers who did, it was a moment of opportunity. \tViebenga designed factories, warehouses and a sizeable shell dome for a church. Then teaching drew him into the mainstream of progressive architecture. In 1922 he was appointed director of the !\ti iddle Technical School at Groningen, housed in temporary quarters. Soon Wiebenga ,vas designing a nd building the ne,v school. l 'he job should have gone to the city a rchitect, Mulock Hou,ver, ,vho insisted that the design, set at the back of a fon n al open space in a developing quarter of Groningen, needed to be matured. H e objected vocally to the disregard of context displayed by the engineer's rapid sketch. But the municipality ,vas in a hurry. Wiebenga undertook to prepare the drawings in six ,veeks a nd have the building ready in thirteen months: that did the trick. 150 As completed, the Groningen MTS was a very early manifestation of the socalled N ieuwe Bouwen (ill. 238). 'fhough Wiebenga asked the young architect L. C. van der Vlugt to help him, he claimed to have done almost all the job himself. ·rhe school turned out a consistent but rather graceless building, almost devoid of 'architecnirc'; even the concrete construction is played do..vn. In the first modernis1n of the 1920s, efficiency ..vithout rhetoric or emotion really did sometin1es reign supreme. VViebenga soon left Gron ingen for a spell in the United States, ,vorking for East Coast engineering firm s. The drift of the articles he ,-vrore on his return to Holland in 1925 concentrated on process - the organization of An1erican ,vork more tha n American building science. ~evertheless the core of his skills ,vas concrete construction. It ,vas in

Van :'\die Factory. interior of om· of 1.hr main floors. showing v\'icbcnga's Oat-slab su·ucture . 240.

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241. Nirwana rials, The HaKtlC'. Bijvoel and Duikcr, architccts,J. G. \\1cbcnga, engineer, 1928· 30.

refining concrete technique that he proved his collaborative worth, foreshadowing those late r engineers \\/hose expertise released or reacted to architects' creativity. T hree fa1nous projects of the late 1920s demonstrate this: Zonnestraal and the Nirwana Flats, already me ntioned, and the Van elle Factory at Rotterda1n. In each Wiebenga played a vitaJ but varying role. ·one \.Vas quite a harmonious partnership. Ar the Van Nelle Factory (ill. 239), 151 Wiebenga acted as a consultant engineer helping young, inexperienced architects. J. A. Brinkinan, then stiU a student in 'civiele techniek', inherited this prestigious j ob in 1926 ,vhen his father, the a rchitect l\1l ichiel Brinkn1an, suddenly died. H e asked Van der V lugt, a forn1er assistant of his father's, to help him. H e it d oubtless ,-vas who bro ught in \Viebcnga as engineer for the multi-storey part of the complex. The storey-heights and cladding of the factory depended upon the concrete frame, whose design in turn hinged on the incidence of natural light on the manufacturing floors. Brinkinan and \ 1\liebcnga clashed over the proposed direction of the main beams, in danger of obstructing the light. For s0111e reason the architects ,.,,ent on opposing Wiebenga even a ller he had red esigned the fra1ne with flat-slab floors and mushroorn columns (ill. 240), but he ,von the battle. At Zonnesu·aal, I S'.! Bijvoet a nd Duiker (specifically, the latter) were una111biguously in cha rge; hea,y engineering was irrelevant. Duiker first toyed \\'1th a timber scheme, but presumably called in \ Vicbenga ,vhen he switched to concrete. It is not clear ,vhere his \vork h{"gan a nd ended, but he had the skills to stre tch ,vhat little n1oney there ,vas as far a~ po. ~ihk and ensure the sanatorium could be built fast. No d oubt he tightened the discipline of the d c:-.ign. Shon spans of three rnetrcs ,verc chosen, fo r instance, so that the shuttl'ring could he rcnH)\·c·cl fa ster. \ \'iebcnga was probably not involved in site supervisio11. " ·hich \\'as inadl'q11a1e; thc con(Tl'll" mix turnt·d ou t to be poor in quality. Where he n1ay hc 10 bla1nl' fi,r la tC'r problc111s wa:-. in f."1ili11~ to in~ist on expa nsion joints.

