Concrete: The Vision of a New Architecture [Second edition] 9780773571198

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
PLATES FOLLOWING PAGES
ILLUSTRATIONS
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
PART ONE: THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL
I. BETON
II. CONCRETE
III. REINFORCEMENT
IV. EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT
PART TWO: THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE
V. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
VI. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
PART THREE: THE CONTRIBUTION OF AUGUST PERRET
VII. THE STUDENT
VIII. THE APPRENTICE
IX. THE THEORIST
X. THE CONSTRUCTOR
XI. THE MASTER
NOTES
PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED ESSAYS
THE CLASSICISM OF AUGUSTE PERRET
THE NEW BRUTALISM OF THE 1920s
PERRET'S ARTICULATION OF REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAMES
INDEX
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z

Citation preview

CONCRETE The Vision of a New Architecture

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CONCRETE THE VISION OF A NEW ARCHITECTURE Peter Collins

SECOND EDITION Foreword by Kenneth Frampton Introduction by Rejean Legault

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

To Marie Dormoy © McGill-Queen's University Press 2004 Foreword © Kenneth Frampton 2004 Introduction © Rejean Legault 2004 ISBN 0-7735-2563-7 (cloth) ISBN 0-7735-2564-5 (paper) Legal deposit second quarter 2004 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper First published in 1959 by Faber and Faber McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities. National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Collins, Peter, 1920-1981 Concrete: the vision of a new architecture / Peter Collins; foreword by Kenneth Frampton; introduction by Rejean Legault. — 2nd ed. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-2563-7 (bnd) ISBN 0-7735-2564-5 (pbk) 1. Concrete construction—History. 2. Perret,Auguste, 1874-1954. 3. Architecture, Modern—20th century. I. Title. NA4125.C6 2004

721.04454

C2004-901846-9

Contents PLATES FOLLOWING PAGES

82, 210

ILLUSTRATIONS

vii

FOREWORD

xv

Kenneth Frampton Rejean Legault

xxi

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

1xi

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL I. BETON

19

II. CONCRETE

36

III. REINFORCEMENT

56

IV. EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT

76

PART TWO THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE V THE NINETEENTH CENTURY VI. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

97 112

PART THREE THE CONTRIBUTION OF AUGUST FERRET VII. THE STUDENT

153

VIII. THE APPRENTICE

173

IX. THE THEORIST

194

CONTENTS X. THE CONSTRUCTOR

2 24 22

XI. THE MASTER

270

NOTES

289

PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED ESSAYS THE CLASSICISM OF AUGUSTE PERRT PERRET

303

THE NEW BRUTALISM OF THE 1920s

315

PERRET'S ARTICULATION OF REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAMES

341

INDEX

353

V1

Illustrations

after page 82 THE ORIGINS OF MODERN CONCRETE 1. The Technique of Pise Construction (From: Rondelet: Traite de I'Art de Bdtir, 1812) EARLY CONCRETE BUILDINGS IN FRANCE 2. St. Denis: 72, Rue Charles-Michels, 1853 (From: L'Ingenieur, 1st November 1855) 3. LeVesinet: Parish Church, 1864 (From: The Builder, llth November 1865) 4. LeVesinet: Parish Church, 1864 The tower 5. LeVesinet: Parish Church, 1864 Details of the facade 6. Paris: 92, Rue Miromesnil, 1867 7. Paris: Cite Ouvriere, Boulevard Daumesnil, 1867

Theodore Lachez L.C. Boileau L.C. Boileau L.C. Boileau

EARLY CONCRETE BUILDINGS IN ENGLAND 8. Chertsey: Fernlands Villa, 1870. (Demolished 1955) T.H.Wonnacott (From: The Builder, 12th February 1870) Harlow: Down Hall, 1873. (Now Downham School) F.P. Cockerell (From: Building News, 4th July 1873) 9. Southwark: Guildford Street: Warehouse, 1867 E. I'Anson (Bombed 1940) Southwark: Zoar Street: Tenements, 1885 10. Southwark: Zoar Street: Tenements, 1885 Detail EARLY CONCRETE BUILDINGS IN AMERICA 11. Port Chester (N.Y): The Ward House, 1873

R. Mook

ILLUSTRATIONS 12. Stanford (Cal.): Leland Stanford Junior Museum, 1889 (By courtesy of Professor Ray Faulkner) Greensburg (Pa.): Kelly & Jones Factory, 1902 (By courtesy of the Walworth Company) (Photo: Ralph) FRANgOIS HENNEBIQUE 13. Project: Brussels Exhibition: 1000 ft Tower, 1888 14. Tourcoing: Charles Six Spinning Mill, 1895 (By courtesy of Messrs. Charles Six) 15. Paris: 1, Rue Danton, 1898 16. Paris: Petit Palais, Champs-Elysees, 1898 Staircase 17. Bourg-la-Reine: Villa, Rue du Lycee Lakanal, 1904 18. Bourg-la-Reine: Villa, Rue du Lycee Lakanal, 1904

E. Neve E.Arnaud C. Girault

EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE 19. London: General Post Office Extension, 1907 20. Kingston (Jamaica):The Queen's House, 1907

Sir H.Tanner Nicholson & Corlette

Kingston (Jamaica): Royal Mail Lines Offices, 1907 (By courtesy of Mr. Vaughn Theobalds) EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE IN AMERICA 21. Cincinnati (Ohio): Ingall's Building, 1902 Elzner & Anderson (By courtesy of Professor C.L. Martin and Mr. Russell Potter) 22. Atlantic City (N.J.): Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, 1905 Price & (Photo: F Hess) McLanahan 23. Atlantic City (N.J.): Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, 1905 Price & Details McLanahan 24. Atlantic City (N.J.): Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, 1905 Price & Details McLanahan 25. Los Angeles (Cal.): Mayan Cinema Theatre, c. 1925 Morgan, (By courtesy of the Mayan Theatre) Walls & Clements (Photos:Avenue Studio, Gonzalez) 26. New York: Monolith Building, 1907 Howells & Stokes 27. Project: Monolithic House, 1906 Manning & Macneille Phillipsburg (N.J.): Monolithic Houses, 1909 (By courtesy of the Curator, The Edison Museum)

Vlll

ILLUSTRATIONS EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE IN GERMANY

28. Munich: Tietz Store, 1904 Heilmann & Littmann Munich: University School of Anatomy, 1907 Heilmann & Littmann (From: E. von Mecenseffy: Kunstlerische Gestaltung der Eisenbetonbauten, 1911) 29. Dresden: King George's School, c. 1910 Erlwein (From: E. von Mecenseffy: Kunstlerische Gestaltung der Eisenbetonbauten, 1911) 30. Breslau: Centennial Hall, 1913 M. Berg (Photo: Yerbury) THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE

31. Paris: St. Jean de Montmartre, 1897 Exterior 32. Paris: St. Jean de Montmartre, 1897 Interior 33. Paris: St. Jean de Montmartre, 1897 Detail 34. Project: Presidential Palace, c. 1910 (From: de Baudot: L'Architecture, le Passe, le Present, 1916) 35. Barcelona: Casa Mila, 1905-10 Roof detail (Photo: Wayne Andrews) 36. Paris: Felix Potin Store, 140, Rue de Rennes, 1904 Roof detail 37. Paris: 229, Avenue Rapp, 1901 38. Paris: Ceramic Hotel, Avenue de Wagram, 1904 Paris: 9, Rue Claude-Chahu, Passy, 1902 39. Paris: 40, Rue Boileau, Passy, 1908 40. Project: A Facade for a Club in Ferro-concrete' (Prize-winning submission for a competition organised by The Builder, 1908) 41. Oak Park (111.): Unity Church, 1906 Pasadena (Cal.): Millard House, 1922 (Photos: Wayne Andrews)

A. de Baudot A. de Baudot A. de Baudot A. de Baudot A. Gaudi Auscher J. Lavirotte J. Lavirotte C. Klein J. Richard F.J. Lucas F.L.Wright F.L.Wright

ECOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS 1891

42. Analytical Study of Classical Architecture (Photo: Chevojon)

IX

Auguste Perret

ILLUSTRATIONS THE ARCHITECTURAL PRINCIPLES OF CLASSICISM

43. Maisons-Laffitte: Chateau de Maisons, 1642 (Photo: Contef) 44. Florence: Palazzo Pitti, Garden Facade, 1558 (Photo:Alinart) Paris: Palais du Luxembourg, 1615 45. Vaux-le-Vicomte: Chateau, 1657 46. Champs-sur-Marne: Chateau, 1703 47. Paris: Place de la Concorde, 1760 (From: P Patte:Memoires, 1769)

Francois Mansart B. Ammanati L. LeVau J.B. Bullet A.J. Gabriel

AUGUSTS PERRET: EARLY MASONRY STRUCTURES

48. Paris: 119, Avenue deWagram, 1902 General view and detail of the facade 49. Paris: Apartment Building, corner of Avenue Niel and Rue Rennequin, 1904 Details of the facade AUGUSTE PERRET: EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAME STRUCTURES

50. Paris: 25b, Rue Franklin, 1903 General view and detail of the facade 51. Paris: 25b, Rue Franklin, 1903 Details of the entrance and staircase 52. Paris: Garage, 51 Rue de Ponthieu, 1905 Facade Paris:Theatre des Champs-Elysees, 1911 Facade (Photos: Chevojon) 53. Paris: Theatre des Champs-Elysees, 1911 Project for the facade, by Henry van de Velde (From L'Art Flamand et Hollandais, 1914) The facade as executed 54. Paris: Theatre des Champs-Elysees, 1911 Doorway detail 55. Paris: Theatre des Champs-Elysees, 1911 Foyer (Photo: Chevojon) 56. Paris: Theatre des Champs-Elysees, 1911 Interior of the large theatre (Opera House) Interior of the small theatre (Photos: Chevojon)

X

ILLUSTRATIONS after page 210 AUGUSTE FERRET: INDUSTRIAL ARCHITECTURE

57. Paris: Esders Clothing Factory, Avenue Philippe-Auguste, 1919 Interior Paris: Scene-painting Studios, Rue Olivier-Metra, 1923 Interior (Photos: Chevojori)

58. Paris: Admiralty Research Laboratories, Boulevard Victor, 1928 Exterior of the laboratories (Photo: Chevojori)

59. Paris: Admiralty Research Laboratories, Boulevard Victor, 1928 The administrative building: original project (Photo: Chevojori)

The administrative building as executed 60. Project: The Arsenal, Toulon, 1929 (Photo: Chevojori) 61. Issoire: Engineering Factory, 1939-48 (Photo: Chevojori) 62. Saclay: Atomic Energy Research Centre, 1949 AUGUSTE FERRET: DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE

63. Paris: Studio for Ghana Orloff, Cite Seurat, 1926 (Jamot:AG Ferret, 1927) 64. Boulogne-sur-Seine: Artists' Studios, Rue du Belvedere, c. 1928 65. Garches: Villa for Nubar Bey, 1932 Garden facade (Photo: Chevojori)

66. Garches: Villa for Nubar Bey, 1932 Plans LE CORBUSIER: DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE

67. Garches: Villa, 1927 Garden facade and plans

(Photos: Yerhury & Le Corbusier: CEuvre Complete, 1910-29) AUGUSTE FERRET: DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE (cont.)

68. Project: Villa for Elias Awad Bey, Cairo, 1931 Facade detail and plan (Photos: Chevojori)

69. Paris: 51-55 Rue Raynouard, 1929 West facade and plan of eighth floor (Photo: Chevojori) XI

ILLUSTRATIONS 70. Paris: 51-55 Rue Raynouard, 1929 Facade details 71. Staircase to Drawing Office, 55 Rue Raynouard, 1929 (Photo: Cbevojori) Entrance Staircase, Marquise de Crussol's mansion, 9, Porte de Passy, 1932 72. Paris: Fondation Weil, Porte de Champerret, 1951 Facade and detail of the entrance AUGUSTE PERRET: CHURCHES

73. Le Raincy: Notre Dame, 1922 Section and plans (Photo: Chevojori) 74. Le Raincy: Notre Dame, 1922 Exterior from the north-west and facade detail 75. Le Raincy: Notre Dame, 1922 Interior and detail of claustra 76. Le Raincy: Notre Dame, 1922 Chancel and choir gallery: details of balustrading AUGUSTE FERRET: TOWERS

77. Le Raincy: Notre Dame, 1922 Grenoble: Observation Tower, 1924 (Photo: Chevojori) AUGUSTE FERRET: CHURCHES (cont.)

78. Montmagny: Ste.Therese, 1925 Interior and detail (Photo: Chevojori) 79. Arcueil: Convent Chapel, 1925 Exterior and interior details 80. Project: Basilica of St. Joan of Arc, 1926 Project: Church at Carmaux, 1938 (Photos: Chevojori) 81. Le Havre: St. Joseph, 1950 Model (Photo: Chevojori) 82. Le Havre: St. Joseph, 1953 (under construction) Details of the exterior and interior

Xll

ILLUSTRATIONS AUGUSTS FERRET: AUDITORIA

83. Paris: Ecole Normale de Musique, 1928 Interior and facade (Photos: Chevojori)

84. Paris: Theatre for the 1925 Exhibition of Decorative Arts Interior and facade (Photos: Chevojon)

AUGUSTE FERRET: MUSEUMS

85. Paris: Mobilier National, 1935 Main facade and plan 86. Paris: Mobilier National, 1935 Exterior and interior of the main exhibition gallery 87. Paris: Mobilier National, 1935 Detail: south-west facade Detail: apartment wing flanking the main entrance 88. Paris: Musee desTravaux Publics, 1938 Facade and plan (Photos: Chevojon)

89. Paris: Musee desTravaux Publics, 1938 Detail of the entrance and interior of the exhibition hall 90. Paris: Musee desTravaux Publics, 1938 Main entrance vestibule surrounding the auditorium 91. Paris: Musee desTravaux Publics, 1938 Auditorium ceiling, seen from above and below 92. Paris: Musee desTravaux Publics, 1938 Exterior of the lantern surmounting the auditorium CIVIC DESIGN 93. Project: Palace of the Soviets, Moscow (Competition) 1931 Auguste Ferret's design (Photo: Chevojon)

Le Corbusier's design

(From: Le Corbusier: (Euvre Complete, 1929-34) 94. Project: Palais de Chaillot, Paris, 1933 (Photos: Chevojon) 95. Reconstruction of Amiens: Railway Station, 1946 (Photo: Chevojon)

Xlll

Auguste Perret Auguste Perret

ILLUSTRATIONS AUGUSTE PERRET: MONUMENTS

96. Tomb of Madeleine Jamot (Designed 1914, executed 1921) ECOLE DBS BEAUX-ARTS 1923-5

97. Atelier Madeline Concours Chenavard (1923-4) 'A floating island in the Atlantic' Atelier Ferret A Circus'

Henri Defrasse Andre Le Donne

THE INFLUENCE OF AUGUSTE PERRET

98. Fribourg University, 1939 Denis Honegger Aula Magna (Photo: Herdog) 99. Fribourg University, 1939 Denis Honegger Music Pavilion (Photo: Herdog) 100. Le Havre: Place de L'Hotel de Ville, 1947-50 South side of the square under construction Typical floor plan (Photo: Chevojori) 101. Le Havre: Column Details Pierre-Edouard Lambert Place de 1'Hotel de Ville, 1950 South sea-front, 1953 (under construction) (Photo: Fernez) 102. Le Havre Brelet & Dubouillon Apartment block, Avenue Foch, 1950 (Photo: Fernez) Hotel Normandie, 1950 Jacques Poirrier 103. Hengelo: Railway Station, 1950 H.G.J. Schelling Geneva: Cantonal Hospital, 1954 Hoechel, Nierle, Lozeron & Erb (Photo: Bacchetta) 104. New Haven (Conn.): Yale University Art Gallery Louis Kahn

xiv

Foreword

DEDICATED to Marie Dormoy, an early commentator on the work of Auguste Ferret, Peter Collins's first work of consequence — Concrete, published in 1959 — is possibly one of the most misleading publications of its time. That Collins elected to publish his study of Ferret under this title is symptomatic of an epoch in which concrete was still commonly regarded as the demiurge of the Modern movement. Even sophisticates such as Collins appear to have uncritically assumed that concrete was as much the quintessence of modernity as the architecture it gave rise to. In fact, it is difficult to find another rationale by which to account for the somewhat confusing title page, where the primary title, Concrete, is followed by the subtitle The Vision of a New Architecture, followed by a second subtitle, in upper and lower case, A Study of Auguste Ferret and his Precursors. It is unlikely that the average reader would have immediately sensed the work's underlying polemic, strangely obfuscated through a titular device that effectively divides the book's content into three sections: first, a history of concrete construction up to 1914, second, an account of the aesthetic debate that attended the evolution of such construction up to 1928, and, last, a study of Ferret's architecture until his death in 1954. It is clear in retrospect that Collins's intent was to establish by implication that Ferret's architecture was not only the ultimate technical and tectonic refinement of reinforced concrete but also the inevitable extension of French Structural Classicism into the present. Collins's rhetorical method, in this respect, was to compare Ferret's modulated syntax to the handling of the material by other modern masters, who, while adopting beton arme, as the French called it, were unable, according to Collins, to give it an equally convincing formulation. The first candidate for this somewhat invidious exercise was Frank Lloyd Wright, whose textile block houses of the mid-twenties gave Collins a certain pause, for while one could criticize the concealed presence of the occasional concrete lintel or pier, by virtue of its being fused with the tessellated, wire-reinforced, concrete block walls of these houses, one could hardly fault Wright for the assertion, in his Architectural Record

FOREWORD essay of 1928, that, "Aesthetically concrete has neither song nor story; nor is it easy to see in this conglomerate a high aesthetic quality." Collins implicitly concurs with Wright's contention that whatever character concrete may acquire in its fabrication comes not from the material itself but rather from a tectonic figure imposed upon its form in the casting process, from the pattern of its prefabricated assembly, or from its as yet unforeseen capacity for wide-span, homogenous cantilevered construction such as we find in Wright's Falling Water, Bear Run, Pennsylvania, of 1936 and in the monolithic mushroom columns of his S.C.Johnson Administration building, completed at Racine, Wisconsin, in 1939. With regard to this last, it is perhaps Perret's prejudice in favour of trabeated construction that led Collins to ignore the large reinforced concrete mushroom columns dramatically exploited by the engineer E. Owen Williams in his canonical Boots Pharmaceutical plant, realized at Beeston, near Nottingham, in 1932. While Williams does get a mention, it is for an early address on the aesthetics of concrete, where he comes out rather surprisingly in favour of the arch. His subsequent daring as an engineer is pointedly ignored. Surely we are already encountering here Collins's reservations with regard to the work of formally gifted structural engineers, a prejudice he undoubtedly inherited from Perret, who was perversely dismissive of Eugene Freyssinet's dirigible hangars at Orly (1917-24) on the grounds that they seemed to be sinking into the ground! Does this disinclination to acknowledge the work of distinguished engineers also explain certain lacunae in what is otherwise still one of the finest accounts of the history of reinforced concrete in English, not withstanding the somewhat arbitrary cut-off point of 1914? In this context one should note that while Francois Hennebique is appropriately credited for his perfection of trabeated reinforced concrete construction, the virtually simultaneous invention of mushroom column construction around 1909 by the American C.A.P. Turner and the Swiss Robert Maillart is inexplicably omitted, even though this remarkable innovation falls well within Collins's time frame. Although the author implies, by virtue of a single illustration, that he might have been willing to stretch his canon to include the concrete diagrid floor of Louis Kahn's Yale Art Gallery of 1952, designed with the engineer Henry Pfisterer, there is no mention of it in the text. One wonders whether comparable space-frame structures by the engineer Pier Luigi Nervi might well have suffered a similar fate had Collins had a few more illustrations at his disposal. To the extent that Collins was committed to interpreting Ferret's work as a continuation of French Structural Classicism, he was loathe to give any kind of credit to engineering structures that departed from the Graeco-Gothic ideal. All of this is spelt out in the fourth chapter of the third xvi

FOREWORD section, which is dedicated to Perret's work as a constructeur; the rubric under which he practiced. Little structural originality can be claimed for his early industrial buildings, even though their simplicity, boldness and economy aroused considerable interest at the time. They were not, for example, any more remarkable than the industrial buildings being executed by Maillart, or by Dyckerhoff and Widmann, at the same period. Yet they possessed qualities which already bore promise of future developments, notably the punctilious regard for an elemental geometry of rectangles and circles, and the symmetry and regularity of the basic structural frames. Whereas the most enthusiastic and ambitious engineers of the period, stimulated no doubt by the plasticity of the material and by the intellectual pleasure derived from elaborating new mathematical formulae, tended to favour shapes expressive of scientific ideas, Perret was content to use more simple, traditional composition, and it is significant that in both the Esders factory, built in 1919, and the scene-painting studios in the rue Olivier-Metra, built in 1923, the arches and shell vault respectively were not parabolic but round. Similarly the "shed" roofing of the Marinoni machine factory at Montataire was less ostentatiously "functional" than most roofs of this type, and we see in all his early buildings that same restraint in the use of new forms, that disdain for facile tours de force, which was to characterize all his later works.1

As for the ideological and professional rivalry between Ferret and Le Corbusier, Collin's critique of the latter displays every indication of having been influenced by Colin Rowe's seminal essay "The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa" of 1947, a debt that he seems to acknowledge indirectly by citing Rowe's equally seminal essay "Chicago Frame" of 1956. This elision is peculiar given that both these essays appeared in The Architectural Review, a journal that was not only closely followed at this time by Anglo/ American architectural intellectuals of Collins's generation but one to which Collins himself contributed. Be this as it may, Collins comments, like Rowe, on the Neo-Palladian columnar system underlying the spatio-structural organization of Le Corbusier's Villa at Garches of 1927, at the same time comparing its trabeated rhythm to the all but identical framing in Perret's Villa Nubar Bey, completed nearby in 1932. Collins proceeds to argue that Perret's version was a more faithful representation of the frame. While this judgment is undeniable, given Le Corbusier's free facade at Garches, it should be noted that the issue is directly related to Ferret's categoric critique to the effect that abstract form (derived as in the instance 1

226-7, this edition

xvii

FOREWORD of Le Corbusier's Purism from the abstraction of figurative art) is completely foreign to the tectonic tradition in European architecture. This fundamental split as to the origin of architectural expression first comes to the fore in autumn 1925 through the magazine L 'Architecture Vivante when its editor, Jean Badovici, publishes a series of proto-architectural works by the artists and architects of the Dutch De Stijl movement. This issue not only featured a polemical essay by Theo van Doesburg but also Piet Mondrian's even more provocative piece, "The Neoplastic Architectural Future," wherein he made the case that a new plasticity can only be created out of a fertile collaboration between artists and engineers, thereby excluding the architect entirely. Needless to say this was anathema to Perret and he promptly asked that his name be removed from the editorial board of the magazine — of which he had become the honorary patron only two years before. This fundamental ideological schism is only tangentially touched on by Collins for reasons that remain unclear. Did he feel that it was a negative reflection on Ferret's judgment in supporting Badovici as editor in the first place? Whatever the case, we learn in Concrete only about the nature of Mondrian's affront and are given little information as to the circumstances attending Ferret's resignation. Rigorously trained in the office of Denis Honegger during the time that the latter was working on the University of Fribourg, and being emotionally as well as intellectually of a somewhat conservative cast, Collins seems to have been unable to recognize the limitations of Ferret's views, particularly with regard to the expressive potential of a more flexible yet rational concrete syntax such as we find in, say, Le Corbusier or in the works of such architects as Giuseppe Terragni, Antonin Raymond, and Johannes Duiker. Moreover, Collins would have been both temperamentally and ideologically incapable of accepting Leonardo Benevolo's sympathetic but sober assessment of Perret, written in his Storia dell'architettura moderna of I960, to the effect that: The French tradition ... was based on the correspondence between classical rules and building practice, and through this correspondence they became so automatic as to pass for natural laws. Perret, steeped in this tradition, was naturally led to identify concrete framework (which was a fact of construction) with the framework as it was to appear on the outside of the building, and to transfer to the first the needs and associations of the second. Hence the desire for symmetry and the continued suggestion of the architectural orders, if not as formal presences, at least as terms of comparison ... He probably believed that he had discovered the constructional system best suited to the realization of traditional works, since the unity of its elements was real and not apparent, as in the classical orders composed of several pieces of hewn stone ... A whole century of experiment had xviii

FOREWORD approved and reinforced this convention from which all advances in modern engineering were born. Ferret lived in the midst of it, he was the heir of Durand, of Labrouste, Dutert, Eiffel; his particular merit was to have sensed that this glorious tradition, impoverished by eclecticism, still had a margin of unexplored possibilities to help resolve the problem of our time, and to have developed these possibilities courageously. In doing this, however, he ruined the last chances of structural classicism, and revealed definitively that the path ended in an impasse, because the initial premises were rooted in an outdated mode of thought. 2

That the larger public monuments projected by Le Corbusier in the late twenties and early thirties transcended this impasse while creatively reinterpreting the precepts of French Structural Classicism was as lost on Collins as it was on Perret, as we can see by Collins' prejudicial discussion of their respective entries for the Palais des Soviets competition of 1931, comparing as he does a decontextualized plan and elevation of Le Corbusier's design for the Palais des Soviets to Perret's panoramic perspective submitted for the same competition. Yet this comparison may be readily turned on its head by drawing attention to Perret's forced reiteration of piers at close centres around the perimeter, a rather contrived device upon which the fragile unity of his scheme depends. Nothing could be further from the more reasonable structural modulation of Le Corbusier's symmetrical parti centred about an elevated May Day plaza symbolically situated behind the main auditorium. In the last analysis Concrete could be said to exemplify Manfredo Tafuri's notion of operative criticism avant la lettre and it is this that prompts one to compare it not only to Benevolo, who is surely more measured, but also to Reyner Banham's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age of I960. Although Banham provides a critical articulation of a much more diverse body of historical material, both works are surely equally polemical — for whereas Banham ends his trajectory with the dematerialized geodesic light-weight anonymity of Buckminster Fuller's dymaxion structures (as far from French classicism as one could possibly get), Collins posits, as an alternative mode of rationalized production, perret's modular syntax in prefabricated concrete, particularly as applied to the rebuilding of Le Havre between 1945 and 1955, as though it was an inevitable midtwentieth century technological norm. Despite its undeniably polemical character Concrete remains a valuable historical text that in many respects has never been given its due, largely because of the perverse and misleading complexity of its title and the fact 2

Leonardo Benevolo, History of Modern Architecture, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1977), 327-31

xix

FOREWORD that it is at least two, if not three, books, deftly telescoped into one for rather tendentious reasons. As I have attempted to indicate its very nature leaves it open to being decoded from totally different standpoints. Nevertheless, it is an unmatched pioneering history of the development of reinforced concrete up to 1914; one that records and analyses the densely articulated, if provincial, English debate with respect to the aesthetic challenge posed by the increasing popularity of concrete from around 1870 onwards. Finally, until very recently, it was the only readily available monograph on Ferret in English. In this regard it remains valuable as a perceptive assessment of Ferret's life and career, one that still stands as a point of departure for all current attempts to situate this seminal architect within the wider trajectory of twentieth century culture. Finally, as I have tried to show, Concrete coincidentally demonstrates the way in which a critical discourse gradually unfolds through a set of tendentious formulations that, while they may be opposed to each other, belong to the same historical moment. Thus, herein we encounter not only Le Corbusier vs. Ferret but also Banham vs. Benevolo, Benevolo vs. Collins, Collins vs. Rowe, and so on, permutated in various combinations, so that eventually we may come to perceive, between the lines, the manner in which part of the ideologically conflicted legacy of our time was initially enjoined. Kenneth Frampton Ware Professor of Architecture Columbia University November 2002

xx

INTRODUCTION

Concrete: On Peter Collins's Vision of a New Architecture1 THE publication in 1959 of Concrete, The Vision of a New Architecture was Peter Collins's first significant contribution to the study of twentiethcentury architecture. Concrete tells the story of the exceptional encounter between a material, reinforced concrete, and the vision of a celebrated architect, Auguste Ferret. With this substantial book, whose title reads like a futurist slogan, Collins showed that his erudition and wit could bring a unique historiographic project to life. But it was his second book, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, published in 1965, that brought him international recognition.2 An iconoclastic genealogy of modernist thinking, Changing Ideals proposes a re-reading of the ideas and beliefs at the heart of the Modern movement. From Concrete to Changing Ideals, Collins developed a highly original if idiosyncratic theory of the origins of architectural modernity. Collins, author of three books and close to one hundred articles, had a prolific career as both a historian and critic of architecture.3 His work, however, was often overlooked or ignored and has only recently begun to receive the critical attention it deserves.4 This new interest in Collins is undoubtedly the result of the growing interest in the historiography of the Modern movement. An example of this is Panayotis Tournikiotis's analysis of the discursive practices of historians of modern architecture5 where Tournikiotis includes Collins in the core group of writers on modernism alongside Reyner Banham, Leonardo Benevolo, Sigfried Giedion, HenryRussell Hitchcock, Nikolaus Pevsner, Manfredo Tafuri, and Bruno Zevi. The recent re-edition of Changing Ideals has also encouraged a reassessment of the book's contribution to the historiography of modern architecture.6 However, Collin's scholarly work on concrete and Perret's architecture has not yet received the same critical attention. Collins's own history provides valuable insights into his approach to architecture.7 While he began his career as a practicing architect, his mature years were devoted to teaching and writing architectural history and criticism. His early work was done in the British Midlands and on the Continent, while his academic career unfolded in North America. Although

INTRODUCTION not unique — many British architects and scholars made similar moves during this period — his professional journey provides revealing clues as to the origins and aims of his scholarly work. This essay offers a reading of Concrete in light of Collins's professional and intellectual development. ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE Born in Leeds in 1920, Peter Collins began his architectural studies at Leeds College of Arts in 1936. His studies were interrupted by seven years of service in the British Army (1939-45), three years of which were spent as an intelligence officer in the Middle East and Italy. Immediately after completing his degree at Leeds in 1948, he left for the continent. He worked first for the Swiss architect Denis Honegger, who was based in Fribourg, where Collins spent eighteen months in 1948 and 1949 (Fig. 1). Honegger had been a student of Auguste Perret at the Paris Atelier du Palais de bois and was one of his most rigorous followers (Fig. 2), adopting Ferret's rationalist conception of tradition, which merged the architectural language of classicism with the use of reinforced concrete. Though the origin of Collins's interest in Perret's architecture is still unclear, we know that his first contact with the French architect took place in 1947. At the time Collins was collecting information in order to design his diploma project, a seminary with a chapel. Collins wrote to Perret, asking for photographs of churches designed by the master or his students.8 He added that he already had images of Perret's Notre Dame du Raincy Church (1922-23) (Plates 73 to 76) and of Denis Honegger's Fribourg University Chapel (1939-41) (Fig. 3). He also mentioned his great interest in the system of precast concrete blocks with geometric openwork patterns — or claustra — that Perret had developed (Plate 75).9 The project Collins eventually submitted to the diploma jury was clearly inspired by Honegger's chapel, a building that made conspicuous use of claustra (Fig. 4). Collins started working with Honegger at the time the Geneva Physics Institute (1942-52) was being built and when the design of the Fribourg Christ Roi Church (1946-52) was underway. In Honegger's office, Collins was involved in all aspects of an architect's work, from conceptual studies to execution drawings to supervision of the building site, a practice based on what his employer had learned from Perret.10 The Christ Roi Church was one of the projects Collins worked on. With a fan-like plan comprised of three naves converging on the choir, the church proved to be a challenging project. The facade was the most difficult aspect of the design as it posed the problem of the junction between the covered portico and the conical vault of the central nave. Joseph Abram has shown that it was Collins who designed the solution for the porch.11 (Fig. 5) Treating the xxii

Figure 1. Peter Collins and his wife, Margaret Gardner Taylor, at the Fribourg train station (c. 1952). Canadian Architecture Collection (CAC), Blackader-Lauterman Library, McGill University.

Figure 2. Denis Honegger (facing forward), consulting with colleagues (c. late 1950s). Ponds Honegger, Institut Francais d'Architecture.

Figure 3. Fribourg University Chapel (1939-41) by Denis Honegger: view of the claustra. Slide Collection, McGill University School of Architecture

Figure 4. Peter Collins's diploma project, a seminary with chapel (1947-48): side elevation, detail. Slide Collection, McGill University School of Architecture

Figure 5. Christ Roi Church, Fribourg (1946-52) by Denis Honegger: view of the model of the porch designed by Peter Collins. CAC, Blackader-Lauterman Library, McGill University.

Figure 6. Christ Roi Church, Fribourg (1946-52) by Denis Honegger: view of the porch. Slide Collection, McGill University School of Architecture.

INTRODUCTION porch as a coffered vault, Collins's design formalized its status as a transitional space while announcing the formal character of the central nave (Fig. 6). As Abrams says, Collins "had perfectly understood the logic of the project, where the formal clarification of the complex structures brings about an enrichment of the architectural language."12 After spending a term teaching at Leeds in early 1950, Collins resumed his apprenticeship at Honegger's Paris office, where he was introduced to the circle of architects who gravitated around Ferret.13 In April 1951, after having first approached Ferret's office, Collins was offered a job with the architect Pierre-Edouard Lambert.14 Although Lambert had not studied with Ferret, he was one of his most faithful disciples and was working with him on the reconstruction of Le Havre (1945-56), much of which had been destroyed by bombs in the Second World War. Ferret, who had been made chief architect for the reconstruction of Le Havre in 1945, was encouraged to form the Atelier de la Reconstruction, a group of architects trained in the spirit of his own brand of rationalism. Architects within the Atelier had agreed to use the same structural system and architectural language (Plates 100, 102A and 102B).15 The construction system they had adopted provided a set of standard dimensions which could be combined in different ways to design the buildings. Variety was expressed primarily through the proportions of openings and the play of plane surfaces in contrast with the structural elements. Each architect in the Atelier was in charge of one or more blocks of the reconstruction. Collins stayed with Lambert for eighteen months in 1951 and 1952, during the time the team was working on the design of the Front de mer Sud (1951-55), a scheme that included 1,400 housing units (Fig. 7). Working in Lambert's Paris office, Collins was involved in preparing conceptual studies and working drawings for the Front de mer Sud and for the Lycee de Jeunes Filles (1951-54), a second project based on an elegant combination of a poured-in place concrete frame and pre-cast infill panels (Fig. 8).16 During his years in Switzerland and France, Collins was immersed in a universe wholly devoted to the implementation of the language, forms, and material privileged by Ferret. He matured as an architect in a world where practice was closely linked with the application and actualization of a specific architectural doctrine. ARCHITECTURAL THEORY On his return to England in 1952, Collins started teaching at the School of Architecture at the University of Manchester and began work on a master's degree in art history at the same institution. His research focused on the eighteenth-century architectural theorist Jacques-Francois Blondel and xxvi

Figure 7. Front de mer Sud, Le Havre (1951-55) by Pierre-Edouard Lambert: view of the building. Fonds P.E. Lambert, Institut Francais d 'Architecture.

Figure 8. Lycee de Jeunes Filles, Le Havre (1951-54) by Pierre-Edouard Lambert: view of a wall section. CAC, Blackader-Lauterman Library, McGill University.

INTRODUCTION

Figure 9. Pages from Peter Collins's 1953 Architectural Review article "The Doctrine of Auguste Ferret." Blackader-Lauterman Library, McGill University.

led to an essay on Blondel's architectural doctrine for which he received the Silver Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1953.17 He submitted his project under the pseudonym of Eupalinos, a veiled reference to Auguste Ferret.18 The most significant aspect of his research was the connection he made between eighteenth-century trabeated structures and contemporary architecture in reinforced concrete.19 He wrote: "A new trabeated stone construction, which was the dream of French classical architects, is now within our grasp, so that perhaps a fresh consideration of basic classical principles may help us develop reinforced concrete design along its proper lines."20 Articles on Honegger and Ferret that Collins published during the same period also show how his research on architectural theory was directly linked to his reflections on contemporary practice.21 The article on Ferret, which appeared in August 1953, was titled "The Doctrine of Auguste Ferret" (Fig. 9). The word "doctrine," commonly used in French architectural culture, implies a body of principles that are asserted to be true and which may be used in judging, creating, and teaching architecture. Collins's first analysis of Ferret's work in light of nineteenth-century French architectural theory focuses on Julien Guadet's theory of architecture. A professor of theory at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Guadet had been one of xxviii

INTRODUCTION Ferret's atelier teachers.22 For Collins, Guadet's teaching "synthesized the traditional esthetic values of French classical architecture and the structural functionalism of Viollet-le-Duc and Labrouste"23 and was central to Ferret's adoption of the trabeated concrete frame and to his belief that only structure can give true character, proportion, and scale to a building. Collins's attempt to link architectural theory to contemporary practice was also shown in his interest in modular systems of design. In his 1954 review of the work of Ferret's Atelier in rebuilding Le Havre, Collins emphasized the role of the modular system — a basic measure used to regularize the rhythm of elements in each building — in producing a unified architectural ensemble.24 For Collins, the way standard modules were used at Le Havre was very different from the modular system proposed by Le Corbusier. In a 1954 review of Le Corbusier's book The Modulor, he skilfully analyzes this new system, based on the "golden section," in light of the various theories of measurement and proportions since Vitruvius but goes on to dismiss it as a rigid academic system that could not be widely applied and was useless for mass production.25 Though Collins's concern for proportional systems was not unique — during the early 1950s many British architects were interested in the study of architectural proportion — his critical assessment of Ferret's and Le Corbusier's modular systems testifies to the timeliness of his theoretical interests.26 Collins's MA thesis, completed in 1955, examines the theory and method of teaching devised by Blondel in his Cours d'architecture.21 As Tanis Hinchcliffe has pointed out, "as the thesis progresses it becomes clear that Blondel, for Collins, has become a justification for his own emerging theory of a true architecture based on his experience with Honegger and Ferret."28 In the conclusion, Collins clearly indicates that his interest in the architecture of the Ancien regime was not only academic: "Reference has already been made to the curious way in which eighteenth-century architecture seems to prefigure the architecture of reinforced concrete in its ingenious striving for trabeated forms of construction, and its sculptural implication of framed elements and infilling panels."29 For Collins, the study of Blondel became an ideal springboard to the development of a critical position that asserts the continuity and lasting validity of the classical tradition, a tradition embodied in the doctrine and architecture of Auguste Ferret. CONCRETE. THE BOOK PROJECT Concrete was a direct outcome of Collins's professional and academic background. In the early 1950s he began to think about writing a book on xxix

INTRODUCTION

Figure 10. Auguste Ferret (c. 1925). Ponds Ferret, Institut Francais d'Architecture.

Ferret, as shown in a letter of authorization dated October 1952 and signed by Ferret himself (Fig. 10).30 But it was only in 1955, after having completed his Master's degree, that Collins began to approach publishers.31 The first was Faber and Faber, who soon agreed to publish a book by him on Ferret. Collins's statement of intention, however, reveals a more ambitious project. In a letter to Ann Faber, Collins defends the idea of grounding his book in a history of reinforced concrete and its early architectural expression,32 arguing that it is necessary to understand the origins of the material in order to understand the meaning and reach of Ferret's ceuvre and its legitimate place in the history of architectural modernity. By framing the work of the architect within the realm of a specific building material, Collins echoed the position developed by Ferret himself.33 But placing this much importance on the material began to change the focus of the book and what had been a study of Ferret began to turn into a study of reinforced concrete. The evolution of the project shows the difficulty of combining a monograph on an architect with the history of a material. The search for an appropriate title is particularly telling. In the first draft Collins proposed the title The Architectural Expression of Reinforced Concrete: A Biography of Auguste Ferret (Fig. 11). At this early point in the project Ferret XXX

INTRODUCTION

Figure 11. Draft of the table of contents for Concrete in a letter to Ann Faber (3 February 1955). CAC, BlackaderLauterman Library, McGill University.

was still clearly the main protagonist in the search for the architectural expression of concrete. By the time Collins submitted the manuscript two and a half years later, the title was Concrete, the Vision of a New Architecture, with Ferret's biography subsumed within the larger study of a material and its architecture.34 But the duality at the heart of the book did not disappear. In Leslie Martin's reader's report for Faber and Faber, he praised the topic and content of the manuscript35 but also stressed that it had two very distinct parts, which he felt were not clearly connected and were difficult to merge under the suggested title.36 In light of Professor Martin's recommendation, Collins added a subtitle, A Study ofAuguste Ferret and His Precursors?'1 to inform future readers that the study was really about the career of the French architect. xxxi

INTRODUCTION Written between 1955 and 1957, the book is unique in its treatment of documentary sources — especially the section on the history of concrete — bringing to light a wealth of little-known writings and examples. Given its originality, it is a surprise to learn that the research was primarily based on library sources and the section on Ferret was written without consulting archival material. Collins was eager to do research on primary sources and tried to consult the architect's files but Ferret had died in 1954 and his wife was unable, or unwilling, to give him access.38 The Ferret archive, which was donated to the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (CNAM) in 1955, became accessible only years later, long after the completion of the book.39 Between the beginning of the project in 1955 and submission of the final manuscript in 1957, Collins had moved from Britain to North America. After a year teaching at Yale University on a Fulbright Travelling Award, Collins moved to Montreal in 1956 where he became an associate professor at the School of Architecture at McGill University.40 It was therefore from Montreal that discussions about publishing the book in French were initiated in 1957.41 The precis of the book sent to the Parisian publisher Vincent, Freal was titled Le Beton et la recherche d'une architecture nouvelle.42 In spite of the early interest expressed by the French publisher, however, the translation project was abandoned at the end of 1958.43 While Vincent, Freal cited high costs and low anticipated sales as the reason for their withdrawal, other publishing considerations may have also played a role: the following year Vincent, Freal published French author Marcel Zahar's book, D'une doctrine d'architecture. Auguste Perret.44The American edition of Concrete encountered a similar fate. While discussions were underway between Faber in London and Reinhold in New York, Collins was overtaken by the 1958 publication of a book on a similar subject: Reinforced Concrete in Architecture by Aly Ahmed Raafat.45 That Collins had begun to adopt a North American vantage point is revealed by unexpected evidence. Although the text focused on Ferret and the reinforced concrete frame in France, the book jacket, designed by B.L. Wolpe but based on a mock-up submitted by Collins, was illustrated with a view of a reinforced concrete frame under construction in North America (Fig. 12). Provided by the Canada Cement Company, the black and white print used for the cover was a view of Montreal's St. Justine Hospital while under construction.46 In further exchanges Collins and the publisher discussed various methods to make the reader aware of the colour of the concrete used by Ferret.47 The brownish color ultimately superimposed on the book jacket was intended to serve this function (Fig. 13). XXXll

Figure 12 (above). Draft of the book jacket for Concrete by B.L.Wolpe (19 December 1958). CAC, Blackader-Lauterman Library, McGill University.

Figure 13 (right).

Book jacket of Concrete (1959). Photo, Aurele Parisien.

Figure 14. Joseph-Louis Lambot's small boat in reinforced cement (1849). Slide Collection, McGill University School of Architecture.

Figure 15. Detail drawing of the Hennebique system (1892). Ponds Hennebique, Institut Francais d'Architecture.

INTRODUCTION After some testy exchanges between Collins and Faber editor David Bland regarding book design and typography,48 Concrete finally appeared in 1959. Its publication coincided with that of two other books on Ferret: D'une doctrine d'architecture by Zahar and Ferret by Bernard Champigneulle.49 This was the second wave of publications on Ferret, the first having been in the militant years of the 1920s when studies by Paul Jamot, Marcel Mayer, and Marie Dormoy established the canonic interpretation of the subject.50 While the 1920s works were written to defend a position, the sudden flourishing of interest in the 1950s was more celebratory in tone, with books conceived primarily as a posthumous homage to the master. Collins's Concrete stands apart, however, for while it was unequivocal in its praise of Ferret's architecture, it was also intended to be a critical and scholarly contribution to the development of architectural modernity. THE HISTORY AND THEORY OF AN ARCHITECTURAL MATERIAL The great originality of Concrete is most evident in its discussion of the history of reinforced concrete. The first part of the book, "The Discovery of a New Material," offers a thorough study of the new material, with chapters respectively titled "Beton," "Concrete," "Reinforcement," "Exploitation and Development." Going beyond the traditional genealogy of inventors and builders — from Joseph-Louis Lambot and his small boat in reinforced cement (1849) (Fig. 14) to Francois Hennebique and his original building system in reinforced concrete (1892) (Fig. 15) — Collins investigates the primary technical events that gave birth to the modern building material. Returning to the work of Francois Cointeraux and his experiments with pise construction (1787) (Plate 1), and to Francois-Martin Lebrun and his essays on the moulding of concrete forms (1835), Collins proposes that the history of concrete must be understood in relation to the mould that gives it its shape. By establishing a filiation from Cointeraux to Hennebique, Collins privileges the French interpretation of the origin of concrete. But by insisting on the primacy of the moulding technique over the combination of elements used to create this building material, he does much more. Throughout his career, Ferret had often insisted on the determining role the wooden form-work played in the formal definition of reinforced-concrete architecture. "It is the use of wooden formwork," Ferret wrote, "that gives reinforced concrete the appearance of a great timber frame and makes it resemble antique architecture; antique architecture was an imitation of timber construction and, since reinforced concrete also makes use of wood, there is a family resemblance due especially to the repeated use of the straight lines that wood imposes."51 In Collins's xxxv

INTRODUCTION work, Ferret's seductive but specious argument was given a technical and historical grounding. Collins's history of concrete ends with an analysis of the first architectural constructions in concrete and reinforced concrete. Covering buildings that range from the residence built by Francois Coignet at SaintDenis (1853) (Plate 2) to Max Berg's Jahrhunderthalle, built in Breslau (1913) (Plate 30), he offers an exemplary investigation of the most significant works in reinforced concrete in Europe and the United States. But, far more than providing a history of forms, Collins is interested in the theories behind the architectural expression of the material. This history of ideas constitutes the second part of Concrete: "The Search for a New Architecture." Reviewing the theoretical positions formulated since the turn of the twentieth century, Collins pays special attention to the many books published towards the end of the 1920s, "the period when reinforced concrete obtained general acceptance and recognition in the more progressive architectural circles in various parts of the world."52 While he mentions the works of Paul Jamot and Ludwig Hilberseimer,53 he devotes more space to Architectural Design in Concrete (1927), in which Thomas P Bennett proposed a rich repertoire of architectural forms executed in concrete.54 But it is The Ferro-Concrete Style (1928) by Francis S. Onderdonk that provides the occasion for Collins to formulate his conception of the essence of reinforced-concrete construction.55 Onderdonk emphasized the plastic character of reinforced concrete, arguing that it had the greatest potential of any material to generate a new architectural style. Collins rejected this argument completely. Reviewing the conditions related to making concrete structures, he argued that the central characteristic of architectural concrete was not its plasticity but rather the way it was crafted. "From the time concrete was first invented," he writes, "the real problem was not, and had never been, to exploit its plasticity to the utmost, but rather to define the limits to which its plasticity must be bound."56 For Collins, this constraint was intrinsically related to the nature of the formwork. FERRET AND THE REINFORCED-CONCRETE FRAME Collins's discussion of the theoretical presuppositions behind the use of concrete was the foundation for his main argument, that "it was in France, with the work of Auguste Ferret, that the first really rational and effectual expression of reinforced concrete was presented to the world."57 In Concrete, Ferret's role as a precursor is asserted through discussion of one of the key elements of twentieth-century architecture: the reinforced-conxxxvi

INTRODUCTION crete frame. For Collins, the idea of the frame — and of the wall infill that is its corollary — has its theoretical basis in the French classical tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth century (Plates 43 to 47).58 The key source for his understanding of the French tradition was Louis Hautecoeur's monumental work on the history and development of French classical architecture before 1900.59 Collins saw this tradition as so significant that he could write confidently: "Outrageously paradoxical though it may seem, it was not Ferret who illogically imitated the seventeenth century, but the seventeenth century which illogically anticipated Ferret, since it was he, rather than they, who made the structural expression and the structure expressed one and the same thing."60 Thanks to Ferret, the synthesis between the French classical tradition and the new material was to be achieved by means of the reinforced-concrete frame.61 During the years that Collins was writing his book, the question of the frame figured prominently on the theoretical agenda. In an article published in 1956, the British theorist Colin Rowe examined the role of the frame in the development of the Modern movement.62 In a striking analogy, Rowe suggests that "the frame has come to possess a value for contemporary architecture equivalent to that of the column for classical antiquity and the Renaissance."63 Comparing the role of the frame in European and American architecture, he added: "In Chicago it might be said that the frame was convincing as fact rather than as an idea, whereas in considering the European innovators of the twenties one cannot suppress the supposition that the frame to them was much more often an essential idea before it was an altogether reasonable fact."64 For Rowe, the European approach to the frame was unmistakably grounded in idealism. Collins was well aware of Rowe's position65 and in his negative critique of Le Corbusier's architecture of the 1920s, he did not hesitate to use the claims of his British colleague: "For the International Style the structural functions of the frame are in fact only secondary, and primarily the frame is a guarantee of authenticity, an assurance against lapse into private licence, a discipline by means of which an invertebrate expressionism can be reduced to the appearance of reason."66 Exploiting Rowe's arguments, Collins lauded the rationality of Ferret's approach as compared to the lack of rigor, the formalism, the romanticism of Le Corbusier. The third part of the book is devoted entirely to demonstrating the determining role of the frame in the architecture of reinforced concrete and the development of architectural modernism. From the Raincy Church (1922-23) (Plates 73 to 76) to the Garde-meuble of the Mobilier National (1934-36) (Plates 85 to 87), Ferret's ceuvre is presented as a constant search for the perfection and refinement of the reinforced-concrete frame. But if Collins's aim was to present Ferret as the most rational of European xxxvii

INTRODUCTION architects, his insistence on demonstrating the irreducible logic of theperretien frame may have yielded, paradoxically, the opposite result: Ferret gradually appears as the most idealist of the rationalists.67 By turning the frame into the visible proof of Ferret's rationalism, Collins tends to conflate the ontological and representational aspects of reinforced-concrete structures — to use the expressions made current by Kenneth Frampton68 — to conflate the constructional nature of the frame with its outward appearance. In Collins's work, Ferret's concrete frame thus rests on an imprecise border, in a perpetual balance between the domain of the "essential idea" and that of the "reasonable fact."69 CLASSICISM AND INDUSTRIALIZATION Ferret's work on the frame was not limited to its technology: Collins shows how he developed and adapted a classically inspired vocabulary to the demands of programs and materials. Fully versed in the subtleties of the building methods involved, Collins describes in detail how Ferret's concrete constructions were designed and executed. Paying special attention to Ferret's use of exposed concrete, he describes the original methods developed by the architect: the crafting of the formwork, the dimensioning of the joints, the choice of aggregates, and the careful treatment of the cement surfaces (Fig. 16). In the conclusion of Concrete, Collins raises the question of the future of Ferret's classical frame in a world more and more defined by the industrialization of construction. While he was fascinated by the way Ferret treated the concrete frame, he was also aware that in some buildings — such as the Musee desTravaux Publics (1936-48) (Plates 88 to 92) — the treatment of the material was the result of craft techniques that were incompatible with contemporary modes of production. Surprisingly, Collins argued that the future of Ferret's classical frame probably rested with methods of construction developed in the United States. His words were unequivocal: "In so far as any architecture today has the possibility of becoming universal, it can only be as a result of industrialization, and since no continent is more industrialized than America, the most powerful stimuli in the creation of a new universal architecture have so far come from the United States."70 Having worked on the project for the reconstruction of Le Havre, where the adoption of a standardized grid encouraged prefabrication, Collins was especially sensitive to the possibilities offered by industrialized building methods (Fig. 17). Interestingly, Collins found support for this belief not in the concrete industry but from contemporary trends in steel construction. Arguing that the need for flexibility had forced American architects to concentrate on xxxviii

Figure 16. Musee desTravaux Publics (1936-48) by Auguste Ferret: close up view of exposed concrete. Photo, Aurele Parisien.

Figure 17. Front de mer Sud, Le Havre (1951-55) by Pierre-Edouard Lambert: view of the industrialized building methods. Slide Collection, McGill University School of Architecture.

INTRODUCTION designing simple symmetrical structures, he noted that many practitioners — inspired by the teaching of Mies van de Rohe — focused their work on a steel framework completed with a variety of industrialized infill elements (Fig. 18).71 Comparing construction methods based on steel and reinforced concrete, Collins came to the conclusion that the two systems, based on a simple symmetrical frame and completed by an infill made of building materials left in their rough state, were essentially the same. He had little doubt that "Ferret would have used steel in exactly the same way had he been obliged to abandon concrete in favor of standardized components of metal and brick."72 For Collins, the successful dissemination of a system based on the use of a metal framework was proof of the continued validity of Ferret's classical ideal. The solution merely required the adaptation of the methods employed for the fabrication of these steel structures to the production of the concrete frame, a transposition that was to be achieved by means of industrialized construction: if, in sum, the forms evolved by Ferret in accordance with rational structural principles could be fashioned accurately, easily and cheaply by more mechanical means, then there is no reason to suppose that a new universal architecture, in the complete nineteenth-century sense of the term, could not be created in concrete in our own day.73 The future of Ferret's trabeated concrete frames, and of the universal architecture that lay at the core of its classical principles, rested, unexpectedly, on the possibilities offered by the industrialization of construction. CONCRETE AND THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE Collins was fully aware of the polemical nature of his book and the reaction it was likely to generate. In a letter he sent to his London publisher on completion of the first draft, he noted that "The biography may arouse the passions of certain critics, since it is basically a study of the application of classical principles to contemporary construction."74 Concrete's publication was immediately noticed and Collins could not have been more correct about the reactions of reviewers.75 The first review to appear was Reyner Banham's in the New Statesman.16 A year later, Banham published an expanded version of this assessment in The Architectural Review.71 Focusing his review on the two poles constituted by the French Auguste Ferret and the German Peter Behrens — the "two fixed stars" of progressive European architecture around 1910

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Figure 18. IIT Navy Building [Alumni Memorial Hall] (1945-46) by Mies van der Rone: view of steel frame structure with brick infill. Photo, Hedrich-Blessing, Chicago Historical Society.

— Banham questioned Ferret's later preeminence in the historiography.78 For him, Behrens was a "far more accomplished and well rounded personality" compared to Ferret, "a narrow, blinkered monomaniac professional." Banham argued that the history of reinforced concrete had been overly associated with the post-and-lintel architecture of Ferret, thus limiting exploration of the plastic possibilities offered by the material. Banham demonstrates Collins's ambiguity about this point by analyzing a passage from the book where Collins discusses the 1913 Jahrhunderthalle in Breslau (Plate 30). Here Collins recognizes the uninhibited embodiment of structural forms made possible by concrete and the possibilities this offers for a new architectural expression.79 But rather than celebrating these new opportunities, Collins emphasizes the negative influence of parabolic structures, claiming that such structures are contrary to current social xli

INTRODUCTION needs. For Banham, this ambivalence reveals that while Concrete does offer an exemplary history of reinforced concrete, it is first and foremost a polemical book about Ferret's conception of modern architecture. Banham's review is revealing about Collins's intellectual universe. Although Concrete was written largely in the United States and Canada, the book was no doubt inspired by, and addressed to, the ongoing exchanges on architectural modernism taking place in Britain.80 The many essays critics such as Rowe and Banham published in The Architectural Review and other journals triggered an intellectual debate that transformed interpretations of the history and sources of the Modern movement, a debate that culminated in the I960 publication of Banham's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age.Sl In this context, Collins's intellectual project appears to conflict with the leading approaches of his time. Given his staunch defense of classicism in architecture, was he not promoting a revisionist project? In one light it appears that Banham, who encouraged going beyond the formal limitations of the Modern movement, and Collins, who insisted on the continuity of classicism, were on opposite sides of an unbridgeable gap.82 However, in spite of the radical divide between their respective positions, Collins and Banham found an unexpected terrain of agreement: Collins's proposal that the classical project should be pursued by means of standardized industrial production was surprisingly close to Banham's position in calling on architects of the Second Machine Age to invest in the technological world. In the end, both seemed to think that advanced technology offered the only possible solution for the future of architecture. But the roads of classicism and modernism were to cross again. When Collins submitted his manuscript, he told his editor that he hoped his book would be as popular as those by Geoffrey Scott and Rudolf Wittkower, whose works had renewed Anglo-American interest in the principles of classicism.83 In The Architecture of Humanism, Scott proposed an a-historical and formal reading of Renaissance architecture in an attempt to assert the topicality of the classical tradition.84 By articulating a truly formalist theory of architecture, Scott's book offered some of the key tools needed to analyze the relationship between the academic discipline of architecture and modernist practices. Wittkower's Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism was instrumental in triggering a re-reading of the works of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe in light of the principles of classical composition.85 While their approaches diverged, both books played a strategic role in the re-evaluation of the foundations of the Modern movement — a re-evaluation that gave Collins's advocacy of classicism an unexpected dimension and appeal. xlii

INTRODUCTION

Figure 19. La visione di una nuova architettura (1965), Italian edition of Concrete: front cover. Collection of Maristella Casciato.

The fact that Collins's fundamental intention was to update the principles of classicism did not go unnoticed. In the introduction to the Italian edition of Concrete, published in 1965, Giulio Carlo Argan suggested that the book was not so much about the history of a technical development as a subtly polemical work that proposed a history of modern architecture from an eccentric and unilateral point of view.86 For Argan, the book's primary aim was to enter the debate on architectural rationalism, arguing that since European architecture was rationalist, there was no need for modern architecture to disavow and repudiate the past or hoist the banner of the revolution. In Argan's view, concrete was an "amorphous" material that had no connection with any original formal principle and Ferret's achievement was to have found the material's proper artistic expression, a solution firmly grounded in history rather than in mere technology. That the Italian publisher had failed to understand Argan's central argument is clear from the book jacket of their edition — a picture of the spiraling staircase in Ferret's rue Raynouard office, the image was turned ninety degrees, creating the impression of an abstract concrete vault that had little to do with the principles of classicism (Fig. 19, Plate 71A).87 Given xliii

INTRODUCTION another layer of meaning, Concrete continued its zealous if ambiguous proselytizing mission in the field of modern historiography.88 CONCRETE AND FERRET AFTER COLLINS Collins's Concrete is unique in the way it examines the specific role of a building material in the genesis of an architect's doctrine and work. It is so original that for many years it was one of the very few references available on two different subjects: the history of reinforced concrete and the architecture of Auguste Ferret. Thanks to the growing interest in the historiography of French modernism, there have been many studies of these subjects in recent years. Scholars have, however, been careful to distinguish between the two topics. After many years of neglect, the history of reinforced concrete has now been the subject of renewed scholarly attention, including several recent theses. Cyrille Simonnet's 1994 doctoral dissertation explores the origin, invention, and aesthetic of reinforced concrete as a technical, social, and architectural construct.89 Gwenael Delhumeau's L'invention du beton arme examines the industrial and commercial development of reinforced concrete in France using the archives of the Hennebique firm.90 My own "L'appareil de 1'architecture moderne" is a dissertation on the role played by the new building material of reinforced concrete in the formation of architectural modernism in France.91 Collins's shrewd investigation of the origin and development of concrete was an invaluable source for all these works. The historiography of Ferret has followed the same pattern and serious re-evaluations of his work have also begun to appear. The first scholar to take up this task was Joseph Abram who, in his pioneering study Ferret et I'Ecole du classicisme structure!, reassessed the architect's approach in light of nineteenth-century French architectural theory.92 Going beyond Ferret's built work, Abram examined his legacy and his successors, arguing that they had sufficient coherence to be considered a school, which he called Structural Classicism. His later research and essays are a major contribution to the study of Ferret's architecture.93 Following Abram's footsteps, many scholars have explored Ferret's career and oeuvre. In his 1993 book on Ferret's theoretical and design approach, the first monograph since the publication of Concrete, Roberto Gargiani seeks to recontextualize the architect's work by siting it within the larger context of French literary and artistic culture.94 By contrast, Kenneth Frampton's essay in Studies in Tectonic Culture analyses the origin and significance of Ferret's poetics of construction.95 In her 2001 monograph Auguste Ferret, Karla Britton explores Ferret's approach in xliv

INTRODUCTION relation to the continuing classicist aspirations of an entire part of French culture in the first quarter of the twentieth century.96 The publication in 2001 of Les freres Ferret. I'oeuvre complete, a catalogue based on the archives of his firm which are preserved at the Institut fran^ais d'architecture, may mark the beginning of a new period in scholarship on Ferret.97 The first major outcome of this archival work, the Encyclopedic Ferret, was published in conjunction with the first retrospective exhibition on his architecture.98 Among the many original contributions to the Encyclopedic, the essay by Bruno Reichlin highlights the richness of studies that focus on the close, but theoretically informed, analysis of Ferret's built work.99 Interestingly, all these recent contributions tend to assume that Ferret's work was the outcome of a coherent architectural doctrine. One of the questions raised by such an assumption has to do with the theoretical underpinning of this doctrine. Collins offers a thorough examination of this issue and both Abram and Frampton propose a subtle reassessment of his position. Even before Concrete, Ferret was usually seen as the heir of the two fundamental but antagonistic trends of nineteenth-century French theory: the neo-gothic and the neo-classical traditions. Collins's key contribution, outlining an important historical debate that would later be taken up by Abram and Frampton, was to suggest how Ferret managed to combine these two positions into a coherent architectural doctrine. According to Collins, Ferret's synthesis of the gothic and classical traditions of nineteenth-century French architecture had been anticipated by the teaching of Guadet. Collins argued that Guadet had reconciled the gothic rationalism of Viollet-le-Duc and the classical rationalism of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts,100 formulating a theory that provided the tools needed for an architecture that, while following the logic of rationalism, was firmly indebted to classical principles, as was Ferret's.101 Abram, who provides a thorough review of the Ferret historiography, proposes a discerning revision of Collins's position. While recognizing the contribution of Guadet's classicism, Abram insists on the central role played by Viollet-le-Duc's rationalism in the development of Ferret's doctrine.102 For Abram, therefore, it was Ferret who, by fusing the classical rationalism of Guadet with the structural rationalism of Viollet-le-Duc, reconciled the two antagonistic positions of nineteenth-century French Architecture. Abram appropriately calls the resulting doctrine, and the school that arose from it, Structural Classicism.103 More recently, Frampton has characterised Ferret as reconciling positions that go back to an earlier, eighteenth-century debate.104 Drawing on the work of Robin Middleton — which appeared only after the publication xlv