STYLES OF PARTNERSHIP

'l'he Nirwana Flats started as \Viebenga's project. 15j His American visit had given him the idea of waking up The Hague's sedate housing with a cluster of high flats. He put much energy into promoting this radical speculation. Sleekness of image was essential to the process. Duiker made the first sketches late in 1925, sho\ving ten tall blocks in a Corbusian parkland setting. The scheme went through many simplifications before Wiebenga could secure finance for the only block to be built (ill. 241), started in May 1928. So the collaboration was more drawn out and intimate than at the sanatorium. Doubtless the challenge of an eight-storey concrete frame was the engineer's main input on the design side. But relations broke down during construction. \Viebenga was frustrated that Duiker used the many changes demanded by his backers to protract the design process in the name of perfection. Confronted by a ne\v proposal for collaboration, he declined:

As Heer Duiker falls entirely short of the mark in organization and construction, it means for my part that in collaboration with him I cannot trust him \vith that side of the work, and so have to relinquish just the most pleasant side of the business. Added to which, on the building side I become the victim of his mania for change, so that I have to redo the \\'Ork four or five times. 154 :For his part Duiker felt that \-Viebenga, cager to move on, was neglecting the job. Efficient delivery sat uneasily with an architectural philosophy of perfectionism. Wiebenga's credentials suited the ideologues of the Nieuwe Bouwen nicely. On the occasions when he took part in their debates, he mouthed the modernist engineering cliches: efficiency begets beauty, look to motorcars as a model for architecture. Yet in the buildings he built bet\veen 1928 and 1934, when he \Vas in municipal service, he developed a marked aestheticism. At Aalsmeer, \VOrking without an architect-collaborator, he built a school with a suavity absent from the Groningen l\1TS. The same holds of a hospital wing at Zwolle, though there his first design was toned down by another hand. For a moment it looked as though \\Tiebenga had turned architect. But the troubles of the decade and of his temperament \vorked against him: Zwolle having disrnissed him in 1934 for unreliability, he was thrown back on mundane engineering tasks. Although his career ran on into the post-war years, Wiebenga never recovered the balance that set him briefly among the memorable modern architect-engineers. That he acted in turn as architect, consultant, entrepreneur and municipal employee indicates the instability - or one might say flexibility - of those few inter-war building engineers able to address concrete creatively. And his relation with Duiker, if short and fraught, foreshadow·ed later \-vays of working. \Viebcnga lived too long, dying in 1974. Today it is only the short-lived Duiker who is really remembered, even in Holland. In the outpouring of grief that accompanied his death there \-vas natural exaggeration: when all is said and done, the record of Duiker's buildings reveals an ingenious designer, not an all-round technician. But the intuition and humanity of the few designs he realized in his maturity gave hin1 the power to engage and move hearts. In that he showed himself a pure, untrammelled architect. On a larger stage, the same holds true of this chapter's last case-study.

LE C0Rs us 1ER l 'hc grip that Le ( :orbusicr still 1naintains over the irnaginativc realn1 of architecture makes his record as a constructor hard to judge. \Vhat matters about his art, those who revel in it will feel, is not how it was 111ade but its fertility of idea, its po,-ver to excite and confront. In order to \V00 his audience, he reaches ruthlessly beyond thr rnatcrials he uses and the men and ,von1en \\'ho help hi1n transfi>nn them. That must be borne in mind as one exan1ines the ambiguous rdations between Le Corbusier, the concrete that " ·as his chief 1nccliun1 of building, and the \\'orld of engineering. J\:lany of his practical dealings with t·nginet·rs " ·ere fuzzy, unlike t hr sharp1wss