INTRODUCTION of Concrete and has deepened our understanding of the French Rationalist tradition — in particular his introduction of the term "Greco-Gothic ideal," Frampton writes: "For Ferret, reinforced concrete was the perfect homogeneous system with which to reconcile the two-hundred-year-old schism lying at the very heart of the Greco-Gothic ideal, that is to say, to combine the asperities of Platonic form with the tectonic expressivity of structural rationalism."105 Promoted by early eighteenth-century theorists, among them the Abbe de Cordemoy, the Greco-Gothic ideal sought a synthesis of Gothic columnar articulation and Greek trabeated forms.106 For Frampton, therefore, Ferret's doctrine must be understood in light of the tentative fusion of the Gothic and the Classic that had already been formulated in the eighteenth-century. The influence on Ferret of nineteenth-century writers such as Viollet-le-Duc, Guadet, and Auguste Choisy is duly acknowledged but Frampton views them as merely inflecting the way Ferret worked within an already extent tradition. Frampton opted to call Ferret's distinctive approach within this tradition, perhaps following Collins, Classical Rationalism.107 Classicism, Rationalism, Structural Classicism, Classical Rationalism, Rational Classicism,108 all these expressions point to the difficulty of defining Ferret's architectural doctrine. They also point to the difficulty of attempting to encapsulate within a single expression an architectural production that must have been the result of an internal evolution, change, or even mutation. In fact, postulating a doctrinal coherence has tempted many authors to downplay the variations, experiments, and transformations that took place within Ferret's work. From the 25 bis rue Franklin (1903-04, Plates 50-1) to the rue de Ponthieu garage (1906-07, Plate 52A), from the Maison Cassandre at Versailles (1925-27, Plates 65-6) to the Villa Arakel Nubar Bey at Garches (1930-32, Plate 68), the work is replete with singular cases that challenge the theoretical framework of the doctrine. Frampton is acutely aware of these tensions, rightly noting that" [Ferret] passes from a brilliant adaptation of the precepts of Viollet-le-Duc to the more idealized forms of classicized rationalism in which he would, nonetheless, remain committed to the primacy of the frame."109 Collins also sometimes falls prey to this temptation, as shown by how little attention he pays to Ferret's villas of the early 1920s, buildings that clearly betrayed the principle of the visible structural frame. These unavoidable changes are most apparent in the statements Ferret made regarding the appropriate treatment of the concrete frame. Around 1914, Ferret thought that the surface treatment of the concrete frame could vary according to the building type, writing: "naked — the garage; re-vested with stoneware — rue Franklin; revested with marble — the Champs-Elysees theater". By 1935, however, both the context and the xlvi

INTRODUCTION work had changed and Ferret now claimed that "If the structure is not deemed worthy of being shown, the architect has not fulfilled his mission," a position that stressed the need to express the nature of the concrete surface itself. As this example shows, Ferret was naturally inclined to retrospectively formulate a coherent interpretation of his own oeuvre.This desire for coherence finds its ultimate formulation in his Contribution a une theorie de I'architecture, published in 1952.110 The synthesis of a life's career in architecture, the Contribution may seem to offer a global framework within which Ferret's work can be interpreted,111 but it falls far short of providing the key that will unlock the many secrets of his complex oeuvre. The difficulty lies in finding the appropriate way to relate the overarching intellectual and ideological framework — the doctrine — that guided Ferret and an analysis of the works themselves. Collin's Concrete was the first work to seriously attempt to accomplish such an analysis. Needless to say, ensuing scholarly debates are in his debt. Many of these later contributions have substantially enriched our knowledge and understanding of both Ferret's architectural doctrine and his built work. For all of them, Concrete has remained the indispensable reference, testifying to the book's foundational contribution. EPILOGUE Throughout his career, Collins's vision of a new architecture was expressed through his analysis and promotion of the architecture of Ferret. In teaching, public lectures, publications, and unpublished texts, he never tired of discussing Ferret's pioneering role in the development of modern architecture. Three of these previously unpublished texts have been included in this new edition of Concrete.112 They are revealing of the way Collins continued to address contemporary debates in light of the model provided by Ferret's architecture. Whether discussing the sources of twentieth-century Classicism, the origins of architectural brutalism, or the principles of concrete frame construction, Collins was always likely to introduce the idea of Ferret's unequalled contribution. By the time that Concrete appeared in 1959, Collins was already at work on his second book, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture. This book, published in 1965, proposed a critical re-reading of the ideas and ideals at the root of contemporary European architecture.113 Ferret, though mentioned only sparingly in Changing Ideals, remains a preeminent protagonist of Collins's history of ideas. But his rationalism was now situated within a new "contextualist" sensibility. Actively engaged in a critique of the "form-givers," the architect as creator of forms, Collins argued that the xlvii

Figure 20 (left). Pseudo-Revivalism: Plate 39 of Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture (1965).

Figure 21 (below). St-Joseph Church, Le Havre (1951-54) byAuguste Perret: view of exposed concrete. Photo, Marie-Dina Salvione.

A. PcrrM: 51-55, rue Raynouard, Paris (1928) PSEUDO-REVIVALISM Illustrating rhf harmony which can be achieved between a modern building and its emi'renrtieKt wilhottl relinquishing the ideals of

funtional planning and new method XXXIX

INTRODUCTION most important problem facing the profession was to make sure that buildings fit harmoniously into the existing built environment.114 Once again, Ferret's work seemed to offer a solution to the problem. Giving the rue Raynouard building (1929-32) (Plates 69 and 70) as an example, Collins explained how the architect had managed to discipline his architectural forms to harmonize with the context, and to achieve this without sacrificing any principles of the modern age (Fig. 20).115 The publication of Banham's book The New Brutalism in 1966 gave Collins a new occasion to discuss the topic of exposed concrete and to assert Ferret's precursory role in the invention of beton brut. According to Banham, the aesthetic of brutalism was often expressed through the use of rough materials, a method highlighted in the beton brut of Le Corbusier's Unite d'habitation at Marseille.116 Collins responded to this assertion by arguing that it was Ferret who had developed and refined the proper treatment of the material. In Concrete he had explained how in the late 1920s Ferret had perfected the working of concrete surfaces, adopting such masonry techniques as bush-hammering to display the aggregates.n7 Beton brut meant that the concrete was left untreated after the removal of the form-work, or brut de coffrage, and in his 1967 review of Banham's book Collins argued that the idea of leaving the concrete in its rough state, a measure adopted to achieve maximum economy, dated from Ferret's Raincy church.118 He acknowledged that both Ferret and Le Corbusier were leaving their concrete brut de coffrageee after the Second World War, probably for economic reasons. What distinguished them, however, was that Ferret always sought perfection in the crafting of the formwork, as at Le Havre St-Joseph Church (1951-54) (Fig. 21) (Plates 81 and 82), while Le Corbusier chose to highlight the textures achieved by the use of rough formwork, as in the Marseille Unite d'habitation (1946-52) (Fig. 22). In a talk titled "The New Brutalism of the 1920s," presented at the 1974 Annual Meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians, Collins reaffirmed the precedent set by the Raincy Church (Fig. 23).119 Questioning the contemporary propensity to celebrate the apparent roughness of Le Corbusier's beton brut, which he argues had more to do with a clever afterthought than an original intention, he writes: "In the Old Brutalism at Le Raincy, it was economy and technology which were cleverly exploited; and if faults were left bare, it was only because of Ferret's contempt for anything suggestive of deceptive or superficial veneers."120 For Collins, the true origin of beton brut resided not in the aesthetic of the New Brutalists but in the marriage of the technical and ethical stance that made the radical design of the Raincy Church possible.121 xlix

Figure 22 (left). Unite d'habitation, Marseille (1946-52) by Le Corbusier: view of exposed concrete. Slide Collection, McGill University School of Architecture.

Figure 23 (below). Notre Dame du Raincy Church, Le Raincy (1922-23) byAuguste Ferret: view of exposed concrete. Photo, Rejean Legault.

INTRODUCTION In his contribution to the 1976 exhibition catalogue on Ferret — an exhibition organized by the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris to mark the centenary of Auguste Ferret's birth — Collins returned to a discussion of these issues.122 Reviewing Ferret's contributions to modern architecture, he stressed, among others, the invention of exposed concrete and the achievement of unity through standardization. But it is respect for the urban fabric that was to receive Collins's final attention. The conclusion of the essay is unequivocal: "The architecture of Auguste Ferret," Collins writes, "depends on the intimate connection between the truths that it expresses and the urban context within which they are inscribed: this is his legacy."123 Ever faithful to Ferret's vision, Collins knew better than anyone else how to distill its essence, express its relevance to twentieth-century architecture, and ensure its posterity. Rejean Legault Ecole de design Universite du Quebec a Montreal April 2003

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INTRODUCTION NOTES 1. I would like to thank Aurele Parisien of McGill-Queen's University Press for his collaboration and unflagging support of this project. My gratitude also goes to Annmarie Adams of McGill's School of Architecture and Irena Murray and Julie Korman at the Canadian Architecture Collection for their assistance. Finally, I would like to thank Cammie McAtee for her invaluable comments on the text. Collins's personal papers, including correspondence, lecture and research notes, are part of the Canadian Architecture Collection (CAC), Blackader-Lauterman Library, McGill University. Collins's slide collection, assembled for his teaching, now forms the core of the Slide Collection at McGill University School of Architecture. McGill University's Rare Books and Special Collections Division kindly scanned all of the original images in the book, held in the Collins collection at the CAC, and the School of Architecture provided scans of Collins's slides reproduced in the appendices. I also wish to thank Eva-Marie Neumann for preparing this edition's new and comprehensive index. 2. Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture 1750-1950 (London: Faber & Faber, and Montreal: McGill University Press, 1965). 3. Collins's third book, Architectural Judgement (Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press) was published in 1971. For a selected bibliography of his publications, see "Peter Collins: Selected Writings," The Fifth Column 4, no. 3/4 (Summer 1984). 4. See, among others, the essays by Martin Bressan, Rejean Legault, Jean-Pierre Epron, and Annmarie Adams in "Profil: Peter Collins," ARQ/Architecture Quebec 75 (October 1993). 5. Panayotis Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999). 6. See the 1998 re-edition of Changing Ideals by McGill-Queen's University Press, with a foreword by Kenneth Frampton and notes by Annmarie Adams. See also Irena Latek, ed., Peter Collins and the Critical History of Modern Architecture (Montreal: IRHA, 2002). This publication is the outcome of a conference organized by the Institut de recherche en histoire de 1'architecture (IRHA) and held at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, 9 October 19997. For an overview of his career, see Tanis Hinchcliffe, "Peter Collins: The Voice from the Periphery," in Louise Campbell, ed., Twentieth-Century Architecture and its Histories (London: Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 2000), 177-94. 8. In the letter, Collins writes that he is particularly interested in the style developed by Perret. Letter from Peter Collins to Auguste Ferret, 21 June 1947. Institut francais d'architecture (IFA), 535 AP 319. Perret responded to this request by sending some prints on 27 June 1947. 9- Typically, a claustra is an openwork partition made of wood, masonry, or terra-cotta. Inspired by the claustra found in medieval architecture, Perret developed a system of precast concrete blocks with geometric openwork patterns. Used as an infill element, these concrete blocks — or claustra — may be filled or lii

INTRODUCTION

Figure 24. Claustra of the Musee des Travaux Publics. Photo, Aurele Parisien.

backed with coloured or clear glass to form a light concrete wall, as is the case in the claustra of the Musee des Travaux Publics (Figure 24). 10. Rejean Legault, "Souvenirs Europeens. Temoignage de Marie-Therese Honegger," ARQ/Architecture Quebec 75 (October 1993): 20. 11. Joseph Abram, "Denis Honegger: 1'mstitut de physique de Geneve," Faces 20 (Summer 1990): 34-9.Abram's claim is confirmed by a note written on the back of a photograph of the model of the porch of the Christ-Roi Church held in the Collins archive. Written by Collins, the note reads: "Model made from my study of the facade (as executed)." CAC 64 006 025. 12. Ibid., 38. 13- In a letter to Madame Perret sent in 1955, Collins recalls his meeting with them: "Le precieux souvenir que je garde de la soiree ou j'ai eu 1'honneur d'etre rec,u a diner en compagnie de monsieur et madame Honegger me laisse esperer que mon nom ne vous sera pas inconnu. C'est de monsieur Honegger que je tiens toutes mes connaissances sur la doctrine du maitre, et je crois pouvoir compter sur son encouragement dans la tache que j'envisage d'entreprendre." Letter from Peter Collins to Ms. Perret, 22 February 1955. IFA, 535 AP 319. 14. Letter from Peter Collins to Auguste Perret, 21 April 1951. IFA, 535 AP 319. 15. See Joseph Abram, L'equipe Perret au Havre: Utopie et compromis d'une reconstruction (Nancy: Ecole d'architecture/BRA, 1989). 16. See Collins's curriculum vitae dated 17 January 1956. CAC 64 004 078 002 f. Drawings of the project are preserved in the Fonds Pierre-Edouard Lambert at IFA. 17. [Peter Collins], The Architectural Doctrine of Jacques-Francois Blondel (1705-1774), by "Eupalinos," An Essay submitted in competition for the Silver Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (1953). 18. The name Eupalinos is borrowed from Paul Valery's famous Socratic dialogue Eupalinos ou I'Architecte (1921), where he was a character many critics associated with Auguste Perret. liii

INTRODUCTION 19. Derived from the Latin word trabs, which means beam, the expression trabeated refers to a post and beam or post-and-lintel construction. 20. Collins, cited in Hinchcliffe, "Peter Collins," 180. 21. Peter Collins, "Geneva University: The Physics Institute. Architect: Denis Honegger," Building, (February 1953), 54-9; "The Doctrine of Auguste Perret," The Architectual Review 114 (August 1953): 90-8. 22. Julien Guadet, Elements et theorie de Varchitecture, 4 vols. (Paris: Librairie de la Construction moderne, 1901-04). 23. Collins, "The Doctrine of Auguste Perret," 92. 24. Peter Collins, "Auguste Perret: His Work at Le Havre," Architectural Design 24 (July 1954): 197-9. 25. Peter Collins, "Modulor," The Architectural Review 116 (July 1954): 5-8. 26. On this topic, see Eva-Marie Neumann, "Architectural Proportion in Britain 1945-1957," Architectural History 36 (1996): 197-221. 27. Peter Collins, Jacques-Francois Blondel (1705-1774) His Life, Work and Influence. Master's thesis, University of Manchester, 1955. CAC 64 017 016. 28. Hinchcliffe, "Peter Collins," 17929. Collins, Jacques-Francois Blondel, 39930. Perret wrote: "En confirmation de notre conversation du 6 courant, je vous accorde volontiers 1'autorisation de rediger, et de publier eventuellement, un livre sur mes oeuvres et je peux vous assurer que toute facilite vous y sera donnee." Letter from Auguste Perret to Peter Collins, 7 October 1952. CAC 64 004 078 001 k6. 31. Letter from Peter Collins to Faber and Faber, 25 January 1955. CAC 64 004 078 001 f6. 32. Letter from Peter Collins to Ann Faber, 3 February 1955. CAC 64 004 078 001 d6. 33. The role Perret attributed to concrete is made clear in many of his texts. See especially "L'Architecture," in Revue d'Art et d'Esthetique 1-2 (June 1935): 41-50. 34. Letter from Peter Collins to Richard de la Mare, Faber and Faber, 13 August 1957. CAC 64 004 078 001 t5. 35. On Leslie Martin, see Peter Carolin and Trevor Dannatt, eds., Architecture, Education and Research: The work of Leslie Martin (London: Academy Editions, 1996). 36. Letter from Leslie Martin to Peter du Sautoy, Faber and Faber, 7 January 1958. CAC 64 004 078 001 f5. 37. Letter from Peter Collins to Richard de la Mare, Faber and Faber, 24 January 1958. CAC 64 004 08 001 d5. 38. This lack of cooperation from the Perret family may explain why the book was dedicated to Marie Dormoy, an art critic who had been Ferret's very close friend and former mistress, and who was banned from Madame Perret's entourage. See Pierre Vago, Pierre Vago. Une vie intense (Bruxelles: Editions AAM, 2000), 151.

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INTRODUCTION 39- Letter from Jean Uguen to Peter Collins, 14 June 1955. Uguen writes: "Le Conservatoire national des Arts et Metiers doit se charger du tri et du classement dans les mois a venir. Lorsqu'il en aura termine, il pourra donner toutes facilites de consultation, sur autorisation prealable de Madame Auguste Ferret." CAC 64 004 078 001 16. 40. His move to Canada had a personal connection for in 1953, in Paris, he had married Margaret Gardner Taylor, a Canadian from Ottawa. He taught architectural history at McGill University School of Architecture in Montreal from 1956 until his untimely death in 1981. 41. See letter from Peter Collins to Richard de la Mare, Faber and Faber, 1 October 1957. CAC 64 004 078 001 o5. 42. Letter from Peter Collins to Mr. Vincent at Vincent, Freal, 30 September 1957. CAC 64 004 078 001 n5. 43. Letter from the publisher Vincent, Freal to Peter du Sautoy, Faber and Faber, 10 December 1958. CAC 64 004 078 001 bbb.The French translation of the book actually appeared only 36 years later. See Collins, Splendeur du beton (Paris: Kazan, 1995), with a preface by Francois Loyer and a postface by Rejean Legault. 44. Marcel Zahar, D'une doctrine d'architecture. Auguste Ferret (Paris: Vincent, Freal, 1959). 45. See Letter from Peter Collins to Peter du Sautoy, Faber and Faber, 4 March 1958. CAC 64 004 078 001 a5. Aly Ahmed Raafat, Reinforced Concrete in Architecture (New York: Reinhold, 1958). 46. Letter from J.V. Tittley, Canada Cement Company, to Peter Collins, 2 June 1958. CAC 64006014. 47. Letter from Peter Collins to David Bland, Faber and Faber, 5 November 1958. CAC 64 004 078 001 kkk. 48. The crux of the exchange between Collins and Bland was about the typeface to be used for the cover and title page of the book. Collins recognized the publisher's attempt to solve previous problems by linking the choice of typeface with the content of the book but writes: "I fully understand the difficulty of spacing the word CONCRETE, but I cannot say I feel any enthusiasm for your proposed solution. I have looked at an example of 'Beton' Egyptian face, and whilst I appreciate the subtlety of the pun, I doubt if this could ever compensate for the extraordinary inelegance of the profile. Perhaps it is that I have too little sympathy with the nineteenth-century romantic notion that the 'association of ideas' has a positive aesthetic value — a notion alien to French classical theory as exemplified in Ferret's buildings." Letter from Peter Collins to David Bland, Faber and Faber, 21 October 1958. CAC 64 004 078 001. 49. Bernard Champigneulle, Ferret (Paris: Arts et Metiers Graphiques, 1959). 50. Among the many publications of the period, see Marie Dormoy, "A. et G. Ferret," L'Amour de I'Art 4, no. 1 (January 1923): 409-16; Marcel Mayer, "De Cluny au beton arme. Les oeuvres nouvelles de A. et G. Ferret," La Revue de Bourgogne (15 April 1926): 230-8; Paul Jamot, A et G. Ferret et I'architecture du beton arme (Paris-Bruxelles:Vanoest, 1927).

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INTRODUCTION 51. InAuguste Ferret, "L'Architecture," Revue d'Art et d'Esthetique 1-2 (June 1935): 41-50. Quoted in Collins, Concrete, 164. 52. Collins, Concrete, 127. 53- Paul Jamot, A. et G. Ferret; Julius Fischer, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Beton ah Gestalter (Stuttgart: Julius Hoffman, 1928). 54. Thomas P Bennett, Architectural Design in Concrete (London: Ernest Benn Ltd., 1927). 55. Francis S. Onderdonk, The Ferro-Concrete Style (New York: Architectural Book Publishing Co., 1928). 56. Collins, Concrete, 147. 57. Ibid., 148. 58. For a discussion on Perret's work in light of the French tradition of masonry construction, see Amy Gardner, "Auguste Ferret: Invention in Convention, Convention in Invention," Journal of Architectural Education 50, no. 3 (February 1997): 140-55. 59- Louis Hautecoeur, Histoire de I'architecture classique en France, 1 volumes (Paris: Picard, 1943-1957). Collins's reviews of this work were published in the RIBA Journal: volume 4 in 60, no. 2 (December 1952): 67, volume 5 in 61, no. 6 (April 1954): 239-40, and volume 6 in 63, no. 6 (April 1956): 252. That Collins was indebted to Hautecoeur's work is clearly acknowledged in his preface to Concrete. 60. Collins, Concrete, 171. 61. For a discussion on the cultural underpinning of Perret's frame, see Karla Britton,"The Poetic of the Frame:The Critical Stance of Auguste Ferret," Journal of Architectural Education 54, no. 3 (February 2001): 176-84. 62. Colin Rowe, "Chicago Frame," The Architectural Review 120, (November 1956): 285-9. 63. Ibid., 285. 64. Ibid., 287-8. 65. Kenneth Frampton also points to the probable influence of Colin Rowe's earlier essay "The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa," published in 1947. See K. Frampton's Foreword in the present volume, xvii. 66. Rowe quoted in Collins, Concrete, 234. 67. Joseph Abram has explored the idealist trend of Perret's work in his search for the "perfect monument." See J. Abram, "Classicisme et beton arme. Ferret et 1'ideal rationaliste du monument parfait," Monuments historiques 140 (AugustSeptember 1985): 5-12. 68. For a discussion on the ontological and representational nature of structures, see Kenneth Frampton, John Cava, ed., Studies in Tectonic Culture. The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Achitecture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995). 69. The importance Collins attached to the idea of the frame is confirmed by later exchanges with publishers. In a letter to Alberto Mondadori, the publisher of the Italian edition, Collins suggests changing the title of the book to "The Concrete Frame." Unable to find an Italian translation, he adds that the French equivaIvi

INTRODUCTION lent would be "La charpente en beton." Letter from Peter Collins to Alberto Mondadori, 3 August 1959- CAC 64 004 078 001 y. 70. Collins, Concrete, 286. 71. Ibid., 283. 72. Ibid. 73- Ibid., 287. 74. Letter from Peter Collins to Richard de la Mare, Faber and Faber, 13 August 1957. CAC 64 004 078 001 t5. 75. See Fred N. Severed, AIA Journal (December I960): 59-60; Architectural Science Review 3, (I960): 36-7. 76. Reyner Banham, "About Perret," The New Statesman, 30 May 195977. Reyner Banham, "The Perret Ascendency," The Architectural Review 127 (June I960): 373-5. 78. A German architect based in Berlin, Peter Behrens (1868-1940) was artistic adviser to the Allgemeine Elektricitats-Gesellschaft (AEG) from 1907 to 1914 and a leading figure of the Deutscher Werkbund. Three of the most influential architects of the twentieth century — Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier — apprenticed in his office. 79- Collins, Concrete, 92. 80. On this issue, see Reyner Banham, "Revenge of the Picturesque: English Architectural Polemics, 1945-1965," in Concerning Architecture, ed. by J. Summerson, 265-73 (London:Allen Lane, 1968). 81. Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London: Architectural Press, I960). 82. Reflecting on the intriguing connection between Banham and Collins, Kenneth Frampton writes, "Born in 1920 and 1922 respectively, it is ironic that they should end up so ideologically opposed and yet so tectonically aligned in terms of their respective heroes, with Banham advocating the geodesic immateriality of Richard Buckminster Fuller and Collins remaining equally fixated in terms of his twin paragons of twentieth-century rationalism, Perret and Mies." Frampton, foreword, in Collins, Changing Ideals, xiv. 83- Letter from Peter Collins to Richard de la Mare, Faber and Faber, 13 August 1957. CAC 64001 135. 84. Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of Humanism. A Study in the History of Taste (London: Constable and Company, 1914 (1924)). 85. Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (Studies of the Warburg Institute) (London: Warburg Institute, 1949). Colin Rowe borrowed from Wittkower's work to formulate his comparative reading of the villas of Palladio and Le Corbusier: see Colin Rowe, "The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa: Palladio and Le Corbusier Compared," The Architectural Review 101 (March 1947): 101-4. On this issue, see also Alina A. Payne, "Rudolf Wittkower and Architectural Principles in the Age of Modernism,"5^///owrna/ 53 (September 1994): 322-42. 86. Giulio Carlo Argan, introduction to the Italian edition, La visione di una nuova architettura. Saggio su Auguste Perret e suoi precursori (Milan: II Saggiatore, 1965), vii-x. Ivii

INTRODUCTION 87. The photograph on the book cover of the present edition illustrates the famous staircase in Ferret's Musee desTravaux Publics (1936-48) in Paris with its two curving flights of stairs. Contrary to the cover of the Italian edition, however, the staircase is presented in its natural position and framed by the row of powerful reinforced-concrete columns of the building's internal skeleton. 88. It is interesting to note that the book cover of the 1995 French translation was illustrated with a photograph of Louis Kahn's Yale University Art Gallery. See Collins, Splendeur du beton. 89- Cyrille Simonnet, "Materiau et architecture. Le beton arme: origine, invention, esthetique." Doctoral dissertation, Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales (EHESS), 1994. 90. Gwenael Delhumeau, L'invention du beton arme. Hennebique 18901914 (Paris: Institut franc.ais d'architecture / Norma, 1999). 91. Rejean Legault, "L'appareil de 1'architecture moderne: New Materials and Architectural Modernity in France, 1889-1934." PhD Dissertation, MIT, 1997. 92. Joseph Abram, Ferret et I'Ecole du classicisme structurel (1910-1960) (Nancy: Ecole d'architecture de Nancy, 1985). 93. Joseph Abram, A. et G. Ferret — une monographie. le partie: architecture, entreprise et experimentation (Nancy: Ecole d'architecture de Nancy, 1989). 94. Roberto Gargiani, Auguste Ferret 1874-1954: Teoria e Opere (Milan: Electa, 1993). See also Giovanni Fanelli and Roberto Gargiani, Auguste Ferret (RomaBari: Laterza, 1991). 95. Kenneth Frampton, "Auguste Ferret and Classical Rationalism," in Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, 121-57. 96. Karla Britton, Auguste Ferret (London: Phaidon, 2001). 97. Maurice Culot, David Peycere, Gilles Ragot, eds., Les freres Ferret. L'oeuvre complete (Paris: Institut francais d'architecture / Norma, 2001). 98. Jean-Louis Cohen, Joseph Abram, Guy Lambert, eds., Encyclopedic Ferret (Paris: Monum Editions du patrimoine, Editions du Moniteur, 2002). 99- Bruno Reichlin, "Tectonique : quel language architectural pour le monolithisme?," 106-24. Ibid. 100. "It will thus be seen that Ferret had gone a long way towards achieving that synthesis between Classical rationalism and Gothic rationalism which had been envisaged by the French nineteenth-century Eclectics and anticipated by Guadet." Collins, Concrete, 220. See also Abram, Ferret et I'Ecole du classicisme structurel, 25 ff. 101. In his discussion of rationalism in Changing Ideals, Collins presents Ferret as the last great Classical Rationalist of the nineteenth century. Collins, Changing Ideals, 207. 102. Abram, Ferret et I'Ecole du classicisme structurel, 17 ff. 103- Abram seems to borrow the terms "Structural Classicism" from Leonardo Benevolo, who used the expression in his discussion of Ferret. Benevolo, Histoire de I'architecture moderne (Paris: Bordas, 1971), 2; 83. 104. Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, 121-57. 105. Ibid., 123. Iviii

INTRODUCTION 106. For a discussion on the Greco-Gothic ideal, see Frampton, ibid., 29 ff. See also Robin Middleton, "The Abbe de Cordemoy and the Graeco-Gothic Ideal: A Prelude to Romantic Classicism," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 25 (1962); 278-320; 26 (1963): 90-123. 107. A choice emphasized by the title of Frampton's essay: "Auguste Ferret and Classical Rationalism." 108. In a recent essay on Ferret, Abram uses the expression "Rational Classicism ."Abram, "Auguste Ferret, le classicisme rationnel et la monumentalite," in JeanLouis Cohen, ed.,LesAnnees 30. L'architecture et les arts de I'espace entre Industrie et nostalgie (Paris: Editions du patrimoine, 1997), 97-105. 109. Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, 123. 110. Auguste Ferret, Contribution a une theorie de I'architecture (Paris: Cercle d'etudes architecturales, 1952). 111. An attempt made by Gargiani in his 1993 monograph Auguste Ferret 1874-1954. 112. The three selected texts are the following: "The Classicism of Auguste Ferret" (1970); "The New Brutalism of the 1920s" (1974); "Ferret's Articulation of Reinforced Concrete Frames" (1977). 113. Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, London, Faber & Faber, and Montreal, McGill University Press, 1965. 114. See Peter Collins,"The Form-Givers," Perspecta 7 (1961): 91-6. 115. Collins, Changing Ideals, 299; see also Peter Collins, "Genius Zoa':The Historic Continuity of Cities," Progressive Architecture 44 Quly 1963): 100-6. 116. Reyner Banham, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? (New York: Reinhold 1966), 16. 117. A technique employed in traditional stone masonry, bush-hammering (or bouchardage) was used to eliminate the cement film left after the removal of the form-work in order to expose the aggregate (i.e. the small stones which are the main constituent of the concrete). Collins, Concrete, 221. 118. Peter Collins, "Neo-Butterfield. The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic (Reyner Banham)," Progressive Architecture 48 (March 1967): 198-202. 119. See "The New Brutalism of the 1920s" (1974) reprinted in this volume. For a published abstract of the talk, see Peter Collins, "The New Brutalism of the 1920s: The Effect of Economic Restraints at Notre-Dame du Raincy," SAH Journal 33 (October 1974): 233. 120. "The New Brutalism of the 1920s" (1974), 340. 121. Collins returned to the discussion on the origin and meaning of beton brut in his 1977 unpublished text "Ferret's Articulation of Reinforced Concrete Frames." 122. Peter Collins, "L'architecture de Ferret," in Jean-Baptiste Ache, ed., A. et G. Ferret. Architectes francais 1874-1954 1876-1952 (Paris: CNAM, 1976), 17-32. 123. Collins,"Larchitecture de Ferret," 32.

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Preface to the First Edition

THIS STUDY of the architectural expression of reinforced concrete has many limitations, but some of them are intentional. It is not in any way concerned with the formulae, calculations, or technical developments of a purely scientific kind. It does not attempt to deal with works of pure engineering, such as bridges, silos or aircraft hangars, nor with the aesthetic qualities which such structures possess. It does not discuss industrial buildings, except in so far as these were prototypes of other forms of architectural construction. It does not pursue the general history of concrete later than 1914 (when the war brought the material into general use); nor does it claim to give an exhaustive account of the many aesthetic theories expressed about concrete architecture, but only to indicate those trends which were most clearly defined before 1939. Its purpose is simply to describe the development of a new building material, to discuss the efforts of various architects to find its most appropriate form, and to study in detail the career of Auguste Ferret, whose lifelong devotion to the pursuit of this particular ideal entitles him to special attention and respect. Architecture, in the past few years, has witnessed a number of spectacular and far-reaching developments corresponding to the peculiar needs of our epoch, such as the housing of vast populations, the adaptation of our cities to modern forms of transport, and the modification of building methods in accordance with advanced industrial techniques. Much of this research has produced solutions in which reinforced concrete plays an important part, but all too frequently the concrete merely fulfils the role of a hidden structural support, and derives its aesthetic effects solely from its power to create dramatic forms unseen. In contrast to such an attitude, the present study is concerned only with the deliberate search for a visible concrete architecture, and if the work of many celebrated architects seems to have been unfairly overlooked, it is not because their contribution to the advancement of architecture is in any way underrated, but because the problem under discussion is not one which they themselves specifically sought to solve.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION The sources from which factual information is derived are indicated by references at the end of the text, but I should like to acknowledge here my special debt of gratitude to Denis Honegger, in whose office I gained an understanding of Ferret's doctrine; to Louis Hautecoeur's monumental work on the history and development of French classical architecture before 1900; to George E. Pettengill's bibliography on Auguste Perret, which formed the basis of research for the third part of this book; and to Vincent Rother of Montreal, Professor R.A. Cordingley of Manchester, Professor C.L.V Meeks of Yale, Professor John Bland of McGill, and Professor J.L. de Stein, also of McGill, who have read my manuscript, and given me generous help in many other ways. McGill University, Montreal, 13 August 1958

Ixii

Part One THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL

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CHAPTER ONE

Beton

A

iie beginning of this century, when interest in reinforced concrete as becoming widespread, the popular lecturer on the subject had a standard — one might almost say ritual — phrase with which to open his discourse. 'Concrete', he would say, 'is one of our oldest building materials, having been frequently employed by the Romans. The dome of the Pantheon, built nearly eighteen hundred years ago, is an eloquent testimony to its architectural possibilities, as well as reliable evidence of its durability and strength.* Then, conscious that he had fulfilled his duty towards polite convention by placing his subject on a respectable plane of architectural scholarship, he settled down comfortably to talk about factories, bridges and drains. Much more remarkable than these Roman precedents was the total neglect of concrete construction during the intervening period. The use of mortar mixed with small stones to produce a hard monolithic mass was described by Vitruvius, and repeated by the standard Renaissance authors such as Alberti, Palladio and Philibert de 1'Orme1, yet it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that concrete was even employed regularly for wall foundations. The cause of this neglect was partly due to the inadequacy of ordinary lime mortar as a bonding material, but mainly to an ingrained conviction that ashlar was the only respectable material for better class building. The surface of such masonry could vary, according to taste, from a severe but elegant plainness to an exuberant profusion of sculptural ornament, but from the middle ages to the end of the eighteenth century, the rich seldom built their mansions of anything but finely worked stone (except in regions where it was quite unobtainable), whilst the idea that important public buildings might be built of another material was only entertained in districts traditionally dependent upon brick. Yet even before the French Revolution disrupted the French building economy, a relaxation of this attitude could be discerned. From the beginning of Louis XVFs reign, we find an increasing use of stuccoed rubble, elaborately treated to simulate masonry, whereby fashionable architects sought to emulate for their less wealthy clients the splendour of earlier reigns. Sometimes this subterfuge was in the interests of speed as well as cheapness. The stucco facade 19

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL of Bagatelle, built in 1777 by the Comte d'Artois, was the result of his £100,000 bet with Marie Antoinette that he would have the entire structure built and furnished before the court returned from Fontainebleau to Versailles seven weeks later. But whatever the motive of its adoption, it proclaimed rather cynically a belief that beauty was only skin deep, and this architectural philosophy was eventually to prove of very great importance, not only because of its effect on French and English architecture during the next fifty years, when stucco exteriors really came into fashion, but because the reaction which followed was to affect profoundly the public attitude towards the use of new building materials, especially the use of concrete for structural walls. The search for economical building methods became particularly intense in France immediately after the Revolution had taken place, and it is about this time that we find the architectural text-books paying increasing attention to this subject, and to building construction generally. It is therefore not surprising that both Rondelet and J. A. Borgnis2 should not merely describe, in their constructional treatises, the methods used by the Romans for constructing in concrete, but should demand for perhaps the first time why modern architects did not use such a cheap and efficient system. Curiously enough, however, when concrete did again come into use as a building material, it evolved from an entirely independent, and much more humble origin: pise. The use of mud as a building material is of course as old as civilization itself, and although too crude and impermanent to qualify for recognition as true architecture before 1750, it was treated with great respect in architectural text-books at the end of the eighteenth century, when theorists were less fastidious, and rusticity had a certain vogue. In Rondelet's Traite de VArt de Batir, first published in 1802 and republished in many editions, there is a long and well-illustrated section dealing with the technique of pise construction, and the subject was still considered of wide importance in 1835 when Rondelet's description was competently plagiarized by Peter Nicholson in his Architectural Dictionary. Pisd was naturally an unsatisfactory material in wet climates, although it was used occasionally in Bedfordshire, Lancashire and other parts of England, and Nicholson refers specifically to fresco-painted/^ walls on the Duke of Bedford's estate at Woburn Abbey.3 But it had been commonly used in Spain, since Roman times, while in France it was especially popular in the Lyons area. 'The rich traders of Lyons have no other way of building their country houses. An outside covering of painting in fresco, attended with very little expense, conceals from the spectator's eye the nature of the building material, and is a handsome ornament to the house. Farmers generally have them simply whitewashed, but others, who have a greater taste for ornament, add pilasters, architraves, panels and decorations of various kinds.'4 Rondelet himself claims to have been asked, in 1764, to restore an old chateau which had been built in pise at the beginning of the seventeenth cen20

BETON tury, and was still in reasonable condition5; Nicholson quotes a certain M. Jancour as describing a church built of pise at Montbrison (Loire) at the beginning of the eighteenth century; in the Lyons area, pise construction remained common until the middle of the nineteenth century, when flooding in the Rhone valley prompted the Prefect to forbid its further use.6 The importance of pist in the development of concrete construction lay not so much in the material used as in the technique employed, which consisted of ramming packed earth between movable timber form-work. The form-work consisted of parallel sets of tongued and grooved boarding, which slid between vertical limber posts, and were maintained the correct distance apart by short wooden props and twisted thongs (Plate i). Once a layer of earth had been tamped in position, the boarding was raised and the process repeated, until finally all that remained to be done was to fill in the holes through which the thongs had passed. The peculiarity of pise construction thus lay not only in the economy of using earth as a building material, but in the process whereby a building was moulded into shape, and it was inevitable that sooner or later some far-sighted individuals should appreciate the revolutionary possibilities of this method of construction, and seek to extend it by improving on the material used. The most obvious improvement was to increase the cohesion of the earth by mixing in a binding material such as mortar, and this had in fact already been done by Rondelet when repairing the chateau in Ain. It was left to others to experiment with suitable hard aggregates, and produce modern concrete, or, as it was termed in French, beton* The first of the pioneers was an ingenuous but ambitious building labourer named Francois Cointeraux.7 As in the case of so many inventors, his achievement is to be measured less by the intrinsic originality of his ideas than by the energy and singlemindedness with which he exploited their potentialities, and even though Cointeraux did not foresee the wider applications of 'moulded* construction, he undoubtedly deserves full credit for having been the first to bring its possibilities well before the public eye. Born in 1740, he would probably have remained an obscure and unlettered peasant had not his attention been drawn in 1784 to a newspaper announcement, inserted by the Academy of Picardy, offering a gold medal to anyone who could devise a simple and cheap method of rural fireproof construction. Cointeraux was primarily a stone-mason, but he had had considerable experience of pise construction in Lyons, where both his uncle and grandfather had been building contractors, so that it is not entirely surprising that he should have conceived the idea of proposing pise construction for the Academy prize. His main problem was how to draw up the report in a style sufficiently elegant for such an august assembly, but this difficulty was happily solved through the kindly aid of one of the * The word does not seem to have been introduced until the second half of the eighteenth century. Patte5 in his continuation of J. F. Blondel's Cours d*Architecture (1777), recommended that pise buildings should be constructed on foundations 'of what is called mortier de Betum' (vol. v, p. 425)5 betum being Old French for a mass of rubbish. 21

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL Dominicans of the priory at Grenoble, where Cointeraux was then engaged on structural repairs. The memorandum which these two so carefully composed never, for some reason, reached its destination, but its preparation had aroused Cointeraux's ambition to such an extent that he decided to make a number of experiments, in the hopes of extending the use of pise to 'chapels, ruins and other fabriques* suitable for the newly fashionable jardins anglais. Success in this field inspired him to further efforts, and filled his excited imagination with fresh visions of a new Utopia built in an architecture of compacted earth. Cointeraux's first experiments were published in the weekly news sheet of Dauphine on I9th May 1786, and this success emboldened him to ask the Intendant of Dauphine for a plot of land on which he could carry out further research. He also wrote to M. de Vergennes, the King's minister, explaining that it was in the interest of the State that he should build full-size models of his designs, and train pupils in his methods. These two officials responded with a gratifying wealth of verbal encouragement, but steadfastly refused to provide the financial resources which had of course been the principal motive of Cointeraux's patriotic appeal. Undismayed, however, by the lack of more solid official support, he continued making experiments at his own expense on some land he had acquired near Grenoble. In the Bibliotheque Nationale there is an undated pamphlet by Cointeraux published probably at the end of the century, entitled Model for a concrete Cistern, imitating the form of an egg. The title evokes the most exciting images of dramatic oviform architectonic masses, and it is disappointing to find that the entire structure was to be below ground. The method of construction was, briefly, to make an egg-shaped hole, place in it some egg-shaped shuttering, and then pour in the concrete. 'As soon as the work is completely finished, the cistern should be filled with water. The concrete will harden in the water, and the form-work should not be removed until about six months have elapsed. To do this, the workmen go down into the cistern once the water has been drained away, and remove the timbers one by one. The cistern is then complete; it will last for more than a thousand years.'8 Another of Cointeraux's far-sighted inventions was the undulating or serpentine wall, which could be made either of pis£ or of stone. Realizing the inherent rigidity of corrugated forms (a peculiarity which has only been fully appreciated within the last few years), he recognized in them a means of dispensing with buttresses, and proposed that 'all boundary walls should henceforth be built in sinuous or angular lines. This freedom combines three essential points: firmness, cheapness and adornment'. As regards the latter quality, he makes certain observations which are quite remarkable for a man of his humble education: 'Never has a straight line been able to produce the slightest effect; only projections and recessions can produce a sensation, an emotion on our souls, if I may thus express myself; in a word, only these can divert us, for 22

BETON the play of masses between the projections and recessions, which vary at each step we take, is the only means of charming us. Hence the absolute need to compose the plan of every boundary wall as if one was planning suites of rooms in a house.'9 Triumphant critics of this invention pointed out that any 'cheapness' gained by using fist was lost through the additional length of the wall, and as a result the whole subject seems to have been abandoned; the system was, however, considered good enough to be used twenty years later by Thomas Jefferson, who may well have borrowed the idea from Cointeraux, since a copy of the latter's Traitd d*Economic Rurale was in his library. In 1787, Cointeraux communicated his discoveries to the LieutenantGeneral of Picardy, Armand-Joseph de Bethune,* Due deCharost.The Due de Charost was one of the most remarkable men of his generation; deeply interested in anything which concerned the welfare of his fellow countrymen, he was so highly esteemed for his wide philanthropy that when the Revolution broke out, he was acclaimed 'pere de Vhumamti soitffrante', and eventually became mayor of the loth arrondissement of Paris. A member of the Royal Society of Agriculture since 1783, he was especially interested in agricultural reform, and it was he who had donated the gold medal to which reference has been made. Perceiving the obvious interest of Cointeraux's methods, he invited him to come to Picardy without delay. Confident that he had at last found a patron, Cointeraux left his family, relinquished his employment, and, accompanied only by one of the labourers who had assisted him in his experiments, journeyed north to Amiens. At first his expectations were happily justified; he was given a plot of land on which to build one of his incombustible houses, and was duly awarded the coveted gold medal. But although musicians were sent to serenade him, and other flattering marks of official respect were paid, the local inhabitants showed no inclination to avail themselves of his services, and as a result he was soon on the verge of destitution. 'Having now no other station in life than that of teaching peasants how to protect themselves against fire', he wrote, 'I decided to take my whole family to the very centre of the Kingdom. It was in Paris that I established, for the third time, a factory for economical and incombustible houses, and it was in the capital where, for the second time, the Royal Agricultural Society crowned my efforts.'10 Shortly after arriving in Paris, Cointeraux was fortunate in enlisting the sympathy of M. Le Roi, a member of the Academy of Science, who went to Versailles and obtained from the Comte d'Artois some land belonging to him in the Champs-Elysees. The Comte d'Artois does not usually figure in history as a philanthropist, and the motives for his generosity are obscure; perhaps he had in mind some further possibilities of winning bets from his sister-in-law. However, whatever the reason, Cointeraux could rejoice in his good fortune, and he lost no time in establishing himself in the metropolis, where he adopted * By a curious coincidence, this name was sometimes spelt Beton; Cf. Chenaye-Desbois, Dictiormaxre de la Noblesse, vol. iii, p. 143. 23

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL the impressive titles: Professor of Rural Architecture or Master Mason, Agriculturist and Architect according to his mood. No sooner had he done so than the Revolution broke out, and during the ensuing twenty-five years he found little to do except give vent to his frustration in a number of pamphlets addressed either to his Fellow Citizens, the French Nation, or whichever Sacred Majesty happened to be occupying the throne at that particular time. Whether he would in fact have had any greater success even in a period of Arcadian tranquillity seems more than doubtful, but one cannot help but admire the ingenuous single-mindedness with which, in the midst of cataclysmic upheavals of revolution and war, he persisted in trying to interest each succeeding governmentin the vital importanceof earth-made walls. In addition to his 'school' near the Tuileries, he had tried to establish another near the avenue de Vincennes, but although he built some of his model dwellings there, the scheme had to be abandoned, and he was only saved from destitution a second time by being commissioned by the Prefect of the Seine to build a wall in pise round the cemetery at Montmartre. This was constructed in 1799." Discouraged by the indifference of his compatriots who were, he said, 'too involved in the wave of political opinions' to appreciate his work, he decided to visit England, where he was fortunate enough to obtain the patronage of Philip Yorke, third Earl of Hardwicke. Unable to speak a word of English, he had to make himself understood to his workmen by signs, but he was sometimes helped by Lady Hardwicke and her daughter Elizabeth, who acted as interpreters. Cointeraux was filled with astonishment at the skill of the English labourers. 'What could they not have done, had I been able to speak their language!' he enthusiastically exclaimed.12 After his return to France, Cointeraux's pamphlets became more and more frantic with passionate loyalty as he sought royal patronage for his schemes. At the age of seventy-six, he published his Easy and Economical Method of Rebuilding Parish Churches in which he recommends that 'in the main cemetery chapel reserved for each parish, there should be a bust or painting of Louis XVII; it would recall to posterity that royal angel who dwells in heaven'.13 His final appeal, published when he was eighty-six, was addressed personally to his former benefactor, the Comte d'Artois, now Charles X, whom he tried to interest in a method of constructing grain silos.14 This idea was later taken up by General Treussart (who published a memorandum on hydraulic mortars in 1829), and it is curious to note that this type of structure, which at the beginning of the present century demonstrated more than anything else the gigantic potentialities of reinforced concrete, probably owed its origin to concrete in the first place. 'We seek today the means of preserving grain in silos,' wrote General Treussart. 'To succeed, it is necessary to preserve it from contact with air and humidity. Both these conditions can easily be obtained at one and the same time by constructing the silos of concrete.'16 The most important of Cointeraux's successors was Francois-Martin Le24

BETON brim, an architect practising in Montauban, whose interest in concrete was aroused by the publication in 1818 of L. G. Vicat's Experimental Researches into building limes, concretes and ordinary mortars.™ In 1831 he had unsuccessfully tried to have concrete adopted as the material for a three-arched bridge, 220 ft. long, which was to span the river Agout at St. Paul-de-Damiate, but the Public Works Commission decided against it.17 An opportunity to put his theories into practice came the following year, however, when building a house for his brother, Jean-Auguste Lebrun, at Marssac, near Albi.18 With courageous thoroughness, every part of the house was in concrete, that is to say the walls, floors and external staircase. The ground floor and roof were of concrete vaults, spanning nearly 18 ft. and 21 ft. respectively, and the intermediate floor was of smaller concrete vaults spanning between two timber beams. The arcading and mouldings on the facade were all cast in situ by means of profiles hollowed out in the timber form-work. The form-work itself was erected all inonepiece, not in short lengths as was customary inpiseconstruction and was left in position under the vaults for a month before being withdrawn. As the vaulting gave every indication of being perfectly secure, Lebrun decided he could confidently use his method for wider spans, and the following year employed concrete for vaulting the cellars of the new town hall at Gaillac (Tarn). This vault, which was 10 ft. wide and 60 ft. long, was built on a centring of solid earth which was removed four months after completion. In 1834 he built a single-storey concrete schoolhouse for the Commune of St. Agnan, near Castel Sarrasin (Tarn-et-Garonne) which was also to have been provided with a concrete barrel vault, but which was eventually roofed in the normal way, since the mayor thought it might one day be necessary to add another storey.19 Lebrun was full of enthusiasm for his new system, which he communicated to the Societe d*Encouragement pour VIndustrie Nationale, and was awarded their silver medal in i836.20 He envisaged the widest applications for concrete construction, not only for public and domestic buildings but for water-mills, spinning mills, forges and other factories. He was also aware of its decorative possibilities, considering that 'concrete will lend itself easily to every kind of decorative design; it will suffice to model the centring with the compartments or coffers required, for these to be faithfully reproduced after the centring's removal. This type of masonry, covered with a coat of plaster, retains perfectly every kind of painting with which one could wish to decorate it'.21 Concrete would also, he considered, be particularly useful for the construction of prisons because of its monolithic character, and he painted a vivid and tendentious picture of escaping prisoners adroitly removing the walls of traditional prison cells, stone by stone. His most ambitious project was begun in 1835. In that year the Prefect of Tarn-et-Garonne, who had been impressed with Lebrun's work, and had already commissioned him to design two small concrete bridges, asked him to 25

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL build a protestant church in concrete for the commune of Corbarieu.22 The motives were purely economic; the commune was in fact so poor that in order to have any church at all, it had been necessary to obtain a subsidy from the Ministere des Cultes. The Prefect saw in Lebrun's method a means of having the largest church possible with the subsidy available; Lebrun, on the other hand, saw in the subsidy a heaven-sent opportunity to finance preliminary experiments, and sensibly contended that they would prove an economy in the long run. Lebmn's plea was rejected on the grounds that the other buildings he was constructing afforded ample means of making the necessary tests, but the authorities generously offered to take full responsibility in case of failure. The plans of the church, which were completed on 20th March 1835 and approved by the Prefect in the following September, comprised a rectangle measuring 58 ft. 8 in. by 26 ft. 8 in., with walls 2 ft. 4 in. thick. To make the concrete vault, four semi-circular trusses were partially embedded in the walls to support the timber formwork. All seemed to be going well until the vault was nearly terminated, when it was noticed that a slight fissure had developed in the end wall, but since this wall carried no load, Lebrun attributed the fissure to settlement of the foundations, and paid no great attention. However, when the concreting had been completed, more cracks appeared in the opposite wall, and when, finally, the form-work was removed two months later, it was seen that there was a fissure running the whole length of the crown of the barrel vault. This was on I4th September 1836. At the beginning of 1837, the fissure was so great that it was decided to demolish the vault and substitute an ordinary timber roof; as soon as this was accomplished, and the pressure of the vault removed, the fissures in the end walls disappeared. How, asks Lebrun, could this trouble have been avoided? It would have been simple enough, he says, if before beginning to make the vault, temporary metal tie-rods had been inserted to counteract the thrust, for once the concrete had hardened and become a homogeneous mass exerting only vertical pressure, the tie-rods could have been removed. All this could have been determined by experiment, but as it was, success had been sacrificed through the parsimony of those in authority. Needless to say, once the calamity had occurred the authorities lost no time in attacking the architect, in spite of their earlier glib assumption of responsibility. Lebrun, embittered and frustrated, persisted in believing in the ultimate triumph of his methods; but he warned his contemporaries to 'keep to the rules prescribed for ordinary materials with regard to dimensions, until experience and long practice have determined the modifications which can be applied to buildings in concrete'.23 As we have seen, both Lebrun and Cointeraux were already well versed in building problems before their attention was turned to questions of monolithic construction. The third Frenchman to become a pioneer in the use of concrete was, however, originally the director of a chemical factory, and the fact that he was an industrialist underlines the essential problem at that time, which was 26

BETON not primarily one of invention but of exploitation and experiment. Pise construction had provided the structural system. The researches of Vicat had indicated the materials to be used. What was needed now was wide experimentation and exhaustive tests in both materials and equipment. This needed tremendous courage and wide experience of modern finance, since the necessary research could not be undertaken, or successful results applied, without a very large financial backing; It also required a genius for organization and propaganda, and such homely virtues as patience and fortitude, which, although they do not usually spring to mind as typical virtues of industrial magnates of the nineteenth century, are essential to greatness in every age and sphere. Fransois Coignet's first use of concrete was in 1852 or 1853 (he himself gives conflicting dates), when building a new chemical factory at St. Denis, near Paris.24 His reasons for using this material are obscure, but he was certainly familiar with pis£ construction in the Lyons district, from which his family may well have originated since they had a factory there. Whether or not he already knew of Lebrun's publications by that date we do not know,25 but since he had no compunction in patenting Lebrun's method two years later without acknowledgement, we may charitably assume that his discovery of the same process at the same time was pure coincidence. The walls, vaulting, stairs and lintels of the St. Denis factory were entirely of concrete, without even the stone or brick dressings round the apertures which were common in the Lyons district, and which had been incorporated by Lebrun. Since Coignet's principal motive was purely one of economy, his main interest at that time was to find the cheapest aggregates, and for this reason his first attempt was made using clinker and ashes. This mixture proved insufficiently strong, so he tried a second material, pure sand, which failed completely. As he experimented, however, he became increasingly convinced that the weakness was not so much due to the nature of the ingredients as to the consistency to which they were mixed, and he concluded that the problem would be solved if only the concrete could be made more compact. The solution to this problem was not easy. A drier and stiffer concrete was not only more difficult to pour within the form-work, but more difficult to mix with the equipment available; hence the usual expedient of adding plenty of water. Yet Coignet knew from Vicat's experiments that the strength of mortars was related chemically to the precise amount of water added, and that excessive water was a source of weakness. The normal equipment for mixing mortar in large quantities was the broyeur Schlosser, a mill turned usually by a single horse; but when Coignet tried using a drier mix, containing sand, he could not produce more than 250 to 300 cubic feet of concrete a day, even when increasing his horse-power to twelve. The difficulty was solved partly by modifying the machine so as to allow continuous 'through-put', and partly by adding only half the sand at the first 2?

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL mixing; by this means, and by mounting two machines in parallel, Coignet succeeded in producing ten times as much concrete as before using only eight horses. Determined to try out his discovery, but this time on a more ambitious building, Coignet decided to build himself a concrete house at St. Denis opposite his new factory (Plate 2), and in 1853 commissioned an architect, Theodore Lachez, to draw up the necessaryplans.26 The design ofthis building is not in itself of particular interest, but it has great historic value in that it constitutes the first bold attempt to construct sophisticated facades entirely of monolithic concrete with mouldings, string-courses, entablatures and a balustrade. The only alien materials were in the upper floors, where timber joists were embedded in the concrete, and in the flat roof, where the concrete was strengthened with iron beams. The house is still inhabited, although it has been divided into tenements. On 29th March 1855, Coignet took out two French patents. The first was entitled Beton Economique and merely explained the possibilities of using cheap aggregates. The other, which was entitled Emploi du Beton, was much more important, since Coignet not only described in it his methods, but, by thus taking out a patent, claimed the sole right to build in monolithic concrete for the ensuing fifteen years. On nth December 1855, having decided that his original patent was insufficiently precise, he joined to it an addendum in which he reiterated the complete sufficiency of concrete, stating that 'concrete walls need no facing materials in stone, brick or any other material whatsoever. The hollow part of the mould, in which the concrete is poured, should have the form to be given to the mass, whether the walls be plain or with projections such as cornices, ramps, attics, string-courses, entablatures, balconies, or any kind of ornament, etc. By this means, the hollow of the mould gives moulded and compressed concrete forms in relief, without need to employ any covering or exterior facing, nor any supporting framework, the whole being in concrete, moulded in place on the wall itself.' The Universal Exhibition of 1855 presented itself as an opportune and obvious way of bringing his patent to the attention of the public. Coignet decided to apply for permission to construct there a concrete house, and to this end addressed a printed memorandum to the organizing committee. That august body took one look at the word Beton-Pisd which figures as the title, and immediately rejected the proposal as unworthy of their attention, but Coignet did eventually succeed in exhibiting examples of his new material, and was awarded a bronze medal. One of the observations in his memorandum is especially noteworthy in an age dominated by patriarchal views on the sanctity of the family house: 'Out customs no longer require these enormous and solid constructions which impose on future generations the tastes and architecture of those of the past. Is not the best solution to the problem for one house to shelter one generation; a house which both rich and poor can enjoy and ar28

BETON range according to their tastes? This solution is certainly opportune today, for the reign of stone in building construction seems to have come to an end. Cement, concrete and iron are destined to replace it. Stone will only be used for monuments.'27 It will have been noticed in the description of the house at St. Denis that iron beams were embedded in the flat concrete roof. This combination of iron and concrete in structural floors was not in itself strictly original since Fox and Barrett's fireproof floor, consisting of cast iron joists set eighteen inches apart and embedded in lime concrete, had been patented in 1844 and used in such diverse buildings as Balmoral Castle and the Wiltshire Lunatic Asylum.28 Moreover Loudon, in article 1792 of his Encyclopedia of Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture (1833), had recommended a system of fireproof flooring consisting of a latticework of iron rods embedded in cement. Coignet may have known of such floors, although it is doubtful if details of it were widely circulated in France until 1854, when the Revue Generate d* Architecture published a report on the recent R.I.B.A. conference on fireproof construction. Iron floor joists were common in Parisian domestic architecture, where they had been introduced during the carpenters' strike of 1845, but attempts to embed them in a monolithic casing had proved disastrous, since plaster of Paris was used and this rusted the iron. It was by no means certain then that iron embedded in concrete would remain free from rust, and Coignet showed either great daring or great ignorance in thus putting it to the test. Coignet's method of constructing floors was described in his English patent of 26th November 1855. 'This new description of floorings is established by laying on the walls to support the flooring a certain number of iron stop planks, parallel to one another, and reposing on the walls by their ends, so as to be completely supported by the whole thickness of the wall... but instead of iron planks I can establish iron rods placed at convenient distances apart one from the other, and traversing through and through the four walls supporting the flooring, so that these iron rods cross symmetrically one another and look somewhat like a chessboard. These rods, being in the shape of a screw and having a nut at each end, will prevent the walls from losing their perpendicularity.' In the amendment to his French patent, dated 24th June 1856, the wording is slightly different, and the last sentence may be translated: 'These rods, tapped and bearing a screw-nut at each end, form so many tension members (tirants) intended to prevent the walls from spreading apart.' This use of rods, and especially of the word tirant, is of the very greatest significance. It is of course apparent that at this stage, Coignet did not yet think of the rods as acting with the concrete after the fashion of modern reinforcement, but regarded them, like Lebrun, as a substitute for buttresses, functioning in the same manner as the tie-rods used in Italian Gothic vaults. Neverthless, he was aware of the need for permanent tension members embedded in concrete slabs, (as opposed to the 29

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL removable tension rods which Lebrun envisaged merely to counteract the thrust of a barrel vault until the concrete hardened) and it was not long before the truth dawned upon him that by his new system, an entirely new type of structure had been created. One of his experiments, published in a memorandum dated i8th November 1858, consisted of building a floor supported only on three sides: 'each floor forms a single slab giving the hardness and resistance of stone, and enclosing within itself small beams ... which form tension members — an arrangement which increases the beam's own resistance to bending by adding the resistance of the concrete slab, which is itself inflexible.' In justice, it should be pointed out that Barrett had observed the same phenomenon in his patent floors. His conclusions, reported in the Revue Generate d'Architecture, were to the effect that 'the entire floor then becomes none other than a single slab with iron ribs. It is above all to the use of concrete that Mr. Barrett attributes the great rigidity given by his floors.'29 Another of Coignet's experiments, performed on a floor measuring 20 ft. by 23 ft., consisted in asking twenty people to dance about on it to prove that no vibration would result. 'Until now', he commented, 'iron beams have been used as supports and not as tension members; the new conditions under which I now place them fulfil the objective I set myself of establishing monolithic constructions. Moreover, this type of floor allows one to make roofs in the form of cupolas, domes or simple vaults, since their thrust is counterbalanced by the effect of the beams contained in the floors below. Several houses have already been built in this manner, thus reversing, so to speak, the architectural conditions established up to the present day.'30 In 1855 Coignet built the stationmaster's house at Suresnes, on the Versailles Railway, and in 1856 the well-known house in the rue des Poissonniers at St. Denis, which was dissected fifty years later to prove conclusively that embedded reinforcement did not rust. The stationmaster's house at Suresnes was thus described by Coignet himself in a lecture given in 1859 to the French Institute of Civil Engineers: 'This house, constructed entirely of compacted concrete, is a complete monolith from the summit to the foundations: cellars, vaults, slabs, walls, floors, roof (in the form of a dome), cornices and ornaments are all in compacted concrete, without joints or any other material. The exterior has all the appearance of rough stone and has withstood all weather for four years.'31 The house in the rue des Poissonniers was similarly constructed, and was also covered with a vault, which here varied in thickness from i ft. 4 in. at the springing to 10 in. at the crown, and spanned 46 ft. 8 in.32 Coignet had sufficient faith in the water-resistant qualities of concrete to leave the surface of the vault completely unprotected, but he rendered the external faces of the walls to disguise the ugly colour of the concrete, which had been made with a cinder aggregate. It is interesting to notice that Coignet never believed in using hard or bulky aggregates, and when, for aesthetic reasons, he discarded cinder, it was to replace it with light-coloured sand. 30