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\Vith which during his propagandizing heyday he flung down the challenge they represented. That challenge included the famous encomia in J-ers une archiucture on modern engineering (p. 5), and the reproach to architects he saw embodied in artefacts like the Eiffel Tower or Gabriel Voisin's aeroplanes. In a typically dramatized anecdote, Le Corbusier relates how in his Paris student days the l\.fetro's chief engineer came to address a class at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts on reinforced concrete, only to be ho\vled do\\-'11 with the retort: 'Tu nous prends pour des entrepreneurs?' - 'Do you take us for a load of contractors?' 155 The engineer is the man of honour, it is implied; the architects are arrogant ignoramuses. Yet the engineer in the story remains unnamed, an abstraction. It ,vas \Vith artists who could react as unreasonably as those students that Le Corbusier felt at home, not with technicians. Le Corbusier's basic training was in a S..viss industrial community. 156 The art school in his home town of La Chaux de Fonds was there to turn out skilled engravers and designers for the watchmaking industry. Had his eyesight not given him trouble, had his devoted, art-minded teacher, Charles L'Eplattenier, not therefore pushed him towards architecture for his fourth year, in 1go5, nothing might have become of him. Frorn watchmaking he learnt the deepest lesson an architect can take from handicraft - a feeling for the nature and limits of materials. l ' he boy made fast progress. But L'Eplattenier's grounding in architecture \Vas narrow; he could not help much with construction or structures, a point his pupil eventually cast back in his face. Le Corbusier was among the many architects who manage to make up for a lopsided training. Yet something also told him that by keeping his distance from technique he could also keep his freedom. He never sought to be pigeonholed as a professional architect - indeed as anything. For the very first house Le Corbusier built, the Villa Fallct, another local architect, Rene Chapallaz, just six years his senior, helped the nineteen-year-old 'put his plans in order'. 157 That arrangement turned into a fonnal partnership for his next two houses, mostly built while he ,vas a,vay on his travels. For one of them, the Villa Stotzer (1908), Chapallaz introduced Hennebique-syste1n concrete floors absent from the original plans. 158 Already a division bet\veen art-designer and executive technician had arisen. In these early craft-based villas at La Chaux de Fonds, Le Corbusier hardly had to confront the border between design and construction. But he knew how much he had still to learn. A ferocious worker and assimilator, he left Switzerland with the ambition to do so: first in \ !icnna, then Paris and Berlin. l'he Paris months, benveen l\farch 1908 and December 1909, were decisive. Allen Brooks's chronicle of his progress there sho\\'S him flailing around at first, then falling in ,vith the rationalist agenda in architecture. For a moment he toyed ,vith studying technique seriously. i\fter listing various technical classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he seems to have sat in on the construction class alone. There he ,vitnessed the teacher rapping out 'formulae in advanced rnathernatics by the kilon1etre ... no one could grasp any of it and ,ve felt that this degradation ,vould \veigh on the \vhole of our lives'. 159 Like 111any hapless architectural students before- and since, Le Corbusier was allergic to rote learning. He bought no tt'chnical books in Paris. and ,vhen lent the French translation of E1nil ~1orsch 's great t G et>rgc, .'un1111cr. As if" to unckrlinc the crafi.smanliness of these ont·•uff. suburban houses. Su1nn11 ·r is o ltt·n dt'srri bcd as a n1ason , though forn1all y he calkd hi,11-..elf ·i11gt'·n icu r-nH1-..11·11l·1vas an unruly, iron-working to\.vn uncontaminated by the civic codes of Europe. Here he built the first of his aqueducts and two road bridges, all suspension structures, all long ago destroyed. His first road bridge (1845- 6), crossing the tvlonongahela at Smithfield Street, consisted of no less than eight short suspended spans, entailing a proliferation of stone piers in the river topped by queer iron pyramids (ill. 306). Each span being separated by t,vo separate cables, there a re therefore, 18 cables suspended to 18 towers. rfhe towers arc composed of four columns moulded in the form of a two-sided or cornered pilaster; they are connected by lattice panels, secured by scre,-v bolts. The panels up and do\.vn strearn close the whole side of a tO\ve1~ but those in the direction of the bridge form an open doonvay, which serves for the continuation of sidewalks from one span to the other. On top of the pilasters or columns, a n1assive casting rests, which supports the pendulum to ,-vhich the cables a re attached. rfhe upper pin of the pendulum Lies in a scat which is formed by the sides a nd ribs of a square box occupying the center of the casting. For the purpose of throwing the ,-vholc pressure upon the four colu1nns underneath, 12 scginents of arches butt against the centre box, and rest ·with the other end upon the four corners. 11i Here is experimental engineer's architecture. Invention precedes; bits of sty le are then cornmandeered and thro\vn at the job. Hints for this bridge's appearance probably can1e from Ellet, ,vho (following Navicr) had separated the to,-vers in his first major suspension bridge over the Schuylkill in Philadelphia (1841 -2). But using iron for their expression \Vas a change, no doubt tailored to Pittsburgh's susceptibilities. Roebling's later Sixth Street Bridge across the Allegheny River (1857- 9) re,-vorked these ideas (ill. 307). This time the a ll-iron superstructure had fe,ver but longer spans and ,-vas decked with 'gilded don1es on the towers and \veil shaped spires on the tollhouses', he wrote with pr;de. 118 Like Telford, Roebling was not against conventional cmbeUislunent; it had just taken him tirne to attend to it.