BETON All this research and enterprise was quite secondary to Coignet's main business interest, which had itself been expanding rapidly in the meantime. After his father's death in 1846, Fransois, together with his brothers Stephane and Louis, had not only enlarged their chemical industry, but were also de-* veloping a patent heating system, which Fran£ois had devised originally for pottery kilns, but which was later adapted for domestic calorifiers. However, in 1861 Fransois Coignet decided to establish himself seriously as a building contractor, and formed the SodeU Centrale des Batons Agglomerts, one of the first limited liability companies to be established in France.33 In a prospectus published the following year, he explains that 'to organize this industry on a large scale, it is necessary to create an extensive organization and to possess large financial means'. These means he assessed at ten million francs, which he had calculated for an output of thirty thousand cubic feet of concrete a day.34 Coignet had some justification for his self-confidence. Apart from the respectful attention paid to his work by the Society of Civil Engineers, the Emperor himself had also become interested, and had personally ordered experiments to be made on the effectiveness of concrete in marine constructions at St. Jean-de-Luz.35 Napoleon Ill's greatness as a patron of architecture seldom receives the attention it deserves. Branded by most liberal historians as a tyrannical upstart and a traitor to the republican constitution he held in trust, he has been credited with no other guiding motive than oppression, and his artistic activities have either been attributed to others, or else condemned out of hand as vulgar propaganda or extravagance. The replanning of Paris, which was the greatest architectural achievement of his reign, and one in which his personal initiative and direction are indisputable, has either been credited entirely to Baron Haussmann, or else attributed to a sadistic desire to mow down the working classes by firing cannonades down boulevards. Coignet's participation in this vast building scheme was limited mainly to civil engineering works, such as sewers, but he also made contributions to the more ostentatious adornments of the metropolis. He was responsible for the magnificent retaining wall of the Passy cemetery, which still majestically dominates the Place du Trocadero which it liberated, and the retaining walls and staircase of the boulevard de PEmpereur, a thoroughfare which, in the course of subsequent political upheavals, became successively boulevard du Haut Rhin, avenue du Trocadero, and the avenue President Wilson. The actual buildings he constructed for the Administration were limited to part of the barracks on the He de la Cite and a few minor edifices in the public parks, such as the keeper's lodge at Vincennes and the hen-house in the Jardin d'Acclimatation. In 1861 Coignet published a short work entitled Betons Agglomeres appliques a VArt de Construire, which was submitted to the Academy of Science for the Prix Montyon. After having toyed with the terms 'beton-pise' and 'beton plas31

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL tique\ he evidently decided that beton agglom&ri or 'compacted concrete' best summed up the essence of his process, which he describes in this pamphlet with an appropriate wealth of scientific minutiae, enlarging eloquently and farsightedly on the great possibilities of the material. 'In the construction of theatres, baths and public monuments in general, we can expect spans unknown to this day. The possibility of building cheaply vaults of unusual span provides the means of once again undertaking the construction of great public monuments; monuments which will not be a servile imitation of ancient Roman works, but will far surpass them in daring, elegance and economy.'36 The use of concrete for theatre construction seems to have most powerfully captured his imagination, and already he saw the wide possibilities of what was to become a fundamental element in the reinforced-concrete aesthetic: the flat roof. 'An entirely new advantage of concrete, so far without precedent, is that the roof of a theatre could become a veritable public square ... nothing prevents us from thinking that the whole area of a theatre, that is to say more than two thousand square yards, could become a veritable open-air promenade, with gardens accessible to the public even during the daytime.'37 He was in some doubt as to the means of producing a satisfactory concrete facade for his theatre, since although, in his patents, he had confidently claimed the ability to cast any type of mouldings in the mass, neither the texture of his concrete nor the accuracy of his form-work were adequate for reproducing the more florid decorative motifs favoured by the Second Empire. Nevertheless, in attempting to explain and justify this insufficiency, he became aware for the first time of a fundamental antithesis of concrete design, namely, that although the plasticity of concrete is by its nature unlimited, this plasticity is in fact restricted by the practical limitations of the moulds in which the concrete is poured. In the circumstances, Coignet was bound to advise covering the concrete with an alien decorative covering, but he saw the need to evolve a concrete architecture within the nature of the material, and perceived that the limitations of form-work would necessarily bring about a great simplification of shapes. 'Theatre fa£ades must be veritable monuments, and the interiors must completely satisfy good taste, yet although monolithic concrete is solid, powerful, strong and durable, it is nevertheless incapable of giving an artistic form. Is this a vice or a beneficial quality? Perhaps it is the latter, since the ordinary means of decoration are already so over-repeated, worn out and vulgar that it will henceforth be difficult, with freestone or plaster, to produce anything new and original. Perhaps with betons agglomfrts we shall find new means of ornamentation; thus the pillars and arches of concrete could be covered over with plaques of marble and varied stucco; a wellmade vault, ceiling or wall ofbtion agglom&re need only be given a few coats of lime wash to acquire the smoothness of surface necessary for painting,'38 The only opportunity Coignet ever had of showing the monumental possibilities of his material was in the construction of a church, when the capacity 32

BETON of his concrete to adapt itself to intricate modelling and at the same time give a good surface, was clearly demonstrated to his contemporaries. In 1862, a competition was launched for a parish church at Le Vesinet (Plates 3-5), a new garden city near St. Germain-en-Laye, by the company which was then exploiting the development. With a bland combination of discrimination and impartiality, not infrequently affected in programmes for church competitions today, the promoters announced that 'even though the Romanesque style seems preferable, the Le Vesinet Company will accept any other order of architecture'. They terminated the conditions with the significant warning that 'the specification must comprise materials of the best quality'.39 The church was to be designed to allow for enlargement to twice the initial capacity of five thousand persons, and was to cost no more than ninety thousand francs. The winner of the competition was Louis-Charles Boileau, the son of Louis-Auguste Boileau,40 a pioneer of iron construction and the architect of the church of St. Eugene hi Paris. Louis-Charles Boileau adopted his father's system of iron construction for the vaulting and its supports, but envisaged a traditional type of masonry construction for the enclosing walls, which were to be adorned with an appropriate display of Gothic detailing. It was with dismay, therefore, that he learnt that Fra^ois Coignet had gained the confidence of Alphonse Pallu, director of the Le Vesinet Company, and we can assume that Coignet himself was none too pleased to find himself obliged to co-operate with a reluctant and even hostile architect. The church, built in 1864, is still in excellent condition, as it stands today with its 130 ft. spire dominating the tree-lined village square: the first modern monumental building to be constructed in concrete. One reason for its good condition is that the main walls are not loadbearing, and it is doubtful whether concrete composed mainly of sand and lime could have withstood the load of a heavy roof.41 However, the iron vault was designed to be entirely supported by slender cast-iron columns against which the surrounding walls stand independently like a screen. The resulting articulation of the structural ironwork is reminiscent of the elegant solution to a similar problem adopted by Labrouste in the Reading Room of the Bibliotheque Nationale; it was also similar to the system adopted in 1868 by Louis-Auguste Boileau in the church of Notre Dame de France, London, where a circular church was built inside the existing cylindrical walls of the old Panorama. The success of Coignet's first major experiment in casting monolithic concrete can be judged from the illustrations. It was not however admitted by Boileau, who never missed an opportunity to dissociate himself from any part in the use of such an undignified material. In a rather vindictive letter to the Moniteur des Architectes in December 1867, he claimed that there had been inadequate adhesion between the layers, that contraction had produced fissures every five or six feet, and that the work had eventually cost four times that of ordinary masonry. 'With regard to forms and decorative appearance, one must c c.c. 23

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL not expect to obtain with concrete the purity of lines and surfaces attained by a good stone-mason. Apart from the enormous difficulty of positioning the wooden boxes which serve as moulds and hide the surfaces and guiding marks, the variations which these wooden moulds undergo under the influence of sun and rain bring about deformations which are necessarily reproduced by concrete poured and compacted into such deteriorated receptacles. The true economy of concrete is in the manufacture of accessory decorative elements which have to be repeated a large number of times, and in which costly handcarving is replaced by factory-made moulding.'42 The use of such an unsuitable material for a church, Boileau hastened to add, was entirely due to the founder of the park at Le Vesinet, 'a gentleman fond of new inventions.'43 There were however others, notably amongst the Rationalist school, who acclaimed the advent of this new material, and it was in fact a laudatory article by Adolphe Viollet-le-Duc in the Journal des Debats of 29th September 1867 which had goaded Boileau to make his public protest. 'In perfecting this material', Adolphe Viollet-le-Duc had written, 'M. Coignet has not only given it the principal role in masonry but, as a result of progressive experiments, has rendered it fit to replace the materials employed in our buildings: stone, brick, iron and wood.' The particular stimulus for this encomium was the flatroofed pavilion, ornamented with Renaissance details, which Coignet had constructed near the Pont d'lena for the 1867 Exhibition. Coignet was indeed testing the architectural possibilities of his new material to the uttermost. In 1867 he began the six-storey apartment block at the corner of the rue Miromesnil and rue de Naples (Plate 6), and when one sees the careful detailing of its imposing fa£ades, so completely characteristic of Parisian domestic architecture of the period, it is difficult to believe that it is of 'compacted concrete' throughout. Only when one finds that the masonry 'joints' are painted on the surface of the wall, and notices the cracks in the unreinforced lintels, is one sure that this is indeed the building enthusiastically referred to by a contemporary as 'possessing alike a delicacy of moulding with all the durability of rock itself'44, even though the original numbering of the street has apparently been changed. In the same year Coignet started the mile-long aqueduct at Moret in the forest of Fontainebleau. This imposing structure, built to carry the water of the river Vannes, comprised two tiers of arcading, of which the lower achieved maximum spans of 117 ft. The following year he started a 200 ft. high lighthouse at Port Said. But in spite of the apparent success of his enterprise, the company was beginning to lose money. Once the rival firms of public works contractors realized how they were being underbid, they collaborated amongst themselves to oust their competitor, and these manoeuvres were facilitated by a general rise in labourers' wages. The city of Paris made no payments on debts between 1867 and 1870, so that Coignet's company had to borrow three million francs from the Credit Fonder. When finally payment was made to 34

BETON them by the municipality, the Franco-Prussian war broke out, as a result of which building operations ceased, the workmen were dispersed and the equipment became derelict.45 In 1872, although he still did not believe liquidation to be inevitable, Coignet was forced to resign from the company. During the previous year, he had drawn up a number of reports, in which he criticized the company for having concentrated on public works instead of housing, at the same time justifying his own actions and motives in conducting the company's affairs. 'One thing is certain', he wrote in a report published in 1871, 'and that is that I believed in this material more than anybody, I believed with enthusiasm, I devoted myself to it completely, I gave it all my time and thought, I sacrificed to it a great part of my fortune, I dragged my family into it, and also my friends, and today I am left with considerable debts to pay, without ever having got a penny out of it. Concrete has not only cost me a large part of my fortune, but it has made my life a permanent torment; no one can then accuse me of having escaped scot free, or of having sacrificed the interests of the shareholders for my personal profit.'46 When Coignet resigned his chairmanship, he closed a chapter in the history of concrete in France. Twenty years were to elapse before another great industrialist was to exploit this material in France on a large and organized scale, and when he did so, that same material was to be transformed by steel into something completely different; no longer a massive inert substance, comparable in its nature to natural stone, but a tough resilient material whose logical forms were delicate and thin. Coignet can justly be regarded as the man who first brought mass concrete construction to the knowledge of the modern world, and who in his lifetime exploited it to its utmost capacity. His methods were far more scientific than those practised elsewhere in his day, and although he never undertook laboratory experiments, or attempted to ascertain theoretically the economic dimensions of the material required, he spared no pains in making practical tests. After Francis Coignet had disappeared from public view, the scepticism of such architects as Boileau seemed to have triumphed47; but the prophet still had honour in other countries. During the next two decades, research inspired by Coignet's example was being carried out in England and America, and in the following chapters we shall see how, during this period, these two countries took the lead.

35

CHAPTER TWO

Concrete

I

n 1836, the first gold medal ever awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects was presented to George Godwin for a prize essay entitled The Nature and Properties of Concrete, and its application to Construction up to the present period * It was a scholarly work, and typical of the period in which it was written in that it still relied largely on the authority of classical authors for confirmation of the scientific facts adduced. Beginning with the quotation 'Auxilia humiliafirma consensus fad? > and taking as his text Matthew vii. 25, which refers to a man who built his house upon a rock, Godwin gave all the more abstruse literary references to concrete or to foundations he could find, and quoted freely from authors ranging from Vitruvius to Belidor, and from Pliny to Pope. A fact which becomes clear, however, as the essay draws to a rather prosaic end, is that however gloriously concrete may have served the architecture of ancient Rome, the practice of concrete construction was unknown in modern England, if we except the few tentative examples of concrete marine constructions, and foundations, constructed before that date. Godwin gives a well-documented account of these first attempts at modern concrete laying, and describes the foundations of Sir Robert Smirke's Milbank Penitentiary laid in 1817. But although Smirke may indeed have been responsible for introducing concrete foundations into current English building practice (a title later contradicted by George Rennie, who claimed that a commission had already recommended its use at Milbank in a report drawn up in i8i3)2 he certainly never introduced concrete into English architecture, and Emil Kaufmann is wrong in suggesting that Smirke particularly favoured concrete because of'his strong feeling for cubism'.3 The impulse given by Joseph Aspdin to the invention of modern concrete has also been somewhat exaggerated, for when Aspdin patented his 'Portland Cement' in 1824, he himself did not then regard it primarily as a bonding material but as a stucco to simulate Portland Stone. The title of his patent was An improvement in the Modes of Producing an Artificial Stone, and he described it as being intended for 'stuccoing buildings, waterworks and cisterns'.4 Modern Portland cement was probably not manufactured until 1844, when it was introduced by J. C. Johnson into the factory of J. B. White & Co.,5 and it 36

CONCRETE was not until a few years after this that cement of a satisfactory quality was made for engineering purposes. Before Coignet's patents were known in England, structural concrete was only used as pre-cast blocks or as an infilling for fireproof floors. Since concrete blocks are assembled like ordinary masonry, and were in fact regarded as imitation stone, they are of little importance in the history of concrete construction, but they had a certain relevance at this period since their use did much to instill confidence in the strength and weathering qualities of the new material. Godwin described in his essay the use of Mr. Ranger's patent concrete blocks in Sir Edward Codrington's house at Brighton, and in the Guardhouse in St. James' Park, London, and reported that a grammar school was then being constructed of concrete blocks near Blackheath. The Architects' Publication Society dictionary refers to the College of Surgeons' building in Lincoln's Inn Fields as having been built of concrete blocks at this same time, together with some houses in Western Road, Brighton, which were partly of blocks, and partly monolithic. In 1837, concrete was used for 'internal works' in the Royal Exchange. Not all imitation stone bearing the name 'concrete' used lime or Portland cement as its main ingredient. In 1844, Frederick Ransome, who was then superintendent of Messrs. Ransome and Sims' ironworks at Ipswich, noticed the waste of good stone in the dressing of mill-stones, and conceived the idea of reconstituting it in some way for building purposes. 'The first difficulty', according to his son, who was later to found the concrete industry of the United States, 'was in finding a proper cementing substance: plaster of Paris, shellac, glue, isinglass, lime with bullock's blood, mastic, etc., were tried and discarded. Amongst the numberless ingredients tried were also common glass, but it was not until experiments with soluble glass were made that success became probable. It occurred to him that if he took flint stones with a moderate amount of caustic alkali in solution, and subjected them to heat in a Papin's digester under high pressure, he might be able to concoct a soup from flint, as Papin had done from bones. But the result was apparently a disappointment, and in order to increase the heat, he finally tied the safety valve with a piece of wire, and forced the fire until the boiler became overheated. Fearing, however, that the boiler would blow up, he threw it out into a cistern with cold water, and the boiler, as might have been anticipated, was broken to pieces — and there, inside, was the glazy, syrupy mass of dissolved glass. The portions next to the walls of the boiler were baked to a flinty hard stone; in one word, the problem was solved.'6 Solved though the problem might be from the point of view of strength, Ransome's 'Patent Concrete Stone' lacked the essential quality of being impervious to water, although later, when carrying out research into methods for retarding the calamitous disintegration of the new Palace of Westminster, he discovered that his artificial stone surfaces could be made waterproof and hard 37

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL by dipping them in calcium chloride. This new discovery was tested and approved by the Professor of Chemistry of St. Bartholomew's Hospital on behalf of the Parliamentary Committee of the Board of Works, and Ransome lost no time in patenting his 'New Patent Concrete Stone'.7 Six years later, that is in 1867, he built a large factory at East Greenwich, and invited for the opening ceremony a distinguished company which included Professor Ansted, who had been a member of the Parliamentary Committee, Professor Donaldson, Professor of Architecture at London University, and George Godwin. A special steamer took them down the Thames, and after a 'liberal cold collation', speeches were made by the three guests of honour.8 But although an important stimulus for the use of concrete was created by the use of pre-cast blocks, the development of true reinforced concrete construction in England originated in developments in fireproof flooring. Thomas Potter records that a certain James Frost patented concrete arches between iron beams in i8229, and reference has already been made to Fox and Barrett's flooring patented in 1844. By the third quarter of the century there was a whole host of such patents, and it is sometimes difficult to determine in what feature their originality lies. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that the patents were only established as a precautionary measure, since they lessened the likelihood of legal suits by earlier patentees. The only really unusual patent flooring of the time was that taken out in 1854 by William Boutland Wilkinson. He stipulated that 'a flat platform of wood is to be erected to the ceiling line, and the floor is to be composed of plaster, air-slaked lime, cut hay and ashes and breeze in certain proportions, and wire rope (which may be procured second-hand in considerable quantities) or iron in other forms in a state of tension. In ordinary dwelling houses I propose placing such wire ropes about 9 his. apart, and to have a full depth of floor of one-sixteenth the span'.10 This patent has been claimed by some twentieth-century writers as the first to describe the principles of reinforced concrete, although the first recorded example of its use seems to be the floor of a cottage built in Newcastle in about 1865.* Wilkinson certainly understood the need for tension members in a concrete floor, even if he seems to have taken considerable liberties with the compression member, judging by the ingredients of the slab. In any event, he ranks as one of the first important reinforced concrete contractors in England, and his Newcastle firm was still flourishing at the beginning of this century, with a branch office in London. Incidentally, it will be noticed that in Wilkinson's patent, the whole emphasis is as usual laid on the use of cheap materials rather than on structural principles, and it was this concentration on cheapness to the detriment of strength which retarded the development of concrete at the time. Whilst experiments were thus proceeding with concrete flooring, news of * This was examined when in course of demolition by Professor W. Fisher Cassie, who found it to be still structurally sound (Structural Engineer, April 1955, pp. 134-7;. 38

CONCRETE Coignet's researches came as a lively stimulus to English contractors, and received far more sympathetic attention from the English technical periodicals than had been accorded to them by the French. George Godwin, who, in 1844, had been appointed editor of The Builder (An Illustrated Magazine for the Drawing Room, the Studio, the Office, the Workshop and the Cottage), was naturally a keen supporter of a building method of which he had been the earliest English advocate, and it is largely due to his enthusiasm that so much acrimonious polemic on the subject was thrashed out in detail in the pages of his weekly review. Coignet had taken out an English patent in November 1855, but the first mention of 'Compacted Concrete' occurs in The Builder on 2nd July 1859, when a report was made of Coignet's lecture to the French Institute of Civil Engineers given in that year. Its immediate effect was to arouse the wrath of a Mr. W. Bucknell, who claimed that the patent was not new since the basins for the fountains in the nave of the Crystal Palace, constructed by him, were true monoliths, and thus constituted an earlier application of concrete. 'Had M. Coignet read the specification of my patent', Bucknell angrily claimed, 'he could not have adopted more closely the language therein used in describing his alleged new process.'11 Fortunately, the report in The Builder also attracted the attention of less captious readers, and was even noticed as far afield as Australia, where a Mr. Herschel Babbage immediately decided to erect a concrete building 21 ft. long by 8 ft. 9 in. wide, with 18 in. walls bearing a concrete vault. Externally the roof was dressed to a double slope like an ordinary gable, but inside it formed a pointed barrel vault with segments of 6 ft. 9 in. radius. 'In order to tie the walls together at the angles,' he reported, 'two pieces of 2 in. hoop iron, 3 ft. long, were built horizontally into each wall at the corner, and were rivetted to the corresponding pieces of the wall at right angles, making a kind of gridiron in the angle; the further ends of the hoop iron were turned up for about half an inch to give them a better hold in the wall. 'In making larger buildings in this way I should advise the introduction of light iron tie-rods to assist the walls to resist the thrust of the arched roof, and I should have no hesitation in making buildings of more than one storey, in which case the floors should be made of a concrete arch with iron ties, and might be faced with cement and painted in oils in the Italian fashion so as to do away with the necessity for carpets in hot weather. 'Settlers at a distance from towns, who find it difficult to procure skilled workmen, I strongly recommend to try this economic building; and even for stations in the Bush when, as often is the case, limestone is to be found. Concrete buildings would be nearly, if not quite, as cheap as log huts; and, whilst being infinitely more comfortable, they would, being fireproof, set at defiance all the attempts of the blacks to burn them, and thus, in case of an attack, enable their inmates to hold out until help arrived.'12 39

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL In spite of his initial enthusiasm, Babbage did not proceed much further with his experiments, although he later built a concrete house with a flat roof in the 'Venetian Gothic' style.13 One reason for his discouragement was the high cost of imported Portland cement, a factor which was also to retard the exploitation of concrete in the United States. The first English building contractor to develop Coignet's discovery was Joseph Tall. He had the perspicacity to realize that since most of the expense of concrete work was due to the timber form-work, the way to achieve the greatest economy and efficiency would be by means of standardization. He therefore turned his attention to devising a type of demountable and re-usable shuttering, which eventually took the form of timber uprights bolted together and filled in between with boards of standard size. Jealous competitors and detractors were not slow to point out that basically this kind of form-work was merely an extension of one of the traditional methods ofpis^ construction, and was thus not original at all. Tall replied meekly that he had never claimed his system to be anything more than an 'improvement',14 but in fact he had no cause to be apologetic; by concentrating on standardization, he had the distinction of exploiting for the first time one of the most beneficial characteristics of concrete construction which, if perceived at all by his contemporaries, would have been condemned by them as contrary to Ruskinian principles of genuine craftsmanship and the dignity of human labour. Tail's system was very flexible in its application, and the apparatus could be bought or hired for use on buildings of any type of design, provided that no projections were required on the surface. To demonstrate the system (patented in 1864), Tall built some six-room sample houses with flat roofs at Bexley, Kent15, and by 1868 he had become a sufficient authority on concrete construction to publish a pamphlet on the subject (which he later claimed sold 38,000 copies) and to lecture to the Architectural Association.16 He was also sufficiently esteemed in architectural circles to be charged with the building of a thirty-room concrete house at East Sheen designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield17, later president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. By 1872 Tail's enterprise had prospered sufficiently for him to form a company of 'former satisfied clients', and to build a new factory in London at the corner of Lawson Street and Great Dover Street.18 This building was 150 ft. long, 50 ft. wide and 40 ft. high, with the walls, floor and a circular staircase all forming an impressive advertisement of the material he was exploiting. The reputation of Tail's Patent Shuttering was not confined to England; it had been awarded a gold medal at the 1867 Paris Exhibition, and had attracted the attention there of Napoleon III. The Emperor, not content only to emulate the sumptuous zeal of his royal predecessors by completing the Louvre, was also showing a democratic preoccupation with the humanitarian aspects of architecture which was peculiar to the century but not usually associated with his regime. In particular, following the example of the Prince Consort, he had 40

CONCRETE taken a deep and genuine interest in the problem of workmen's dwellings, and within a year of his coup d'etat had organized an important competition for workmen's flats called Cites Ouvrieres. This early attempt at architectural philanthropy had not however been an unqualified success; his large blocks of apartments, such as the Cite Napoleon, bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the barracks he was building elsewhere, and were consequently found repugnant by their occupants. The Emperor therefore appointed a committee of workmen, with extensive funds provided by himself, to consider alternative methods of housing. They finally recommended three-storey semi-detached apartment blocks, of which a prototype in brick took its place with the other workmen's dwellings constructed in the Champ de Mars for the International Exhibition of i86y.19 When making plans for the first of his new Cites Ouvrieres, the Emperor decided to abandon traditional methods of construction in favour of Tail's system, and adroitly ignoring Coignet's patent rights, gave the commission to two English contractors, Newton and Shepard, who operated Tali's patent apparatus under licence. Newton proudly reported at a meeting of the Society of Arts how 'in the original plans submitted by him to the Emperor and Empress, his Majesty made some modifications, sketching them on paper himself; and the houses were being erected according to the plans thus amended by the Emperor'.20 Many of these houses built in the Boulevard Daumesnil are still standing (Plate 7), and are in excellent condition. The plan of each dwelling was certainly not luxurious, since it consisted only of a living room, a bedroom and a kitchen, but there was a cabinet d'aisances in each apartment, in which 'water closets were fitted up in the English fashion, in compliance with the orders of the Emperor'.21 The staircase well was lit and ventilated on the fa£ade by a series of cast-iron grilles which gave the group of buildings such an ecclesiastical air that they were known locally as 'the convent with green shutters'.22 The fa£ades were severely criticized by the editor of the Nouvelles Annales de la Construction which, like other French reviews, also condemned the new material. 'The fa£ades are absolutely monotonous, and the grilles which light the staircases seem to have been borrowed from the gateway to a tomb, convent or chapel.'23 Newton also claimed to have built some dwellings at Montmartre for the workmen of the Societe Anonyme des Forges et Fonderies, but no record apparently survives of their exact whereabouts.24 The Emperor's interest seems to have conferred a new dignity on concrete, for at the beginning of the iSyo's we find a marked rise in its social status. Whereas formerly it was regarded by noble landowners as suitable only for their animals and more humble tenants, it was now adopted by the gentry as worthy to be used in the construction of their own mansions, and was specified without more than a passing shudder by the fashionable architects of the day. We have seen how in 1868 Tall had made the first breach in conventional pre41

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL judices by building a house for Sir Arthur Blomfield; it was left to Charles Drake to establish this new status firmly and bring concrete completely into the realm of polite architectural design. Drake had originally been employed by Tall as his manager, but whilst working for him had realized the advantages which would result by using uprights of metal instead of timber in the patent form-work. Such an improvement had been suggested to Tall, but with an obstinate conservatism curious in such an enterprising nature, he persistently maintained that his original patent was best.25 As a result, Drake patented his own system, established a competing firm, and was soon busy constructing buildings in regions as far apart as Essex, Lancashire and Aberdeen. The first architect of distinction to employ Drake's services was Professor Hayter Lewis, who in 1868 built some cottages at Staplehurst.26 In 1870 Drake built Fernlands Villa, Chertsey (Plate SA), to the designs of T. H. Wonnacott27; in 1872 he built a church and school at Whitehaven to the design of T. L. Banks28; in 1873 he built Down Hall, Harlow (Plate SB), to the design of F. P. Cockerell (a friend of Sir Arthur Blomfield and honorary secretary of the R.I.B.A.)29; and some time before 1875 he constructed a mansion for Lord Portman to the design of J. B. Green30, and the Master's lodge at Marlborough College to the design of G. E. Street.31 With the possible exception of the latter building, which was of flint concrete with lump chalk packing, all were of normal concrete, 'bonded' with hoop iron, and the architects made remarkably little attempt to dissimulate the true nature of the material. Down Hall, built for Sir H. Selwyn-Ibbetson, is a particularly striking example of the best concrete work of the period. The only constructional material used other than gravel concrete was the stone used for quoins, cornices, columns and openings. The plain surfaces were divided into panels, the stiles being plain Portland cement and the panels rough-cast with fine sea shingle. Decorative panels and two horizontal friezes were executed in sgraffito 'by Mr. Wormleighton from cartoons by Mr. Wise, both of South Kensington'.32 The baneful influence of South Kensington will be discussed further in a later chapter. Two other important pioneers in this period were W. H. Lascelles and Philip Brannon. Lascelles was originally an architect, but in 1875 he had devised a remarkable system of reinforced pre-cast slab construction when designing a house for Sir Sidney Waterlow, and this he lost no time in patenting. It consisted of a wooden framework with posts 3 ft. apart, faced with concrete slabs measuring 3 ft. by 2 ft. and i£ in. thick. The slabs were cast in moulds with 'iron rods embedded in the concrete to strengthen the slabs, which are faced on both sides so as to require no further finishing. The face of the mould may be so prepared, that the outer face of the slab would look like wall tiling.'33 In 1878 the timber scantlings were replaced by 'cement studs with iron in them',34 and The Builder announced that 'the patentee has secured the valuable co-operation of Mr. Norman Shaw to assist him in putting this material into 42

CONCRETE picturesque shape, and publishes a very pretty volume of cottage buildings drawn by Mr. Maurice B. Adams from that gentleman's designs. We should never wish to speak otherwise than respectfully of anything produced by Mr. Norman Shaw, but we must confess that we fail to see the reason for thus imitating rustic buildings in a modern material, unless it be to believe that there is a charm in whatever is old-fashioned in building and something wrong about whatever is new. Our opinion is that here was a real chance for doing something new on the basis of a new material and method, which chance has been deliberately and almost perversely thrown away; for the very surfaces of the cement slabs are made in what is called by the builder a "fish-scale pattern", to imitate the effect of wall tiling, and it is promised that the slabs may be stained with an indelible red stain with the same object.'35 Shaw's insidious craving for redness seems to have produced an indelible stain on Lascelles' mind, as he tended more and more to specialize in vermilion ornament for Norman Shaw and Ewan Christian to incorporate in their Queen Anne fa9ades. The Builder's wrath was probably aggravated by a particularly overpowering product of the co-operation between Lascelles and Shaw, which had been awarded a gold medal and the Legion of Honour at the 1878 Paris Exhibition. Philip Brannon's work attracted less attention in the technical magazines, but his work was no less important. In 1871 and 1874 he took out patents for a system of monolithic concrete reinforced with iron rods, and founded a small syndicate called The Monolithic Fireproof and Sanitary Construction Works Ltd.36 The title of Brannon's company was in itself significant. We have seen how the incentive for Cointeraux's early efforts had been to find a cheap fireproof building material, but in later years the stress had nearly always been on cheapness. By using the words 'fireproof and 'sanitary' (or, as we should say today, 'hygienic'), Brannon initiated an important line of propaganda which was to constitute the most effective argument of the partisans of concrete construction. The most cogent justification for using concrete for workmen's dwellings apart from any question of cost, was that it was 'sanitary', whilst the claims of concrete as a means of fireproofing public buildings, especially theatres, were soon undisputed. Both qualities fulfilled a need which had long been urgent in the new industrial age, and it was these, rather than any structural or aesthetic potentialities of the material, which prompted architects and their clients to allow the material to prove itself in increasingly important projects. In 1872 Brannon received approval from the Metropolitan Board of Works to build 'monolithic fireproof buildings' at Balliol Square, Islington37, and in about 1875 constructed a house for Sir Walter Trevelyan on concrete arches over the river Axe at Seaton, Devon38, as well as a number of large houses at Walton-on-the-Naze. These latter buildings were not reported by contemporary periodicals, but were in the 'Swiss style', with wooden balconies protected by overhanging gables, and half-timber decoration applied to the upper 43

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL storeys. Brannon's buildings at Islington, however, received a greal deal of attention from the press since in 1874 some of them collapsed owing to faulty construction.40 It was not to be expected that the many bold attempts to build large structures in a new material could always be triumphant, especially in an age when it was difficult to test materials scientifically, and when the theory of structures was almost unexplored. Concrete construction was particularly vulnerable to poor workmanship, and however careful and efficient the leading contractors might be, the reputations they had established were always at the mercy of careless labourers, unscrupulous competitors or foolhardy amateurs. A much advertised scandal had occurred in 1868 when Dr. George Larden, having read Tail's pamphlet On the Construction of Buildings in Portland Cement Concrete, decided to purchase the apparatus and build himself a four-storey house in Ailsa Park, Twickenham. On 4th September 1868, his clerk of works, who had been Tail's clerk of works on the house at East Sheen, proudly announced in the Building News that with only four workmen, he had started work at nine o'clock on August ipth, and that by August 2ist the walls of the house had reached a height of 6 ft. 4 in. Six weeks later a letter from a Mr. W. May Jr. informed the same readers that 'with respect to "H.R.Y' letter which appeared in the Building News of September 4th', the garden wall he had built looked very well, but the house itself had fallen down. The ensuing correspondence, carried on in both The Builder and the Building News3 was sharp and impassioned, but was mercifully soon closed when it showed signs of degenerating into an exchange of personal abuse between Dr. Larden and Tall. The facts of the matter seem to have been perfectly clear, since they were established by W. E. Newton, a civil engineer who had been professionally instructed to report on the catastrophe.41 In the first place, the architect's plan was blatantly defective, since the main facade, 40 ft. long, was not braced at all by cross walling, and the window openings were extremely wide. The angles, as designed, were abnormally thin, since not only were the 12 in. walls chamfered at each quoin, but each quoin was additionally weakened by a 5 in. chase intended to conceal a rain-water pipe on the interior. The foundations were defective, the gravel was inadequate and the cement, which Dr. Larden had bought cheap to save a penny a bushel, was characterized by Newton as the worst he had ever seen. The most crying defect, however, and the immediate cause of the collapse, was the fact that the walls were carried up 40 ft. without a single intermediate floor joist or binder of any kind; the clerk of works having been so anxious to break the records for speed of construction that he could not wait for the cast-iron beams to arrive from Belgium. The main wall collapsed quietly in the night, dragging with it the confidence of quite a large section of the public. In 1875, publicity was given to the case of Froggatt v. Firth, in which the plaintiff succeeded in his action for recovery of damages when two concrete 44 39

CONCRETE houses in course of construction collapsed due to faulty ingredients.42 In October 1878, the concrete floors failed in the new Comparative Anatomy Schools at Cambridge, as a result of which the new concrete roof and floors of Clare College Lodge were inspected by Blomfield and Rickman and declared defective.43 In neither case were there any casualties, but the public again became aware that concrete construction involved far greater risks than its promoters were prepared to avow. These several failures did not merely make architects less inclined to use a material which was so difficult to supervise; they also stiffened the attitude of the Metropolitan building inspectors, who had always been unwilling to approve a process which could not be subjected to traditional tests. As early as 1866, the district surveyor of Camberwell had refused permission for the construction of concrete walls, on the grounds that there was no 'bond' as required by the regulations for masonry44; and however much the various interested contractors might patiently explain the characteristics of concrete agglomeration, the local surveyors persisted in pleading this obviously irrelevant clause in the building act as an excuse for refusing permission to erect monolithic walls. Even when permission was granted, the Metropolitan authorities still insisted that a 'bond' should be provided by incorporating hoop iron at every'course'. In 1872, Joseph Tall was summoned under section 56 of the Metropolitan Building Act for unlawfully erecting a building in London, in that he failed to submit the plans to the district surveyor, and refused to pull down a wall which the surveyor had condemned. The edifice in question was one of six blocks of three-storey apartments, with walls, floors and a flat roof of concrete and iron joists, which the Peabody Trustees were constructing in East Lane, Bermondsey.45 Although the offenses for which Tall was indicted had undoubtedly been committed, the case was in fact extremely controversial, since the real point at issue was the legality of building in concrete at all. The walls had been condemned for 'lack or absence of bond', and the summons was by way of being a test case on this issue. After a great deal of discussion, in which the Southwark Police Court magistrates failed to reach a decision, the prosecution was withdrawn in the following August, and the regulations were modified; just in time, as it so happened, for the Metropolitan Board of Works to approve Brannon's disastrous project at New Bunhill Fields, Islington a few days later. The technical press in general supported Tall, but the Twickenham catastrophe was too fresh in the public mind for the seriousness and complexity of the issue to be underestimated, and it was appreciated that however obstructive and obtuse the district surveyors might sometimes be, there was everything to be said for strict inspection and efficient control. 'The three desiderata to be sought for in concrete construction are strength, durability and aesthetic effect,' wrote the editor of the Building News. 'The first may be considered as 45

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL proved, the second arguing analogically, may also be regarded as proved, although it will require time to definitely determine this. The third has not been proved yet, but as the material affords plenty of scope for aesthetic treatment, it is to be hoped that it will before long. Public opinion is turning more and more towards the value of building in concrete, and it would be a great pity if the whole system received a severe blow by some ill-advised and unscientific attempt at construction, of which any competent professional man could detect the inherent weakness at a glance.'46 Although, as a result of the Bermondsey test case, the adequacy of the natural 'bond' in concrete was legally established, the adequacy of its fireresisting qualities was apparently not, for in 1885 a contractor named Henry Goodwin was charged at Southwark Police Court with having contravened another clause in the regulations, which stated that 'every building shall be enclosed with walls constructed of brick, stone, or other hard and incombustible substances'.47 The magistrates dismissed the summons, accepting concrete as an incombustible material, but as a result, probably, of the court action, the Metropolitan Board of Works finally decided to amend the By-laws so as to include formal references to concrete, and no longer leave decisions to the ad hoc interpretations of district surveyors or magistrates. These modifications to the existing By-laws were published the following year; they appeased the builders by specifically allowing concrete walls (although only on condition that they were of the same thickness as that required for brickwork), and also mollified the district surveyors by allowing an increase of fifty per cent in their inspection fees whenever concrete was used. Henry Goodwin, who thus played a noteworthy part in obtaining legal recognition of the soundness of concrete construction, was one of the most zealous promoters of the new material. His first use of it was probably in 1867 (Plate 9A), when he commissioned Edward I'Anson to design a large warehouse for him in Great Guildford Street, Southwark, using Tail's apparatus.48 From the very beginning he was at loggerheads with the Metropolitan Board of Works, and for this building, he was obliged to wait a year before permission to use concrete could finally be obtained.49 In 1869 he built a concrete chapel at Snaresbrook, Essex50; in the same year he built a concrete villa in Addiscombe Road, Croydon51; and in 1872 he constructed a factory in King Street, E.G. 2., which he claimed was the first concrete building ever to be given a licence in the City of London.52 The building concerned in the litigation about fire-resistance was a block of workmen's flats in Zoar Street, Southwark (Plate 93), built with five storeys and a flat roof. The staircase in the centre was open, and led to access balconies at the rear which were of concrete slabs cantilevered on iron joists. The most curious feature of the design was the detailing of the facade, which, with its simple string-course, surbased arches and mascaron key-stone is quite unmistakably Louis XV (Plate 10). It seems not unlikely that the design was copied 46

CONCRETE from a French model, since apartment blocks were so very much more common in Paris than in London. In addition to all the various concrete buildings constructed by important London contractors, a considerable number of essays in the material were made in the suburbs and provinces. In 1867, concrete cottages were built at Selling, near Faversham.53 In 1869 a new concrete school was built at Cattistock in Dorset to 'a Gothic design furnished by the late Mr. J. Hicks of Dorchester', but later modified to 'the plainest form possible'.54 In 1870 a row of five dwelling houses and shops was erected near the railway station at Twickenham with 'Mr. Hooper's apparatus'.55 In 1871 a concrete Temperance Hall was built in Station Road, Workington,56 and in the same year a crescent of high-class five-storey houses was built in Marine Crescent, Folkstone, 'close to the bathing establishment'.57 In 1872 a concrete house was built near Addlestone railway station, described by the proud owner as 'a handsome Gothic house, which anyone interested can inspect within the next ten days on presenting his card to the gardener'.58 In 1873 the Hastings Cottage Improvement Society experimented with concrete working-men's dwellings and built Scrivens' Buildings, a block of nine apartments at the foot of East Hill.59 The material was especially favoured by large landowners for buildings for their farm tenants: in 1867 some cottages, a farm and a not very successful church were built of concrete on the Marquess of Salisbury's estate at Hatfield on the advice of Captain Fowke, the architect of the Albert Hall60 and in 1873 Thomas Potter, who was then agent to Lord Ashburton, built a number of buildings at Steeple Langford, near Salisbury, and at All Cannings, near Devizes61, which were to make him an enthusiastic apostle of concrete construction for the rest of his life. The importance which concrete was beginning to assume can be judged by the number of lectures on the subject given at this period, and not all of the titles have such derogatory implications as On the Architectural Treatment of Rubbish^ a paper delivered by Gilbert Redgrave to the Architectural Association in i87i.62 As early as 1857 George Rennie had lectured to the Institute of Civil Engineers on The Employment of Concrete in works of Engineering and Architecture™) and in 1866 a paper had been read before the British Association on The Application of Concrete to Fireproof Construction™, but neither of these lectures was intended especially for architects, or dealt with anything more elaborate in building construction than concrete foundations or floors. The first important public discussion on the architectural use of concrete was probably that which took place at the Architectural Association on 8th January 1868 under the chairmanship of Phene Spiers.65 This not only aroused considerable interest at the time, but prompted a whole series of regular articles in the Building News on The Art of Building in Concrete.™ In 1872 a lecture on Concrete Buildings was given to the Northern Architectural Association by its president,67 and in the same year the president of the Architec47

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL tural Association of Ireland read to his members a paper with a similar title.68 A most important lead was given at this time by the Royal Institute of British Architects, which, it must be remembered, was a far more exclusive and academic institution than it is today, and numbered less than 500 full members. Bye-law 29 required that 'all members, whether Associates or Fellows, should deliver an original paper within twelve months of their election, or make a donation to the library', and even though most members gladly availed themselves of the latter alternative, the implicit obligation to make an academic contribution clearly indicated the spirit in which the Institute was being conducted. Its early recognition of the importance of concrete is thus significant, and may be taken as evidence of the new architectural status which the material had achieved. In 1857, Professor Hayter Lewis had read a paper on Experiments in Concrete, but the discussion was confined mainly to minor structural works, and represented little advance on Godwin's prize-winning essay. In 1871, however, the new wave of interest and research was ushered in by two papers given on June 5th by Thomas H. Wonnacott and Sir Arthur Blomfield. The chairman was Edward I'Anson, who claimed to be the oldest as well as one of the most experienced users of concrete at the meeting, having adopted it for internal works in the Royal Exchange Building in 1837. Other speakers included Robert Kerr (Professor of the Arts of Construction at King's College, London), Alexander Payne and Charles Barry (jr). Wonnacott's lecture was a thorough and balanced survey of the technical aspects of concrete construction, dealing not only with methods of preparing and testing the material, but with its resistance to moisture and heat, and other mechanical properties. In spite of the success of his villa at Chertsey, and his pride as an early pioneer, his attitude was more cautious than one might expect, especially when compared with the unrestrained claims which enthusiastic building contractors had made so familiar. He considered, indeed, that the material should be employed only as an exception, and then only in minor structures. 'For first, second or even third class houses I would not recommend it, but for houses having no intricacies of plan, and no pretension to ornament, it may be used to advantage. For retaining walls, backing or filling in to ashlar stonework, for cottages, farm-buildings, fence-walls, warehouses, sea-walls and other buildings that may be made endurable to the eye by cement rendering I should certainly permit if I did not recommend its use.'69 Blomfield's paper was far more interesting, but since it was concerned mainly with the aesthetic aspects of concrete design, it will, for this reason, be dealt with in a later chapter. The technical aspects of concrete were also referred to in a lecture on New Materials and Recent Inventions connected with Building given by T. Roger Smith at the Royal Institute of British Architects in May 1875, with Sir Gilbert Scott in the chair. In the discussion which followed, Professor Kerr remarked that 'with regard to the use of concrete, I think there is more in the 48

CONCRETE question than most of us suppose. I am myself accustomed to say that concrete makes the only theoretically perfect wall we have. The chief difficulties with regard to its use seem, at present, to be two — first, how to manipulate concrete with sufficient facility, and secondly, how to make it weathertight, for I believe a concrete wall at the moment requires to be covered with a cement facing, to keep the wet out, which is of course a very serious consideration.'70 Professor Kerr's views were confirmed by the honorary secretary of the Institute, F. P. Cockerell, whose comments are especially remarkable in view of the fact that he was no mere arm-chair critic, but had, as we have seen, successfully completed a large concrete house near Harlow only two years before. 'I assume concrete to be, what in my opinion it should be, viz. not a solid mass but more or less a honeycomb; that is the proper construction for concrete,' he contended. 'I may further remark, that the use of concrete produces an inconvenience which nobody would suspect without experience of it, viz., that unless the flues are lined with pipes or panelled with very exceptional care, the smoke will percolate through the walls and issue in distant parts of the house wherever any part of the wall is not plastered.'71 These gruesome propensities did not prevent Cockerell from using concrete two years later when building a house at Datchet for Mr. T. E. Howe, but he dispensed with patent apparatus, and used ordinary timber form-work between the brick dressings of the openings.72 It will be seen, then, that within the short space of twenty years, a few courageous and far-sighted building contractors in England and France had demonstrated the practicability of mass concrete for load-bearing walls, but were unable to proceed much further until architects had studied the problems of external appearance, and engineers had evolved more efficient ways of reinforcing horizontal slabs. The interest of architects in the aesthetic problems involved was not slow to be aroused, and their many heart-searchings and speculations on this subject will be given detailed attention in a later chapter. It is important at this stage to note, however, how intractable and repellent was the material they were being asked to use. Today we think of concrete as a highly compacted smooth material with a cement surface so fine that it reproduces every grain of the form-work in which it is cast. Evenif this cement film is removed, the surface is still compact in texture and uniform in tone. In 1870, however, the normal concrete surface presented, as we see, a rough honeycombed appearance, mottled with such sombre and variegated hues that not even the most radical fundamentalist could ever have seriously contended that it had any aesthetic appeal in its natural state. It is only by appreciating this that we can sympathize with the late Victorian architect's apparent obsession with the morality of facing concrete with other materials since, in accordance with Ruskinian doctrine, he must either justify his use of facing materials on ethical grounds, or eschew concrete altogether. The imperfect water-resistance of honeycomb concrete was one such obvious justification, and thus militated D 49 c.c.

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL still further against any positive attempts to discover the architectural possibilities of using concrete alone. As compared with architects, the engineers remained curiously aloof and indifferent, and their contribution towards solving the structural problems involved in the combination of concrete and metal remained insignificant until long after the general theory of the subject had been broadly established by architects and contractors combined. The lively interest in concrete suddenly taken by the architectural profession is of particular significance in that it undoubtedly helped towards a truer general understanding of the function of reinforcement. We have seen how metal rods or strips had long been used either as a form of lateral bond, especially at corners, or as tension members to prevent the separation of parallel supporting walls. Yet both these systems had long been common in masonry practice, especially on the continent, and although several of the early pioneers of concrete were vaguely aware that a mesh of rods embedded in a concrete floor seemed to give additional strength to the slab, they were still unable to enlarge upon their discoveries, or arrive at a rational theory of beam or column design. There were of course many who remained distrustful of the incorporation of metal in concrete, either because they were offended on ethical grounds at the thought of uniting two alien materials, or else because they feared some hidden structural weakness would develop. Drake used as little iron as possible, believing that 'it would soon be dispensed with altogether, so soon as accurate tests had been made, and accurate schedules framed, showing the safe loads for various spans and thicknesses of concrete floors and slabs.'73 But others were intrigued by the possibility of making metal and concrete work together in perfect unison, and a Mr. Robins even went so far as to take out a patent in 1869 in which gum was incorporated with the concrete to make sure that it stuck to the steel.74 In a patent taken out in 1867, H. Y. B. Scott expressed more clearly than anyone previously the theory of reinforcement when he stated: 'The floor becomes one solid beam, having the tie-rods and hoop iron in combination with the concrete to take the tensile strain, and the concrete to take the compressive action resulting from the weight of the floor.'75 Little by little, the intellectual atmosphere was being prepared for the discoveries and structural theories which were to revolutionize architecture at the end of the century. The architect who did most at this period to familiarize the profession with the idea of reinforcement was Alexander Payne, who later became Borough surveyor of Hackney. In 1873 he had built a factory floor of groined concrete vaulting in which diagonal tie-rods were embedded to neutralize the thrust, and this gave him the idea of developing the system as a series of concrete domes containing concentric rings of iron.76 The idea of applying concrete to a distinctive form of roof construction was in itself novel and significant. We have seen that concrete barrel vaults were not entirely neglected by the early pioneers, but in general they were more interested in evolving wide concrete 50

CONCRETE slabs, and using them as either floors or roofs as circumstances required. No desire to emulate the Pantheon seems to have manifested itself, and most of Coignet's contemporaries evidently shared his assumption that flat roofs were the most desirable and logical for concrete buildings. In Payne's method, patented in 1875 and used three years later in a factory at Oldham77, the iron rings were still used basically as independently acting tension members, like the chains round the dome of St. Peter's, Rome; but although the reinforcement was as yet distributed quite unscientifically, its systematic incorporation within the curved shell of the vault constituted a radical and epoch-making modification of earlier conceptions. By translating the idea of reinforcement into three dimensions for the first time, Payne may, without exaggeration, be regarded as having created the prototype of the great shell vaults of the future. The inventor of this new system was not unaware of the vast field of development he had opened up, even though his views as to the direction it would take were to some extent vitiated through his persistence in regarding reinforcement as primarily a self-supporting frame. 'How far can iron be advantageously used in connection with concrete?' he demanded rhetorically in a lecture given in 1876. 'It appears to me that no two materials are so admirably suited to go together as iron and concrete. With the one a light skeleton framework can be made of almost any dimensions and of great strength and lightness, and in the other we have a plastic material that can be readily moulded to any shape, and can be made to enclose the skeleton and give it substance and solidity, and it is well known that once you bed iron and keep it from the air, you entirely protect it from rust and oxidation. But, more than this, iron is just the material to give to walls the tensile and binding strength that they lack. I would lay it down as an axiom that concrete offers unusual facilities as a material for walls, etc., from the readiness with which iron or other ties can be embedded in it in any direction to resist any thrust or tendency to separate in the structure.'78 This idea of reinforcing a wall in any direction against thrust, although perhaps imprecisely expressed, was also a revolutionary suggestion, and when considered in conjunction with his reinforced domes, illustrates once more the newness of his attitude to reinforcement in general, which had been regarded until then as only relevant to the construction of floors. It will have been noticed that Payne accepted without question the idea that iron embedded in concrete .would not rust. This is obviously the most fundamental condition for all reinforcement, but doubt persisted for many years, and it was not really until well into the twentieth century, after a number of widely publicized demonstrations, that public fears on the subject were fully allayed.79 It was not to be expected that Payne's assurances would be universally accepted. In February 1885, he informed the editor of The Builder that the dome of Brompton Oratory, London, was to be constructed on his method, but a month later, the architect Herbert Gribble, repudiated this report in a lecture given to the Society of Civil and Mechanical Engineers. 'It

51

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL was my original intention to have embedded in the middle of the concrete vaulting hoop-iron bond interlacing each other, for the purpose of securing a toughness to the material; but subsequently I felt that the presence of iron in such a substance would eventually do more harm than good by its oxidation, and, on the other hand, if the concrete was unable to support it, no amount of hoop-iron bond would enhance its stability, and so I abandoned it altogether.'80 As a result, this 53 ft. diameter cupola was built in mass concrete, graduated from 14 in. at the haunches to 7 in. at the crown. Payne's 1876 lecture was commented upon at length in a leading article in The Builder (written presumably by George Godwin), but although it wisely advised that 'the attention of inventors cannot be too earnestly directed towards the problem of reinforcement'81, the scope of the article was limited to the consideration of floor slabs, and neglected the really significant aspects of Payne's prophetic vision. The only inventor to accept this challenge, and study scientifically the effect of reinforcement in beams, was Thaddeus Hyatt, but although most of his research at this time was carried out and published in London, he was an American citizen, and his achievements more closely affected developments in the United States. The wide general interest in concrete was, in fact to languish almost as suddenly as it had begun. Not unnaturally, the energetic discussions carried on by the various architectural societies, and the editorial comments published in the technical press, soon exhausted a subject about which so little of practical value was known. The discussion had given architects who had used concrete the satisfaction of announcing the fact to their colleagues; it had given building contractors the opportunity of advertising their proficient use of it to the profession; but it had also given sceptics the pleasure of dwelling upon the errors committed and the snags to be overcome, and as a result we find a decrease rather than an increase in the number of important buildings built of concrete in the decade which followed. Some blame for the declining popularity of concrete may also be attributed to the unco-operative and unpredictable attitude of the Metropolitan Board of Works, but since this authority had fortunately no control over railway constructions, research in the sphere of pure engineering was unrestricted. The many engineering applications of concrete were in fact beginning to arouse great popular interest, and one building contractor, who in 1871 had just built five cottages in concrete, considered that it would be 'well adapted (both as regards cost and strength) for constructing a tube or tunnel under the Channel'.82 It was the work of civil engineers, unrestricted by building codes, which really allowed the possibilities of concrete to be exploited to the full at the end of the century, and although architects can be justly proud of their own contribution to the search for formal expression, their debt to civil engineers can never be adequately expressed. During the whole of this early period, the principal concern of those who

52

CONCRETE advocated concrete was, as has already been pointed out, that of cheapness. This in itself was nothing of which to be ashamed, since most architectural forms throughout the course of history have been conditioned, if not actually evolved, through a search for economy of either material or effort. But in the highly competitive industrial atmosphere of the mid-nineteenth century, the search for economy in concrete was unwisely restricted to experiments with waste materials and the employment of unskilled labour; an error which did not pass unnoticed at the time. In a letter signed 'A Practical Operative' which appeared in The Builder on loth June 1876, the writer approved the criticism made of this short-sighted policy by Alexander Payne in the recent R.I.B.A. discussion, and added: 'Science, art and skill are essential to all successful results in establishing one of the greatest reforms that ever took place in building, building operations, decorations, &c., appertaining thereto: therefore, the advocacy of our concrete builders for unskilled labour must be wrong, raising distrust of the qualified and impeding real progress by accidents. Constant and qualified supervision is the necessity, and a scarcity of skill the want.' The apparent ability to dispense with craftsmen particularly recommended the use of concrete in those regions of the British Empire where skilled labour was almost unobtainable, and it was thus that in 1886 the Secretariat and Army Headquarters of the Government of India at Simla was constructed entirely of concrete on an iron frame.83 But in Europe conditions were otherwise, and it was essential, if the structural and monumental potentialities of concrete were to be developed, that more cogent motives than cheapness should assert themselves. Such motives occurred and first became apparent when the fireproof qualities of concrete were exploited in a search for safe theatre design. The end of the i88o's was the boom period of theatre construction in London. It was also the period which saw some of the most catastrophic fires in an age only too familiar with the hazards of a lamp-lit stage. The public had been particularly shocked by two disasters which occurred within a short time of one another; one at the Bolton Theatre, the other at the Grand Theatre, Islington, and in the controversies which followed, the advantages of concrete construction were made manifestly clear, since the only undamaged parts of the Grand Theatre, Islington, were those which Charles Drake had constructed of concrete. The proscenium was of monolithic concrete 3 ft. thick, with 'solid marble concrete' moulded jambs and soffits on the 32 ft. wide proscenium arch. The staircases were all of monolithic concrete with 'marble concrete' treads and risers, and the landings and refreshment-room floors were of concrete with iron joists embedded.84 Commenting on Drake's claims, the editor of The Builder (now H. H. Statham) remarked that 'it may be worth while to build one large theatre in concrete and iron entirely as an experiment'86; an idea which was not entirely original since, as we have seen, it had been put forward by Francois Coignet. As early as 1868, Charles Phipps had announced that the Gaiety Theatre, of 53

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL which he was the architect, would have the balcony, upper boxes and gallery of wrought iron and cement concrete, adding that 'with the exception of the Grand Opera and the new Vaudeville Theatre in Paris, there is no theatre in Europe which has been constructed with such regard to prevention of fire.'86 In 1872, Phipps built the New Theatre, Aberdeen with solid concrete side and party walls87; in 1887 Walter Emden built Terry's Theatre, Strand, mainly of concrete, and in the following year this same architect constructed the Garrick Theatre and the Court Theatre, Chelsea, to similar designs.88 A month after the publication of Statham's leading article, Phipps announced that his new Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, was to be constructed with the balconies, corridors, foyers, refreshment-rooms and dressing-room floors in iron and concrete, but here, it should be added, the walls were of brick.89 The climax of this new policy in theatre design was the construction of the Royal English Opera House (now the Palace Theatre), begun at the end of the same year. In this monumental building, which was to seat nearly two thousand spectators, the walls were of monolithic concrete construction, as were the seating ramps, balcony fronts and all the roofs. The floors, ceilings, staircases and landings were of steel and concrete; the balconies were of steel cantilevered from concealed columns; and the 30 ft. deep cellar below the stage was made waterproof by successive layers of concrete and asphalt. Richard d'Oyley Carte was so confident of the fireproof qualities of his new theatre that he announced publicly that it would not be insured.90 Mr. d'Oyley Carte's confidence was not however shared by Captain Shaw of the London Fire Brigade; a man whose name will always be remembered, if only through a derisive reference to him in lolanthe. Far from believing in the demonstrable fireproof qualities of reinforced concrete, he refused to allow his men even to enter a burning building which had concrete floors91; an intransigeance which seemed justified when, in a lecture given at Leeds in 1891, Professor John Goodman condemned concrete when mixed with kon because 'the iron expands rapidly under the influence of heat, and consequently disturbs and breaks the rigid concrete'.92 The hostility of 'experts' and the conflicting opinions of scientists thus combined with all the other causes mentioned to produce a sort of impasse in the development of concrete construction. By 1892, the interest of architects had almost completely waned, contractors became less insistent, and the native genius seemed incapable of developing the material much further than the stage it had reached twenty years previously. True, there were still a number of inventions being patented. In 1885 Lee and Hodgson had patented a concrete column reinforced by vertical bars and a spirally coiled trellis, which may have been the first example of its kind.93 In 1891 and the years following, a number of patents were taken out by F. G. Edwards for beams which displayed an advanced knowledge of reinforced concrete theory.94 But the actual building of concrete structures was still being carried out by small contractors 54

concrete using primitive methods, and the challenging example, which had been given by Francois Coignet, of a nation-wide exploitation, was never followed up. Only one person seems to have understood the true nature of the problem, and that man, appropriately enough, was George Godwin. In a leading article published in The Builder in 1876, he quoted Sydney Smith as saying: 'That man is not the discoverer of any art who first says the thing; but he who says it so long, and so loud, and so clearly, that he compels mankind to hear him.'95 No Englishman, however, seemed to have enough energy, inspiration or courage to force the new material on the attention of his fellow countrymen by developing it on a vast scale, and it was left to the French to achieve this task, and complete the architectural revolution which they themselves had begun.