307. Sixth Street Bridge, Pittsburgh. J. A. Rocbling, engineer, 1857-g. In Rore a sl'cond deck " 'as added in 1962, the (;eoq.{t' \\'ashington was on(' of the slin1111cst as \\·ell as longest of suspension spans, relying on .\(oissc-ifl''s application of deflection theory and indeed !\1oisseiff hirnsclf contributt.·d to thl' cotH·cpt ion . .-\111n1ann "s d('sign was n-rtainly experin1ental, unduly so in sorne engineers· first successfully marketed in France and beyond by engineer-contractors such a s Hennebique and his licensees. \Vhile the concrete engineering firms of those years -approximately, 1890--1914 - did indeed take much of the structural effort a,,·ay fron1 architects, they were not consulting professionals. As the patents for the early concrete systems lapsed, independent consulting engineers who advised on building in concrete emerged. But the link between advanced designing in reinforced concrete and engineer-contractors remained unbroken between the ,,·orld ,vars. Auguste Perret designed and built not with a consulting engineer but in panncrship with the contracting firm run by his brothers. Pier Luigi Nervi too operated in a contracting partnership. Likewise in his inter-war works in partnership with Lubetkin and others, Ove Arup was not officially a consultant but the agent of engineer-contractor firms. \Vhen it came to creating a modern concrete architecture in which a building·s expression followed fron1 its materials and structure, the consulting and the contracting paths developed side by side. Both proved to have pros and cons. After 1945 a regular mode of collaboration between independent professionals for ambitious buildings at last firmed up in Britain and the United States - though not to the same extent in France, where the bureau d 'etudes system tackled the means of translating architectural design into construction via a different path. l\1uch was due to a ne": humane brand of structural engineer. Some were independent consultants like :-\ rup. Bodiansky, San1uely, Severud and \Veidlinger who had roots in European culture, cared about art and architecture and drearnt of imaginative buildings rationally built. Others like Fazlur Khan settled for anonymity within interdisciplinary firms of architecL-; and engineers like Skidmore O\vings and 1\.-f errill. \'\'hat role architects played in this ne,v sense of common purpose is harder to specify. )'cars of 1nodernist propaganda had deprived the old styles of their strength and dinned into their heads that they should ain1 for the honest expression of structure. Tht'y had hcIw ;: , Brazil from 179:1. Tht' caS 6 and :~7 (his) (capitalization and punctuation c·hangcd}. 1ti-2 Ibid., p. 106. I (j'.l Ibid., p. 35:z. rfi-1- Ibid.. p. '.lP. 11>5 Ibid.• p. 358 (capitalization. punctuation and soml· spelling changed). Theodore J. Crackd, ~~rs/ Point (Lawrence, Kansas. :zoo2), pp. 32· 3. C rackl·l's narratin· emphasizes the discontinuities at \.Vest Point lx-rwn:n •7!H· and 1817. He also notes that .-\lexander H amilton pnx-urcd a plan for an academy from du Portail in 1798. Sec also

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179

(\\'ashington, 19~), pp. l. :l. pp. I:>:):) UL •n l·i·dnrO\·. ·:\fat1h1·,,· Clark'. p. i-1 (Suthcrland. of>. ,it.. p. 108). 9·1 Ro11d,·l,·1 111 h is rn·i~1·d ecli1ion added tha t dw lrti.-s1·s of dw Brn1r,t· ·hold th.1ri-... 1:t:-;b. p. trt. ,,11n· ; l!.!_;lln