55

CHAPTER THREE

Reinforcement

A

hitects in nineteenth-century America never seem to have taken as great an interest in the structural possibilities of concrete as their confreres in Europe, even though, by a curious coincidence, some of the most important contributions to the development of reinforcement were produced in the United States. The reasons for this are not far to seek. Until the last quarter of the century, the high cost of imported cement made the use of mass concrete an unjustifiable luxury for any type of building, and when eventually the cement industry was established in America, steel was becoming increasingly available for tall buildings, in which the frames were made fireproof not, as in Europe, with concrete casings, but with terra-cotta slabs. The conjunction of iron floor beams with concrete infillings, which had first made English contractors suspect hidden virtues in the combination of the two materials, did indeed eventually promote important developments in the United States; but the problems of the concrete wall, around which, in England, so much thoughtful architectural controversy was to revolve, had little relevance in America until Hollywood over-enthusiastically exploited the decorative potentialities of concrete in the following century. In 1837, a Mr. G. A. Ward had built a residence in concrete at New Brighton, Staten Island, which was for many years a landmark at the entrance to New York Harbour, but although the concrete was moulded on the site, the walls were almost certainly built up of pre-cast blocks.1 The only other early examples of concrete construction seem to have been the three-storey barn built by Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, at Chappaqua, N.Y., in 1852; a dwelling house built in 1867 at Winona, Minnesota; and a large three-storey building with walls 2 ft. thick constructed in Chicago, on East van Buren Street, immediately after the fire in 1872.2 No hint was thus given of the remarkably advanced research which was to be suddenly undertaken by American inventors in the 1870*5; inventions which had important consequences in Europe, even though they were somewhat neglected in their country of origin. The first of these inventors was William E. Ward3, a mechanical engineer who came originally from Philadelphia, and founded the bolt factory of Rus56

REINFORCEMENT sell, Burdsall and Ward at Port Chester, N.Y. When on a visit to England in 1867, he noticed some workmen having great difficulty in removing cement from their spades, and it occurred to him that if cement adhered to iron tools with such undesirable tenacity by accident, it must also adhere equally firmly to iron joists deliberately embedded in concrete floors. Whether or not he was already familiar at that date with Coignet's methods, it is impossible to say, but it seems more than likely that he first learnt the details of the process from Major-General Q. A. Gillmore's A practical treatise on Coignet-Beton and other artificial stone} published in New York in 1871, the year of Ward's first experiments. In this work, full information was given concerning casting and form-work, and it is significant that both Gillmore and Ward always referred to concrete by its French rather than by its English name. Ward's experiments were conducted in 1871 and 1872. Their ultimate purpose was to obtain information preparatory to building a new and entirely fireproof mansion near his home at Port Chester (Plate 11), intended to placate his wife, who was terrified of fire. By making and testing a number of Portland cement concrete beams reinforced with iron joists, Ward demonstrated that 'the utility of both iron and beton could be greatly increased for building purposes through a properly adjusted combination of their special physical qualities, and very much greater efficiency be reached through their combination than could possibly be realized by the exclusive use of either material separately in the same or in equal quantity'. With scientific precision, he ascertained their deflection, shear strength and resistance to fire, determined the optimum size for the stone aggregate, and calculated the reciprocal value of the two materials combined. Most important of all, he concluded that the iron should be placed near the bottom of the beam 'to utilize its tensile quality for resisting the strain below the neutral axis'.4 The tremendous significance of this entirely new scientific approach, and its influence on modern developments, will be apparent. Once his experiments were terminated, he commissioned a New York architect, Robert Mook, to design 'a large first-class comfortable home, with walls such as would be required if they were of brick with a hollow space, and floors of the thickness required for construction with timber, furred off on the underside, panelled and elaborately ornamented with plaster'.5 The design of this dignified structure was in the 'Hudson River Villa style', consisting of a French Renaissance chateau wedged between two machicolated towers, with a Tuscan colonnade encircling the lower extremities. Known locally as Ward's Castle, it was originally referred to as Ward's Folly in anticipation of its imminent collapse, but apart from a few fissures, the building is still as sound as the day it was built, and stands overlooking one of the most beautiful New England landscapes as a proud if somewhat incongruous monument to the courage and invention of the family which occupies it. No wood was used at all except in the window frames, doors and stair-rails, and even the mansard roof was 57

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL made of bare concrete reinforced by iron rods. The floors were covered with fitted carpets nailed to embedded pegs so as to avoid the need for a wooden parquet. The building was begun in 1873, using a concrete of Portland cement, sand and crushed blue-stone, and Ward was able not only to cast all the decorative details of the facade in situ, but also to cast cornices and panels within the structural coffered ceiling; a feat all the more remarkable in that he employed only his own workmen, and supervised the work entirely himself. The floors were 3^ in. thick reinforced with TS in. rods, and some of these slabs spanned as much as 6 ft. between the reinforced concrete beams; partitions were of 2| in. reinforced panels which he had shown to equal in strength a brick wall three times that thickness; the veranda columns were of concrete reinforced with f in. rods, and made hollow down the centre to act as rainwater pipes. Certain features of the design, such as the incorporation of a complex hypocaust heating system within the structural walls, suggest that Ward may possibly have obtained some of his ideas from current English technical periodicals, since a similar system had been used by Wonnacott in 1870 at Fernlands Villa, Chertsey; but even so his initiative, ingenuity and daring were quite extraordinary in view of the fact that, like Coignet, he was not really a builder at all, and thus had no practical experience of the trade. His achievement was recognized in the American Architect of 1877 and in the Gazette des Architectes of 1884, but his example was not immediately followed anywhere, even though it prompted several articles in the first-named periodical concerning the use of concrete as a building material. Meanwhile, however, the study of reinforced concrete beam design was being developed independently by Thaddeus Hyatt, another American inventor, who was working at that time in England. In 1873 Hyatt had established a factory in New York to exploit his new patent pavement lenses, and a few years later had gone to England to build a similar factory in London. As early as 1855 he had been interested in the idea of reinforced flooring, but his experiments with beams of perforated brick threaded on to iron tie-beams, slabs of plaster of Paris embedded with hollow tin tubes, and tin tubes filled with mortar, had not met with any success. Later, however, as a result probably of experimenting with glass lenses embedded in concrete pavement slabs, his attention was attracted to the possibilities of combining concrete and iron, and after having studied the matter for some little time, he enlisted the aid of Thomas Rickett, a retired railway engineer from Birmingham, to help him with the theoretical analysis of the structural problems involved.6 At this period, the public's growing conviction that so called 'fireproof castiron construction was more dangerous than solid timber had become a certainty, and when Hyatt started building his own factory in Waverley Place, New York, in 1873, he had preferred to use solid log floors of his own invention. In his new factory in Farringdon Street, London, however, he used iron 58

REINFORCEMENT surrounded by concrete in the manner he had just discovered, and was thus able to put to his own immediate advantage those benefits he was about to bestow on the general public. The detailed results of his experiments were published for private circulation in 1877 under the title: An account of some experiments with PortlandCement-Concrete combined with iron as a building material, with reference to economy of metal in construction, and for security against fire in the making of roofs, floors and walking surfaces. By diagrams and calculations he was able to demonstrate that the compressive strength of concrete above the neutral axis was more than sufficient to counteract the tensile stress of the bars below, and showed that by placing 2\ in. by J in. iron ties six inches apart at the bottom of the slab, the concrete would compensate for the normal upper flange of an iron beam. Tests were made in July 1877, when fifty beams, ranging from 200 Ib. to 900 Ib. with the reinforcement arranged in various combinations, were loaded to breaking point at David Kirkaldy's workshop in Southwark Street. The mechanical properties of the two materials when subjected to intense heat were also studied, and as a result, Hyatt not only proved that his beams were structurally economical under loads, but were also free from the danger of rupture by fire, since the expansion of iron and concrete were the same. For this latter discovery alone he deserves to rank as one of the creators of modern reinforced concrete design, since it is upon this fundamental assumption that all calculations depend. His detailed accounts of the various calculations and tests naturally make rather dull reading, but when describing his newly invented Stone Light at the end of the book, he becomes quite lyrical, and forgets for a moment the annoyances being caused him by the Metropolitan building surveyors who, with their usual perversity, were unable to find any reference to 'iUuminated concrete slabs inset with lenses' amongst their regulations, and therefore condemned it out of hand. 'The writer may say in passing that he is now prepared to undertake the construction of domes of any span from two feet to two hundred, according to the general methods herein set forth. Such domes when set with glass may be underlined with bent or curved glass stained or coloured to any design, the effects of such combination being singularly beautiful and unique, and for the roofs of churches particularly applicable. The plain stone light roofs may be curved to any pattern, whether as dome or arch; and when made with glasses having a stepped lens face (the steps being ground) transmit and diffuse a light of remarkable softness and clearness suitable for picture galleries and other places requiring a particularly good light. By the use of the New Portland Cement in making these structures the illuminating roofs, even when set with glass, are made thoroughly fireproof— a great desideratum for a gallery containing treasures of art. But the combined fireproof concrete and iron has other uses besides the ones thus far treated of. For chimney shafts of great height for manufacturing purposes, this combination of metal blades and 59

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL concrete seems admirably adapted, the metals, like roots of a tree deep-planted in the ground, extending upward through the concrete mass, and threaded upon wires forming circles, give to such a monolithic construction the strength of a hollow metallic cylinder, at once lighter, cheaper and stronger than one made of brick. And if serviceable for such purposes, equally applicable for light-houses, needing coherence as well above as below the waves. Such lighthouses also, when set with glass, being capable of transmitting light from base to summit like a column of flame.'7 To what extent can Hyatt be considered the real inventor of modern reinforced concrete design? Needless to say, even in his own day there were angry letters to the press contesting his claims to originality. Matthew Allen (who had been Lascelle's contractor for Sir Sydney Waterlow's house) claimed not merely that he had been using such a system for sixteen years, but that he used less reinforcement and gave as evidence the lintels of some six-storey flatroofed dwellings built in Mark Street, Finsbury, for the newly formed Improved Industrial Dwellings Company in i863.8 In more recent years, Joseph Louis Lambot and Joseph Monier have been popularly credited with the invention of reinforced concrete on account of Monier's reinforced cement flower pots, patented in 1867, and Lambot's reinforced cement boat, patented in 1855. Apart from the fact that both used cement mortar instead of concrete (i.e. used no aggregate), it will be apparent that there was little novelty in the architectural use of wire mesh reinforcement, which had been used in the 50*5 for plaster vaults by Labrouste. A better claim to originality lies in Monier's later patents, registered in November 1877, f°r beams and columns of cement and iron intended to be used on roads and railways. Even so, there is little doubt that he had no comprehension whatsoever of the true function of reinforcement, and when, many years later, G. A. Wayss showed him slabs with the reinforcement concentrated at the bottom, Monier criticized the arrangement, and is reported to have abruptly ended the argument by exclaiming: 'Who is the inventor, you or I?'9 Monier's principal importance is that it was through him that reinforced concrete found its way to Germany, and thence throughout the AustroHungarian empire. There had already been a slight use of concrete in Germany in the 1870*5; a concrete house, probably the first to be constructed there, was built in Friedricksberg, near Berlin in 1871, and its success prompted the architect, Dr. Riese, to build twenty-eight concrete cottages in the summer of the following year.10 In 1878 a German Portland cement manufacturer built himself a concrete house at Vorwohle, but no reinforcement was used in its construction.11 In 1879, however, occurred the great event in the history of German reinforced concrete when G. A. Wayss saw some of Monier's beams exhibited at the Antwerp Exhibition, and bought the German rights which Monier had had the foresight to establish in that same year. In 1880 Rudolph Schuster concluded a similar agreement with Monier for the Austrian rights, 60

REINFORCEMENT and then formed an Austro-German company with Wayss which lasted until 1893, when it was absorbed into the firm of Wayss and Company. Further patent rights were obtained from Monier in 1884 by the firms of Freitag and Heidschuch, of Neustadt-an-der-Haardt, and by Martenstein and Josseaux, of Offenbach-am-Main, but these in their turn were acquired by Wayss in i885.*12 In 1887 Wayss published The Monier System (Iron Skeleton with Concrete Filling} in its application to Building. In spite of its title, he showed little concern with the architectural aspects of concrete design, and it is apparent that apart from being used for floors, staircases and roofs, German reinforced concrete was at this time confined mainly to engineering works, many of which, curiously enough, were constructed in France. On the other hand, Germany rapidly took the lead in the theoretical field, where the most important contributions were made towards future technical developments. Before this period the reinforcement, if calculated at all, was merely estimated as a simple ratio, and as late as 1896 Philip Hobbs, then managing director of W. B. Wilkinson's old firm, could seriously inform the Northern Architectural Association that the sectional area of the iron reinforcement could be calculated with sufficient accuracy as about one-sixteenth of the sectional area of the concrete.13 Similarly, he reported that eliptical monolithic staircases currently constructed by his firm were usually reinforced by merely laying a rod along the width of each step, and flat bars or wire rope on the soffit. Ten years before this, however, German engineers were already elaborating complete theories of beam and slab design, and although the formulae published by Koenen in the Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung in 1886 were subsequently proved to be not entirely accurate, they set a precedent for calculating concrete structures in a purely scientific manner. At about the same time, prompted by the Berlin authorities' refusal to allow cast-iron columns in stores and workshops, Professor Bauschinger of the Munich Polytechnic elaborated a study of reinforced concrete columns, and published further papers on the 'Monier System' in i885.14 Whilst Wayss was developing reinforced concrete construction in Germany, the only person exploiting it in America was Ernest Leslie Ransome, whose father's attempts to reconstitute stone have already been discussed. Ernest Ransome may possibly have gone to the United States in connection with the company his father founded at Baltimore in 1866, but shortly after this date he became superintendent of the Pacific Stone Company of San Francisco, which apparently introduced reinforcement in 1870. Whether or not Ransome had ever heard of Ward's or Hyatt's experiments we do not know; in any event he did not share Ward's confidence in the complete adherence of concrete to * The claim that Monier invented reinforced concrete was mainly fostered by the German Monier patentees at the beginning of the present century, in opposition to Hennebique's pretensions (see p. 64). Hennebique retorted by pointing out that Monier was then living in abject poverty, and that a more convincing expression of loyalty would have been to pay him some of the profits which were his due.

61

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL iron, for in 1884 he patented a twisted spiral rod intended to prevent the reinforcement from losing its grip. Ransome's first important architectural use of reinforced concrete was the Junior Museum of Stanford University, California (Plate I2A), designed originally to be constructed of sandstone, but eventually built in 1889-91 with the entire wall and floor construction of concrete, and a roof of interlocking concrete tiles on iron trusses.15 This museum, like the girls' dormitory constructed at the same time, was considered absolutely fireproof and also earthquake-proof; no wood whatsoever was used in the building, the windows being of metal and the hall panelling of marble slabs. The exterior may perhaps be criticized for the defects inevitable when one material is made to imitate another, but it has the distinction of being probably the first building in which the concrete, instead of being covered with a coating of cement, was tooldressed to show the texture of the aggregate. The fact that Ransome did this deliberately to imitate masonry is relatively unimportant; of much greater significance is the fact that by removing the thin film of cement which always forms between the agglomerated aggregate and the form-work, he set a precedent for treating concrete as possessing a natural nobility of its own, instead of regarding it as a cheap infilling or backing to which a fair surface must be subsequently applied. For the first time in the history of architecture, concrete was considered to be the concern of skilled craftsmen, and capable of displaying an inherent beauty. In the next year Ransome constructed a Borax factory at Alameda, California16, which was important in that it not only included the first systematic use of concrete columns and T-section floors, but enabled him later, by constructing a factory for the same firm at Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1897-8", to bring his methods to the east coast. However, although this building was the first concrete structure of its kind in the region, it was also to some extent the last, since the old method of designing concrete factories on the model of traditional masonry structures, with small windows set within massive walls, was then being superseded by an entirely new conception of concrete design, which we shall study later. More pretentious concrete buildings of this period were the Nassau County courthouse, constructed in 1901 on Mineola, Long Island18, and a seven-storey office building constructed the previous year in Washington D.C.19 to the designs of Leon E. Dessery. The former was of little historic interest, since it merely imitated a masonry building in mass concrete in the manner already employed at Stanford, and although the careful modelling of the interior columns and vaults represented a distinct advance in technique, that technique was still in the old mass concrete tradition. The Washington building, however, showed certain unusual features of construction; since although the main facade was of brick and terracotta with a solid concrete backing, the other walls, consisting of two skins reinforced with f in. wrought iron bars, were 62

REINFORCEMENT only 3 in. thick on the outside and 4 in. to 5 in. thick on the inside, the two being linked together at intervals with ties. Commenting on this method of construction, The Builder remarked that 'such a structure as this would not be permitted in any town in England as it contravenes the by-laws as to thickness of walls. Whether our building regulations ought to be modified to allow such erections in this country is another matter'.20 Editorial policy had indeed changed radically since George Godwin handed over control of the paper to Statham twelve years previously, and the new editor's scepticism, which later turned to hostility, undoubtedly contributed greatly to British neglect of concrete at this period. It will be appreciated that in all the buildings so far built by Ransome, concrete was merely substituted for masonry and although classical colonnades were often incorporated in the design, the general conception was based on the traditional idea of a load-bearing wall. From 1900 to 1902, however, he developed a system of construction which constituted the American prototype of the reinforced concrete frame, whereby the mass wall disappeared entirely in favour of a basic structure consisting merely of a series of columns and floors, between which thin concrete curtain walling could subsequently be cast in situ as required. This system, patented in 1902, was first put into effect in the Kelly and Jones machine shop at Greensburg, Pennsylvania (now the Walworth company) (Plate I2B); a four-storey factory 300 ft. by 60 ft. constructed with spirally reinforced columns based on a new system recommended by the French engineer, Armand Considere. According to Ransome, 'the principal advantage of frame construction as compared with the old solid concrete walls are, aside from the purely technical ones, that large window areas are easily made possible'21; a feature which was not only to be widely popularized as a standard characteristic of reinforced concrete factories by such firms as the Albert Kahn organization, but which came to be regarded as a fundamental and inalienable aesthetic characteristic of concrete frame structures as such. The constructional advantages of the frame were no less appreciable, for once each floor had hardened, it could become the basis for the formwork of the floor above, and this not only decreased the cost of scaffolding, but proved an invaluable saver of space on sites bordered by busy streets. In 1905 Ransome turned his attention to further developments (this time to problems of standardized form-work), but by 1905 text-books on reinforced concrete were making the principles of the subject universally known, and the field was now open to competitors brought in by the vast wave of development which, we shall see, had been simultaneously gaining momentum in Western Europe. The impetus for this new surge of interest had in fact derived some of its force from reports of Ransome's own enterprise, but he obtained little benefit from it himself, and was indeed submerged by the many new systems which completely outstripped in scale and complexity the limits of his own technical financial and administrative competence. He continued in business, 63

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL but his place in the history of American reinforced concrete was superseded by the vast organization of Julius Kahn, which worked in co-operation with the equally vast architectural firm of Albert Kahn Inc., and of Henry C. Turner, a former employee of Ransome, who had founded the Turner Construction Company in 1902. In France, the reawakening to the advantages of reinforcement in concrete architecture had been due mainly to the personal genius and initiative of Francois Hennebique22, a man who, without any special advantages of scientific training or industrial experience, conceived and established an audacious organization which was rapidly to develop his system throughout the world. This organization, like that of Ransome, was in turn destined to lose its monopoly, and be swamped by the subsequent developments which grew from the initiative of the inventor himself, but the Maison Hennebique still operates from its original premises, and although it naturally no longer commands the unique prestige it possessed fifty years ago, when its engineers were responsible for most of the reinforced structures under construction in the world, it is still one of the most flourishing firms of reinforced concrete consultants in Paris. Born in 1842 at Neuville St. Vaast, in Belgium, Fra^ois Hennebique came of peasant stock, and might have remained a farm labourer had he not, at the age of eighteen, decided to seek work as a mason in the nearby town of Arras. His progress within the next seven years was so prodigious that by 1867 he had established a building firm of his own, and for the next thirty years or so he carried out a number of important contracts, most of which were concerned with restoring the mediaeval cathedrals of northern France. Here he not only learnt how to organize men, but also became an expert master-carpenter, and it may well have been the experience gained in repairing vast cathedral roofs which gave him his intuitive skill at designing timber frames; later to serve him in such good stead when he turned his attention to the theory of reinforced concrete charpentes. The most remarkable and startling example of his virtuosity was his ungainly project for a 1,000 ft. timber tower designed to rival the Eiffel tower at the Brussels exhibition of 1888 (Plate 13), but this, fortunately, was never built. He first used concrete in 1879, when building a villa for a friend, M. Madoux, at Lombarzeide, near Westende. Whilst it was under construction, a fire destroyed a neighbouring house, and as a result, Hennebique decided to make M. Madoux's floors fireproof by replacing the timber joists with pre-cast concrete beams containing cylindrical iron rods. The next year, when constructing a gardener's house for the same client, he introduced stirrups as a bonding medium between the upper and lower strata of the concrete beams, and it was this invention, together with the idea of bending up the reinforcement near the supports, which was eventually to constitute the basis of his first patents. 64

REINFORCEMENT For the next twelve years, Hennebique secretly carried out research on columns, beams and slabs, and eventually evolved a completely scientific system of frame construction. It is impossible to say how much of his own research was aided by contemporary publications on research in Germany and America, or even by earlier work constructed in France. In spite of the general indifference to concrete which had followed Coignet's financial failure, Eugene Dupuis had constructed the Librairie Catholique, rue des SaintsPeres, Paris, with reinforced concrete floors and pillars in iSyS23, and several French periodicals, including the Nouvelles Annales de la Construction, had published jdetails of Ward's research. Hennebique himself claimed that he had no knowledge of the parallel enquiry being carried on elsewhere in the world until he read an account of American concrete construction in 1892, but although this news may well, as he informs us, have precipitated the summary patenting of his methods at that date, we may feel reasonably sure that so astute a man would hardly have undertaken twelve years' elaborate research without keeping himself informed of the activities of potential rivals. If Hennebique had been merely content to patent certain refinements of general and widely accepted structural principles, he would have deserved no more credit than that shared by the many other distinguished engineers who were at this time developing their own theories along much the same lines. Even his substitution of steel for iron reinforcement, which had already been suggested by Hyatt (although never apparently used by him), would in itself have constituted no more than a novel but inevitable development in a much wider field of general scientific research. It so happened, however, that Hennebique aspired to something far more ambitious than the elaboration of a general theory or the private exploitation of a new technique, and his greatness rests on the boldness with which, lacking any better background than that of a provincial building contractor, he conceived and carried out alone one of the most audacious and far-sighted projects ever developed in the building industry during the nineteenth century. As soon as he had secured the monopoly of his inventions in Belgium and France by taking out patents in February and August 1892, he relinquished his contracting business completely and established himself as a consultant engineer. There were two reasons for this step: firstly, he had clearly perceived that confidence in the new material could never be firmly established unless the design and calculation of concrete structures were conducted on a strictly professional basis, and remunerated independently of the builders' profits; secondly, he appreciated that the primary conditions for successful reinforced concrete construction were impeccable workmanship and constant supervision, and these could not be ensured on his own personal responsibility once a private building concern had grown to the scale on which he intended to operate. He therefore affiliated to his organization a number of established building contractors whom he could trust, and granted them concessions to E 65 c.c.

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL operate his patents, on the strict condition that they observed meticulously his specifications regarding methods and supervision of work. The advantages of this system compared with that established earlier by Fran£ois Coignet were enormous. By his new method, Hennebique not only ensured an adequacy of supervision which would have been impossible within the ramifications of a large private concern, but was able, through this ease of control, to multiply his interests without limit, and at considerable profit to himself. Conscientious contractors, for their part, were soon only too eager to obtain the concessions of an organization whose patronage was in itself a certificate of efficiency, and by so doing they both raised the status of their own concerns, and benefited financially from the exclusive contracts automatically fed to them by the head office. When few reinforced concrete contracts were on hand (and this feature of the scheme was to be of particular importance during the early stages of the organization) the contractors could undertake other business on their own account; thus the builders enjoyed considerable liberty of their own, whilst Hennebique was both absolved from the liability of maintaining idle craftsmen in slack periods, and yet assured of a large skilled labour force whenever it should be required. The utmost flexibility and reliability in building organization was thus attained, and any fall in standard on the part of a nominated contractor could be immediately countered by a revocation of the concession. Nevertheless, efficient as it was, this organization could never have worked had it not been welded into a whole by the amazing personality of its founder. Superbly capable of handling men, one of his principal cares was to create a sense of solidarity amongst all those connected with the firm, and especially amongst the young engineers from the Ecole Centrale whom he had grouped around him and trained. Once his office had been established in Paris, no opportunity was ever lost of marking each event in the firm's growth with some form of celebration, and on the occasion of every thousandth contract, magnificent banquets were held, at which congratulatory speeches were exchanged by the heads of staff", and copious amounts of wine were drunk to the confusion of all competitors; entertainments which were described in the company's magazine down to the minutest hors-d'oeuvre, and which cannot be read today without producing vicarious nostalgia and thirst. Once Hennebique had firmly established his organization, he next turned his attention to the equally important matter of publicity. No one was more aware than he that the man who really discovers an art is 'he who says it so loud, and so long, and so clearly, that he compels mankind to hear him', and to achieve this end he became in his own way a pioneer of modern methods of commercial propaganda. Conscious that every new movement must have a manifesto, and every respectable manifesto must have a slogan, he decided on the phrase: Plus d'lncendies Desastrueux', an awkward but apposite maxim which was used as the title of his first brochure published in 1892, and stamped 66

REINFORCEMENT on every plan which left his office. Next he organized annual 'congresses' in Paris, of which the first was held in 1897; ^&se not omy allowed the concessionaries to meet one another and discuss common problems, but also served as an opportunity for exhibiting photographs of recent constructions to the general public. Thirdly, to maintain interest and an unflagging esprit de corps during the intervening months, Hennebique published a monthly magazine entitled Le Beton Arme, which first appeared in June 1898 and consisted of two parts; one for general circulation and the other, on pink paper, destined for private distribution amongst his concessionaires alone. Most of Hennebique's early contracts were concerned with civil engineering, but within a few years of taking out his patents he had already gone a long way towards establishing the principal tectonic forms which reinforced concrete was to bestow on civil architecture. As might be expected, his first complete reinforced concrete buildings consisted of purely utilitarian structures, since it was here that the advantages of the new material were most apparent and least contested. The first of such buildings was the Raffinerie Parisienne de St. Ouen, built in i894~524 the second was a spinning mill built for Messrs. Charles Six at Tourcoing in i89525 (Plate 14); the third was a spinning mill built for Barrois Freres at Fives, near Lille, in i89626; and the fourth was a flour mill built for Le Moulin Ideal at Nort (Loire-Inf.) in 1898." The Raffinerie Parisienne, which was a single-storey building, was not perhaps of much consequence, although the concrete and glass 'shed' roof was something of an innovation at the time; the importance of the other two factories was however enormous, since they established aesthetic precedents and prejudices for certain reinforced concrete forms, and the fact that this was neither deliberately intended nor perceived by any of Hennebique's contemporaries does not lessen the significance of the event. The manner in which tectonic forms are sometimes gratuitously transposed from functional to decorative use can provide entertaining material for the architectural moralist. The usual examples cited are taken from the buildings of Greece and Rome, but it is probable that every age can show certain forms which have persisted long after their functional reason d'etre has vanished, and have survived simply because of the inherent beauty of the forms themselves. Sometimes the cause is not so much aesthetic as mystical. Carroll Meeks has explained in The Railroad Station how the great barrel-vaulted concourses of early twentieth-century termini were really imitations of the more primitive tram sheds, and were introduced because this form seemed to 'express' an idea which had by then become an established tradition. A similar example of what one might call fossilization seems to have occurred in reinforced concrete design. The ability to fill structural concrete frames with nothing but sheets of glass was exploited by Hennebique in his earliest buildings for the most compelling utilitarian motives. His method had been primarily adopted by the clients not with any preconceived ideas as to the form the buildings 6?

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL would take, but because fires in the French textile district around Roubaix and Tourcoing had demonstrated the imperative need for fireproof spinning mills. At the same time, however, his system incidentally permitted the fulfilment of a second and hitherto unattainable requirement, namely the provision of adequate daylight in multi-storey factory blocks. Whereas in iron construction it had still been customary to conserve the traditional heavy masonry walls with small apertures, Hennebique perceived that his columns, beams and floors were sufficient in themselves, so that traditional wall surfaces could be abandoned altogether in favour of an infilling that was entirely transparent. Thus was created the idea of a visible reinforced concrete frame, expressed without embarrassment on the face of a building, and creating an entirely new scale of proportions both as regards the unaccustomed slenderness of the supports themselves, and the shape of the voids created by the wider spans. It was some years before architects became familiar with these new forms, and when they did, the more enthusiastic of them saw in this use of glass a novel and exciting mode of expression, to be applied not only to factories, but to buildings of many other types and requirements. The extent to which such a conception of architecture is an inevitable result of frame structures as such, or even derives from the requirements of modern life, will be considered more fully in a later chapter; it is important to note here however the main source from which this inspiration came, and to recognize the remarkable achievement which this straightforward solution represented at the time. The solution adopted by Hennebique for his fourth building, Le Moulin Ideal de Nort, was rather more subtle, and hence its brilliance was not only completely overlooked by other designers, but was not really appreciated even by Hennebique himself; indeed, if Auguste Ferret had not independently discovered the same structural system many years later, and subsequently developed it into a complete set of architectural principles, its remarkable qualities would probably never have been noticed at all. Like the mills at Tourcoing and Fives, the Nort flour mill was also a multi-storey building, but with this difference that its function required large blank walls instead of sheets of glass. The normal method of providing such walls in a frame building at that time would have been to carry up thin webs of reinforced concrete between the columns and beams of the fa9ade; a method not only considered the most rational by the reinforced concrete theorists of the period, but one adopted on nearly every subsequent occasion by Hennebique himself. Instead, however, the spaces between the monolithic frame at Nort were fitted at intervals with thin prefabricated vertical posts, and these served in turn either to hold in position such small windows as were needed, or to act as stiffening members to infilling panels of prefabricated bricks or slabs. We thus find in this building a complete though apparently premature comprehension of the affinity between reinforced concrete and mediaeval half-timber construction, as well as an understanding of the various advantages which accrue when monolithic frames 68

REINFORCEMENT and prefabricated elements are combined. Why Hennebique's engineers should have neglected such an efficient method of assembly in their subsequent work is difficult to understand, and one may even wonder whether the architect, M. Chudeau of Nantes, did not take the more active part in designing the structural system adopted. Within the first six years of the firm's existence, contracts had been more or less doubling themselves annually, so that by 1898, with 827 contracts on hand for that year, it was necessary to find larger premises.28 Hennebique decided to build an entirely new headquarters, and chose for his site a narrow wedge of land at the junction of the rue Danton and the Place St. Michel in Paris (Plate 15). This site had so far been left vacant because it was commonly regarded as incapable of development; the point of the wedge being so narrow that no utilizable space could possibly have remained once normal masonry walls of the required thickness had been constructed. But Hennebique perceived at once that a reinforced concrete structure would not only overcome this impediment, but would at the same time constitute an excellent advertisement for the only economic advantage which reinforced concrete possessed at that time. He therefore commissioned Edouard Arnaud to design a building in which full advantage of the possibilities of the material would be taken, both from the point of view of appearance and of internal planning. The working drawings of the new venture were completed in May 1898, and the building, which comprised not only Hennebique's offices but also five floors of rentable apartments, was ready for occupation the following year. As a result of the extreme thinness of the walls and floors compared with traditional masonry construction, it was possible to insert an extra storey within the maximum legal building height, and add ten square yards to the superficial area of each floor. These figures alone were enough to arouse the interest of those who saw the details in the technical journals, and it was not surprising that the increase in rentable space, combined with the already much publicized fireproof qualities of the material, led to a somewhat wider use of concrete for domestic architecture in the first decade of the twentieth century. But Arnaud's attempts to solve the aesthetic problems posed by the new structural system were less successful, and although he did make a valiant effort to avoid imitating masonry forms too closely, he gave few leads to other architects as to the most appropriate expression for the new material. He had noticed that 'if one looks at a photograph of a reinforced concrete skeleton, it appears at first sight like a timber frame, since one no longer has the colour to guide one'29, but he was unable to make practical use of this conclusion, and like most architects of the time who considered the matter at all, was so obsessed by the plasticity of the material that all other characteristics were lost to view. His general thesis was that since concrete is moulded, it can take literally any form whatsoever, so that he found himself in the quandary of having no reason to choose one form rather than another. Even his rather timid surface modelling 69

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL was covered with cement rendering, since he feared public criticism of a bare concrete facade. We may however sympathize with him in this dilemma, since although by this time there was little need to fear the gross irregularities and discoloration which had frustrated the efforts of earlier theorists, Ransome's masonry technique had as yet found no following in Europe. Hennebique was by no means indifferent to the questions of appearance, and in May 1901 invited Pascal Forthuny, a well-known architectural critic, to publish comments on the building in the firm's magazine. Profiting from the relatively restricted nature of the publication, Forthuny did not spare his views, and delivered a trenchant criticism of the architect's detailing which included the following remarks: 'It is regrettable that, from the moment he thought of decorating the fa9ade thus composed, the architect did not follow his logical order of ideas and break completely with all known forms; forms which have eloquently proved their impotence to represent a satisfying type of street architecture today. One obvious truth seems incontestable. Reinforced concrete is a new material, and has no links with the systems of construction which preceded it; it must thus necessarily draw from within itself its exterior aspects, which must be clearly differentiated from familiar motifs in wood, marble or stone. How can one innovate lines and surface modellings in domestic architecture which are in some way the consequence of the use of reinforced concrete? Can one even ask of this method of construction alone a suitable decorative effect? M. Arnaud has doubtless not dared to risk such an undertaking in this first great attempt in which so many other considerations all intervened for the first time. But how much more edifying his facade would have been had he just made the effort to adorn it in its own way, extracting from the study of his material the elements of an entirely personal decoration of his own design. What would it have mattered how clumsily each detail was repeated from cornice to plinth? A lesson would have appeared in the faults themselves, and it would have been a first experiment made, never to be repeated again.'30 These were bold comments, but Forthuny, who clearly tended to think of architecture very much in terms of ornament, gave little indication himself as to what form he thought the first attempt should have taken, except to insist that concrete should be essentially 'moulded'. It was not surprising, therefore, that in subsequent buildings, most architects played even safer than Arnaud by facing the concrete frames with brick or stone, as had been done in the apartment block constructed at 43, boulevard de Clichy, Paris, in i899.31 Controversial though the aesthetic potentialities of reinforced concrete might be, there was no question that, as a structural material, it was as fireproof as Hennebique's slogan claimed, and for this reason it came to be increasingly used in buildings where the fire-hazard was especially great. In 1899 the architects Regamey and Heydel of Lausanne commissioned Hennebique to design cantilevered reinforced concrete galleries for the Casino Theatre at Merges, Switzerland, and although these only projected a modest 9 ft. 6 in. 70

REINFORCEMENT beyond the face of the masonry supporting wall, they were probably the first examples of their type.32 The experiment was repeated the following year, when Hennebique was engineering consultant for the theatre in Berne, designed by the architect de Wurstemberger. Here the fa£ade was in the inevitable Style Louis XV then in vogue, but the entire structural frame behind, with its cantilevered balconies, was of reinforced concrete frame construction.33 In 1903, when the New Popular Theatre was built in Munich to the designs of Charles Tittrich, the available funds were so small that the concrete frame was for the first time left completely apparent.34 This trend culminated in the great Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris, designed by Auguste Perret in 1911, and which constituted not only the first important civic monument in reinforced concrete, but one of the most influential buildings in the development of modern architectural design. Theatres, by the complexity of their requirements, were particularly suited to bring out the full versatility of the material, and it was here that its peculiar virtues were exploited in their most rational and dramatic architectural way. In 1898, Hennebique made a first modest contribution to monumental architecture when he designed the floors of the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, then under construction for the 1900 Paris Exhibition in the ChampsElysees.35 The Grand Palais was planned as a vast glass-covered arena enclosed by three main stretches of fa?ade, which, to avoid professional jealousies, had been designed respectively by Louvet, Deglane and Thomas. The Petit Palais, designed entirely by Charles Girault, was much more interesting architecturally, since it was designed as a permanent art gallery, with an ingenious trapezoid plan enclosing a handsome D-shaped interior courtyard. In addition to the floor, Hennebique was responsible for the two spiral staircases which start from cantilevered landings on the main floor and then sweep down freely in graceful curves to the level below (Plate 16). Originally these flights stood free in the centre of each circular stair-well, so that in then* present state, with the soffit walled up to provide storage space, the intended effect is lost. Contemporary illustrations give eloquent evidence, however, of their original grace, and their complete expressiveness of the novel structural system employed. Hennebique had earlier appreciated the technical advantages of using reinforced concrete for cantilevered stairs, and had built a free-standing double staircase of 37 ft. span for the Geneva Exhibition of i896,36 but here, as elsewhere in similar circumstances, he had concentrated on showing the virtuosity of the material rather than its elegance. In the Petit Palais, however, the design of the staircase formed part of a traditional classical composition, and since its shape had already been established by Girault, Hennebique was merely asked to determine the most economical method of execution. Thus for the first time, a monumental concrete staircase was designed in collaboration with an architect to achieve inconspicuous grace rather than call attention to itself 71

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL by the singularity of its convolutions; but these virtues were little appreciated either by Hennebique himself or the more visionary enthusiasts of the new methods, and the very human desire to astound continued to be the main stimulus towards future developments for many years. A number of temporary buildings for the 1900 Exhibition were also designed in reinforced concrete, since special advantages were seen in a material which was not only fireproof, but also slender, tractable and light. These advantages were not prized aesthetically — the reaction against the wiry ironand-glass facades which had been a feature of every exhibition since 1851 was too strong for that — but reinforced concrete frames were perceived to be ideal for supporting the exuberant decorative surfaces which were now all the rage. It was as hidden supports for fibrous plaster fa9ades, therefore, that Hennebique designed his elegant little structures, and few of those who ultimately visited the Palais du Costume, the Palais de Lettres, Sciences et Arts, or the Palais Beige (a replica of the mediaeval town hall at Oudenarde) can have suspected the slight means by which these elaborate structures were upheld.37 Many of the more thoughtful architects and contractors who saw these pavilions under construction must however have marvelled at the contrast between the delicate skeletons and the hulks with which they were subsequently clad. The Palais de Lettres, Sciences et Arts was a particularly insensitive example of such disparity, since in addition to the normal patisserie excrescences, a bevy of buxom caryatids were suspended from the thin cantilevered balconies in order to give the impression of lending them their support. Hennebique also carried out a considerable amount of civil engineering for the exhibition, some of which, like the covering for the Molyneaux railway cutting, proved eventually to have been very much easier to construct than to remove. As a reward for his work, he was given one of the numerous gold medals awarded to exhibitors, but his recompense extended far beyond this, for the advertising value of his constructions had been tremendous, and there is little doubt that the 1900 Paris Exhibition was the principal event which caused reinforced concrete to be adopted abroad, for example in Italy and Holland.38 In 1902, ten years after the firm was founded, Hennebique was handling more than fifteen hundred contracts a year, and directing an international organization which had licensed contractors in nearly every country in Europe. By 1917 he had completed 17,692 building contracts and a similar number of engineering works.39 Having thus, on the aftermath of the Exhibition, amassed considerable wealth, Hennebique decided to construct a large residence for himself and his family away from Paris, yet within easy reach of the rue Danton, where he had so far been living. To this end, he purchased some property at Bourg-la-Reine (Plates 17,18), a village which borders the pare de Sceaux, but is at the same time only a few minutes by train from the centre of the city. As in the design of his office, he sought to profit from the occasion by exploiting the poten72

REINFORCEMENT tialities of concrete to their greatest extent, but whereas in Paris he had been obliged to concentrate on obtaining the maximum amount of space within a restricted site, at Bourg-la-Reine he was not only completely free as regards the choice of shape and plan, but was unaffected by any tiresome municipal restrictions concerning alignment and silhouette. He therefore resolved that his new villa should be first and foremost an example of the virtuosity of concrete, and although we might today criticize him for lack of restraint, we cannot reproach him for lack of courage. Work on the villa began in 1904. In some respects it bore a certain resemblance to William Ward's house in Port Chester, especially in the almost fanatical exclusiveness with which concrete was employed, and also in the use of a tower to support a concrete tank. But whereas the Ward house was sternly if confusedly disciplined by stylistic precedents, the Hennebique villa happily disregarded all historical models or rules of design, and abandoning itself to the single-minded pursuit of structural ingenuity, produced a landmark of such eccentricity that it will always remain a unique example of its own particular genre. The general plan of the building consisted of a ground floor used in common by all the members of the family, and three or four separate apartments on the upper floors. Hennebique was very proud of the functional character of the design, and boasted that 'each facade, without preoccupation with its neighbour, shows clearly the use of the rooms to which it corresponds'.40 In fact, however, the variety of the fa?ade treatment was due less to the frank expression of interior accommodation than to a firm desire to incorporate every conceivable variety of cantilever which reinforced concrete would permit. The most astounding feature of all was the tower, a minaret-like structure which, rising high in the air, pierced an enormous water tank having all the appearances of being ready to slide down on to the house beneath. From the top of this minaret, those with the courage and energy to climb the narrow spiral staircase could gaze beyond this cistern to the fine panorama below. Apart from the cantilevers and generous use of glass, there were a number of other structural features which, though less spectacular, were fairly novel at the time. One was the extensive use of reinforcement, which was used even for the delicate interlacing of the concrete parapets. Another was the use of pre-cast reinforced slabs, i in. to i£ in. thick, and 14 in. high, which formed permanent shuttering and regulated the amount of concrete poured in between at each stage of the construction.41 This latter system was adopted principally as a means of economizing in timber form-work, but it also provided a reliable finished surface to the facades, since the faces of the slabs were tooled to leave the flint aggregate showing, and no retouching was necessary at all. It will be noticed that these walls were loadbearing, and that Hennebique did not evidently consider the frame structures of his factories suitable for domestic architecture. 73

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL The building of Bourg-la-Reine not only represents Hennebique's most ambitious attempt at architectural virtuosity, but also marks the climax of his supremacy in the field of concrete design. As might be expected, the exclusive rights to exploit reinforced concrete, which Hennebique claimed by virtue of his patents, did not go unchallenged by his competitors, and there were many engineers who felt fully competent to design such structures on their own. Their normal recourse, as in previous periods, was to take out counter-patents which, though comprising only trivial modifications of technique or phraseology> were sufficient to protect them from proceedings in the civil courts. Such were the many systems established at this period, as Bonna, Bordenave, Boussiron, Bramigk, Considere, Cottancin, Coularou, Degon, Demay, Donath, Klett, Koenen, Locher, Maciachini, Moller, Mueller & Marx, Melan, Pavin de Laforge, Piketty, Rabitz, Roebling, Sanders, Turner and Wilson.42 Hennebique did not accept this encroachment tamely, and on 24th December 1900 sued Cottancin for infringement before the Tribunal de la Seine;43 but he was undertaking a hopeless task in trying to hold back the flood of development which his own endeavours had largely brought about, and although his patents did not legally expire until 1907, his methods had in fact become public property long before then. Apart from the widely publicized research being carried on in Government departments by specialists such as Armand Considere, chief engineer of the Ponts et Chaussees, the principles of reinforced concrete design were being disseminated by his own publications, and popularized by articles in technical reviews. A number of text-books were gradually being put into circulation. Some of these books and articles were written by members of Hennebique's own staff, such as Paul Christophe, and one could hardly expect civil engineers, once they had mastered the principles of concrete design, to refer their clients to Hennebique's office for all the working details. It was thus that rival specialists began to establish themselves, bringing rival contractors in their train, and although Hennebique did indeed profit from the general increase in the volume of work which this popularization had caused, the field of concrete design was no longer so exclusively associated with his own name. Moreover, the legal right to a monopoly became a dead letter as soon as the government took steps to establish safety controls by means of official regulations. The French authorities had shown themselves extremely accommodating as regards building licences for reinforced concrete structures, and seem to have accepted Hennebique's specifications without any demur, but once the method began to be used by unaccredited and unsupervised contractors, it was obviously essential that safety regulations of some kind or other should be laid down. A commission to study the question was therefore established by the French Ministry of Works at the end of 1900. It was under the chairmanship of Considere, and included most of the foremost experts on the subject, including Hennebique himself. Some of the members, particularly Hennebique, were inclined to be sceptical about the whole idea, esteeming with 74

REINFORCEMENT some justification that once official formulae were made obligatory by law, the whole development of reinforced concrete theory would be severely hampered. Such views on the matter were however discounted, and the official regulations were finally drawn up and published in 1906. By this act, the long efforts to create a new building material were given their final seal of recognition, and from then onwards concrete was no longer a hazardous novelty, but an acknowledged medium of architectural design in the modern world.

75

CHAPTER FOUR

Exploitation and Development

W

ith an equity which fate seldom introduces into the realm of business affairs, it so happened that Hennebique's most successful competitor was Edmond Coignet, the son of the originator of Betons Agglomeres. Inspired by the same ambitions as his father, but better equipped technically for the task, Edmond Coignet had been trained as an engineer at the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, and made his first distinguished contribution to the theory of concrete design in 1888, when he read a paper on the subject of reinforcement to the French Society of Civil Engineers .1 In 1892 he constructed his first important building, the Casino and Municipal Baths at Biarritz, which was designed by the architect Calinaud,andhadthe distinction of being probably the first reinforced concrete building to be made entirely of prefabricated elements.2 His most advertised work at this period was however the Chateau d'Eau for the 1900 Exhibition, which stood in front of the Palais de 1'Electricite and formed the focal point of the whole ensemble. It was composed, to quote from a contemporary exhibition catalogue, 'of a vast semi-circle alcove, 108 ft. wide by 36 ft. deep, containing a series of immense basins arranged in amphitheatre form, from which sheets of water flow and fall in cascades into a yet larger basin at the foot of the fountain. Some idea of the volume and force of this vast outpouring may be gathered from the fact that these tumultuous waterfloods flow at the rate of 420 gallons a second or 1,500,000 gallons an hour. In the large basin is an allegorical group thirty-two feet high representing Humanity led by Progress marching onward to the Future.' The principal arch, spanning 80 ft. and rising 130 ft. above the ground, was covered with the inevitable display of fibrous plaster exuberance, but the trussed concrete beams and water tanks which had made such a tour deforce possible were widely advertised, and Coignet's achievement was officially recognized with the award of a Grand Prix and gold medal.3 Both Coignet and Hennebique soon established themselves abroad. Hennebique sent Louis-Gustave Mouchel, one of his senior engineers, to Britain in 1895*, when he landed at Briton Ferry in South Wales, and immediately proceeded to spread the gospel by erecting Messrs. Weaver's Granary and Flour Mill at Swansea (completed in iSpy).5 The example of this missionary activity 76

EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT was followed by Coignet, for whom G. C. Workman opened an office in Chancery Lane, London in I9O4.6 At first all the Hennebique contract drawings were done in Paris, but Mouchel soon established his own office in Westminster, where he was joined by T. J. Gueritte, J. S. de Vesian and other colleagues from the rue Danton. The British response to all this foreign invasion was one of understandable suspicion; Lewis Angell had first reported the German Monier system to the Royal Institute of British Architects in May 1892, and The Builder, then running a series of articles on concrete in the Students' Column, noted that 'in America some quite important buildings are being constructed of concrete, in which are embedded iron rods for the purpose of supplying the necessary tensile strength'7; but it was many years before developments abroad attracted any real interest, and as late as 1901, the editor of the Building News could remark on the little progress made by 'armoured concrete' in England.8 The choice of name was, incidentally, one of the principal obstacles to discussion. Editors, authors and lecturers plunged one another into mutual confusion by referring to the material in different terms, and the public was compelled to oscillate between 'Armed concrete', 'Armored concrete', 'Reenforced concrete', 'Ferro-concrete', 'Hooped concrete', 'Sidero-concrete', 'Steel concrete', 'Concrete-steel' and 'Concrete-metal' as each writer strove to get his neologism assimilated into the English or American tongue. Fortunately no one remembered that when a M. Legoux had invented a constructional system of metal and concrete in 1866, he had called it calceolithemetalliconeurophore.9 The question of nomenclature was made even more complicated by the'fact that Mouchel claimed 'Ferro-concrete' (a word of his own invention) to be the distinctive name for the Hennebique method, and had even tried to register it as a trade-mark, but without success. It was only as a result of general exhaustion that a new term, 'Reinforced concrete', carried the day against its outworn rivals after its invention round about 1898. In October 1902, Augustus de Rohan Galbraith lectured to the Society of Engineers on 'The Hennebique System of Ferro-Concrete Construction'10, but the hostile editor of The Builder merely took this as an occasion for a shrewd blow in the terminological battle, and in a patronizing leading article persisted in referring to the lecture as having been about 'Concrete Steel'.11 To this attack, another champion, William Dunn, responded the following year by lecturing on 'Armoured Concrete Columns'12, and was emboldened a year later to aim at yet another linguistic group by lecturing on the construction and strength of 'Reinforced Concrete Columns' (a paper actually read to the Royal Institute of British Architects by his partner, Mr. Watson, since 'Mr. Dunn was prevented from attending by a sharp attack of rheumatism').13 Any idea, however, that his use of the term 'reinforced' indicated a final truce was dispelled when this paper was followed at the same meeting by another on 'Ferroconcrete' delivered by Mouchel. 77

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL One of the main reasons why English architects were so slow to adopt reinforced concrete as a building material, whatever the term, was the difficulty of obtaining economic structures which conformed to the local by-laws. In 1908, when the architects Corbett and Dean wished to build the new Manchester Y.M.C.A. by the Kahn method, the city Corporation had to apply for special Parliamentary sanction, since no authority to allow and control concrete construction could be derived from the existing Acts.14 The architects announced that if the Bill was passed they would avail themselves of the facilities it afforded, but in the meantime they were obliged to design the building in such a way that it could be constructed of brick with a steel frame if required.15 Even in quite minor work the district surveyors continued to show the hostility they had always borne towards mass concrete, and, regrettably enough, in the most notable dispute brought up in court, their mistrust was shown to be only too justified. This was in 1902, when the case of Rowton Houses Ltd. v. Crow, was tried before the Tribunal of Appeal. The manager of these lodging houses contested a ruling by the district surveyor that certain cantilevered staircases would be unsafe in the event of panic, but in cross-examination, the architect, Mr. Meadows, admitted that 'in lieu of new angle irons they generally used bedstead iron to reinforce each step'. The Tribunal not unnaturally decided that the staircase should be condemned, but it is significant that in his own evidence, the district surveyor stated his opinion that 'the presence of an iron core was objectionable on account of the greater expansion and contraction which would take place in the metal owing to variations in temperature'.16 It was a view which, as we have seen, had been clearly disproved by Hyatt in 1877; yet other 'scientific authorities' still perpetuated such errors, and these did much to anchor prejudice in the popular mind. It thus happened that the only privately owned buildings which could legally be constructed in reinforced concrete were either industrial buildings (for which special rules applied) or railway buildings (which were removed from the control of local by-laws altogether). This allowed the public to become to some extent familiar with the general characteristics of the method, and enabled great advances to be made in structural techniques; but it did not force architects to study the aesthetic potentialities of the material, and it was precisely these which the public, having seen the factories and railway sheds, most distrusted. The problem seemed thus to have reached a deadlock which neither the examples of foreigners nor the complaints of the press could change. The first relaxation of the official attitude came as a result of one of those delightful legal quibbles which are doubtless refreshing to the professional jurist but which usually madden the public at large. It so happened that whereas the ordinary building owner was naturally subject to current building regulations, and thus forbidden to take advantage of any economies which reinforced concrete could afford, these sanctions did not apply to Government departments themselves, which were fully at liberty to build in any way they pleased, 78

EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT even though the law might state categorically that such methods were inadequate or unsafe. When in 1907, therefore, the chief architect of the Post Office, Sir Henry Tanner, was asked to prepare plans for extending the main buildings in St. Martin-le-Grand (Plate 19), the need for economy prompted him to use the Hennebique method, and he boasted that by so doing he was saving the Government j£8o,ooo.17 The newly formed Concrete Institute was of course delighted, and made him their president, but members of parliament were less pleased at such blatant inconsistencies, and the member for SouthEast Essex had a number of awkward questions to ask. First he elicited from the Secretary of State for War that concrete had been found entirely satisfactory for military buildings in Woolwich and Cairo, and then asked the President of the Local Government Board whether he would allow loans for reinforced concrete work on terms as favourable as for brick and mortar, since at that time such loans had to be repaid within half the normal time allotted. Mr. Burns replied as follows: 'I am advised that it is doubtful whether ferro-concreteisasuitablematerialforpermanentstructural works under all conditions, and that there is need for caution in dealing with it. The Local Government Board have had under their notice examples of the failure of works constructed with it. I believe that this material is intended to be used in the construction of the new General Post Office, and it is the case that it has been used for some years on the Continent and in the United States, but its use has not always been successful. I am not at present satisfied that the periods allowed for the repayment of loans for works constructed of ferro-concrete can properly be extended.'18 Two weeks later, the First Commissioner of Works was asked by the same member whether any more Post Office buildings of reinforced concrete were projected, and was informed that in addition to the St. Martin-le-Grand extensions, reinforced concrete was to be used for the Manchester Principal Sorting Office, the Birmingham Store Building and the London Western District Post Office, and that the estimated saving was to be twenty per cent.19 Bureaucratic perversity could hardly have been explained away with more cynicism or cant. Stubbornly inconsistent though the Government's attitude might be, it must be admitted in all fairness that the Local Government Board's caution was not without a certain degree of justification, since the real trouble was caused by lack of proper legislative control. Whereas the inflexibility of the old English by-laws and the intransigence of those who administered them had been a severe impediment to the development of reinforced concrete in Great Britain, the laxity of the American regulations had been catastrophic, and had resulted in a number of notorious failures which were widely publicized at the time. The most serious was the collapse of part of the new Eastman Kodak plant at Rochester (N.Y.) in 1906, but in the following year similar failures had occurred at the Bixby Hotel at Long Beach (Cal.), and when, in 1908, La Construction Modeme published a lengthy article by F. W. Fitzpatrick entitled Le 79

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL Beton Anne en Amerique it was almost entirely devoted to details and photographs of gruesome accidents which had overtaken buildings in Philadelphia, San Francisco, New York, and so on.20 The British Government's obvious remedy was not to obstruct the use of reinforced concrete by penalizing its use, but to copy the example of the French, and ensure that adequate regulations were enforced; this however they were not prepared to do. Their inconclusive and unconcerted pronouncements did however have one salutary effect; they prompted the First Commissioner of Works to adopt the face-saving expedient of asking the opinion of the Royal Institute of British Architects on the subject, and the Institute gladly seized the opportunity of publishing a lengthy and enthusiastic report on the whole matter. The enquiry was in fact very opportune, because since October 1905, a committee of the Institute, under the chairmanship of Sir Henry Tanner, had been studying rules for reinforced concrete construction, and their report had been adopted in May 1907. Instrumental though this was, however, in providing standardized regulations for the architectural profession, these could not compensate for the lack of official legislation, and it was this which was largely responsible for the sterility of reinforced concrete architecture in England before the first world war. In London, the old Metropolitan building regulations had been succeeded in 1894 by the London Building Act, but this still made no allowance for any novel methods of construction, and in order to allow reinforced concrete, the London County Council introduced a Bill into Parliament in 1905 designed to permit 'such modifications to the Act as each occasion might demand'.31 Ideally this would have provided the maximum flexibility, but architects and engineers were not slow to see the danger of giving the authorities arbitrary powers to make building regulations when and how they pleased, and as a result of protests from the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Institute of Civil Engineers, the Bill was withdrawn in I9O9.22 However, in that same year authority was given under section 23 of the London County Council (General Powers) Act for that body to make proper standard regulations with respect to buildings wholly or partly in reinforced concrete, and in December 1910 the London County Council sent a draft report of these regulations to the Royal Institute of British Architects for comment. This draft was confirmed on 28th November 1911, but the matter hung in abeyance, and even as late as 1912 there is at least one case recorded of the London County Council refusing to allow any reduction in the external walls of a reinforced concrete building, and insisting that they conform to the dimensions specified for brick.23 A 'final draft' of the Council's report was circulated in 1913, but the Local Government Board, which had a power of veto, proposed several modifications to the prejudice of economical design. The draft was still unapproved at the outbreak of war the following year. In the meantime development was proceeding as best it might, and in addition to those engineers already named, other specialists and contractors were 80

EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT gradually establishing themselves in London and the large provincial towns. Cottancin and the German Monier patentees had opened offices in London in I9O424, the American Julius Kahn followed in I90625, and Armand Considere, who had resigned his appointment at the Fonts et Chaussees to set up in private practice, opened an office of the Considere Construction Company a few doors from MouchePs London headquarters in I9O9.26 English contractors were not slow in taking advantage of the trail thus obligingly pioneered for them, and in 1906 Mouchel was involved in a test case with Messrs. W. Cubitt & Co. who were alleged to have infringed his patents in work done by them for Whitbread's Brewery.27 By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, reinforced concrete was established in England as a standard method of construction, and each civil engineer or contractor considered he had a natural right to use any system he pleased, regardless of patent rights, provided he obtained prior approval of his calculations from the local authority. The most successful contractor at this time was probably Julius Kahn, whose family organization, started in Detroit in 1903, soon spread rapidly throughout the United States, and then to England and Russia. His first important non-industrial building in England, apart from the interior of the Hammersmith Public Baths built in I90728, was the Manchester Y.M.C.A. (to which reference has already been made), where the many complex planning problems undoubtedly suggested the advantages of using such a highly flexible structural material. On a restricted site in the centre of the city, and within a height limitation of 75 ft. above the pavement, the architects were required to incorporate an enormous amount of hotel accommodation into the volume allotted, and at the same time provide a large auditorium and a swimming pool. The swimming pool, on the model probably of the New York Y.M.C.A. (a building constructed of steel), was placed at the very top of the building, whilst the auditorium occupied the central core of the block. Much of the architects' and engineers' ingenuity must have centred on the complex problem of constructing this elegant little theatre with its cantilevered balcony and shallow concrete vault, and one can imagine their emotions when they were asked, twenty years later, to cut it horizontally in two to provide smaller rooms. Before this building had been completed, it was decided to construct the London Y.M.C.A. in a similar manner, although here Mouchel was the consultant engineer.29 The architect chosen was Rowland Plumbe, a man who at least prided himself on some experience of concrete construction, since on the strength of cottages built in 1871, he had lectured to the Architectural Association on the 'Architectural Treatment of Portland Cement'.30 In his design, however, he made little attempt to exploit the capabilities of the structural system, or display the peculiarities of the material, and although considerable ingenuity was shown in the imitation of traditional roofing forms, he evidently did not dare hazard anything revolutionary, even in such an avant-garde area as F

8l

C.C.

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL Bloomsbury, or such a cosmopolitan thoroughfare as the Tottenham Court Road. In 1910 the Kahn organization built Stoke Town Hall, won in competition the previous year by Wallis and Bowden31, and the Wesleyan Hall, Westminster, designed by Lanchester and Rickards.32 The interiors both presented one highly interesting and novel feature hi that the form-work was made with sufficient care to produce entasis on the structural columns; an entasis so accurate that the columns could be completed with nothing more than an £th inch coat of plaster before the carved capitals werefinallyattached. Thefasades were however of the materials appropriate to such traditional designs, and made no attempt to display the nature of the structures they masked; indeed, Moritz Kahn considered that this was the way concrete should always be treated, and in a lecture given at Sheffield University in 1908, he informed his listeners that he 'did not regard reinforced concrete as a decorative but a structural material', proposing that 'for architectural purposes it should be cased in stone, brick or glazed tiles'.33 It was a point of view shared by most contractors and engineers. Edmond Coignet's first important reinforced concrete frame structure in England had been the Second Tobacco Warehouse at Bristol constructed in 1908, which was 215 ft. long, 102 ft. wide, 96 ft. high, and had a hundred and three pillars on each floor.34 The following year the firm obtained two important Office of Works contracts, the London Western District Post Office35 and the General Post Office Money Order department at Holloway36, and by the first world war had been responsible for a number of important structures, including a six-storey office block in Leeds (i9io)37 and the offices of Baker Street Station, London (i9i2).38 In every case, however, in so far as the architectural expression of the material was concerned, the structure might as well have been framed in steel, and in most cases the elevations were executed in brickwork or masonry under separate contracts by separate firms. The most monumental building of the period, from the point of view of sheer size, was the Royal Liver building at Liverpool, begun in 1909 to the designs of Aubrey Thomas and L. G. Mouchel.39 Externally, the facades were loaded with a mass of Renaissance detail carved in Scottish and Norwegian granite, but within was a remarkable structural frame rising seventeen storeys high, and constituting the tallest concrete structure of the time in Europe. Probably the only non-commercial building constructed before 1910 which did not deliberately disguise its structure on the facade was an eight-storey block of lawyers' chambers constructed in Glasgow at the corner of Hope Street and Bath Lane.40 Designed by James Salmon of the firm of Salmon and Son and Gillespie, again with Mouchel as engineer, the building occupied only a small site (46 ft. by 33 ft.) but its position at two narrow traffic intersections demanded a constructional method of more than usual efficiency. To avoid ground scaffolding, therefore, it was built as a reinforced concrete frame, and 82

THE ORIGINS OF MODERN CONCRETE i. The Technique of Pise Construction (From Rondelet: TVaj'te' de I'Art de Bdtir (1812), Vol. I, article 12, Plates V and VI)

EARLY CONCRETE B U I L D I N G S IN FRANCE

2. St. Denis: 72, Rue Charles-Michels, 1853 Architect: Theodore Lachez; Contractor: Fran£ois Coignet (FromL'Ingenieur, ist November 1855, Plate XXXIII)

EARLY CONCRETE B U I L D I N G S IN FRANCE

3. Le Vesinet: Parish Church, 1864. Architect: L. C. Boileau; Contractor; Frai^ois Coignet (From The Builder > nth November 1865, pp. 800, 805)

EARLY CONCRETE B U I L D I N G S IN FRANCE

4. Le Vesinet: Parish Church, 1864. The tower (130 ft. high) Architect: L. C. Boileau; Contractor: Francois Coignet

EARLY CONCRETE BUILDINGS IN FRANCE

5. Le Vesinet: Parish Church, 1864. Details of the facade Architect: L. C. Boileau; Contractor: Fra^ois Coignet

EARLY CONCRETE BUILDINGS IN FRANCE

6. Paris: 92, Rue Miromesnil. Contractor: Francois Coignet

EARLY CONCRETE BUILDINGS IN FRANCE

7. Paris: Cite Ouvriere, Boulevard Daumesnil, 1867 Contractors: Newton & Shepard (Tail's System)

EARLY CONCRETE BUILDINGS IN ENGLAND

8A. Chertsey: Fernlands Villa, 1870. (Demolished 1955.) Architect: T. H. Wonnacott; Contractor: Drake (From The Builder, i2th February 1870)

SB. Harlow: Down Hall, 1873. (Now Downham School). Architect: F. P. Cockerell; Contractor: Drake (From Building News, 4th July 1873)

EARLY CONCRETE BUILDINGS IN ENGLAND

9A. Southwark: Guildford Street: Warehouse, 1867 (Bombed 1940). Architect: E. I'Anson Contractor: Goodwin (Tail's System) 9B. Southwark: Zoar Street: Tenements, 1885. Contractor: Goodwin

EARLY CONCRETE BUILDINGS IN ENGLAND

10. Southwark: Zoar Street: Tenements, 1885. Detail Contractor: Goodwin

EARLY CONCRETE B U I L D I N G S IN AMERICA

ii. Port Chester (N.Y.): The Ward House, 1873 Architect: R. Mook

EARLY CONCRETE BUILDINGS IN AMERICA

I2A. Stanford (Gal.): Leland Stanford Junior Museum, 1889 Contractor: Ransome

I2B. Greensburg (Pa.): Kelly & Jones Factory, 1902 Contractor: Ransome

FRANCOIS HENNEBIQUE

13. Project: Brussels Exhibition: 1000 ft. Tower, 1888 (Timber on a concrete base.) Architect: E. Neve

FRANCOIS HENNEBIQUE

14. Tourcoing: Charles Six Spinning Mill, 1895

FRANgOIS H E N N E B I Q U E

15. Paris: i, Rue Danton, 1898. Architect: E. Arnaud

FRANCOIS HENNEBIQUE

16. Paris: Petit Palais, Champs-Elysees, 1898. Staircase Architect: C. Girault

FRANgOIS HENNEBIQUE

17. Bourg-la-Reine: Villa, Rue du Lycee Lakanal, 1904

FRANgOIS H E N N E B I Q U E

18. Bourg-la-Reine: Villa, Rue du Lycee Lakanal, 1904

EARLY R E I N F O R C E D CONCRETE IN THE B R I T I S H E M P I R E

19. London: General Post Office Extension, 1907 Architect: Sir H. Tanner; Engineer: Mouchel

EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE IN THE BRITISH E M P I R E

IDA. Kingston (Jamaica): The Queen's House, 1907 Architects: Nicholson & Corlette; Engineer: E. Coignet

20B. Kingston (Jamaica): Royal Mail Lines Offices, 1907 Engineer: E. Coignet

EARLY R E I N F O R C E D C O N C R E T E IN A M E R I C A

21. Cincinnati (Ohio): Ingall's Building, 1902. Architects: Elzner & Anderson Contractors: Ferro-Concrete Construction Company

EARLY R E I N F O R C E D C O N C R E T E IN A M E R I C A

22. Atlantic City (N.J.): Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, 1905 Architects: Price & McLanahan; Engineer: Kahn

E A R L Y R E I N F O R C E D CONCRETE IN A M E R I C A

23. Atlantic City (N.J.): Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, 1905. Details Architects: Price & McLanahan; Engineer: Kahn

EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE IN A M E R I C A

24. Atlantic City (N.J.): Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, 1905. Details Architects: Price & McLanahan; Engineer: Kahn

EARLY R E I N F O R C E D C O N C R E T E IN A M E R I C A

25. Los Angeles (Cal.): Mayan Cinema Theatre, c. 1925 Architects: Morgan, Walls & Clements

EARLY R E I N F O R C E D CONCRETE IN AMERICA

26. New York: Monolith Building, 1907. Architects: Howells & Stokes

EARLY R E I N F O R C E D CONCRETE IN A M E R I C A

2yA. Project: Monolithic House, 1906. Inventor: Thomas A. Edison Architects: Manning & Macneille

2-jB. Phillipsburg (N.J.): Monolithic Houses, 1909. Inventor: Thomas A. Edison

EARLY R E I N F O R C E D CONCRETE IN GERMANY

28A. Munich: Tietz Store, 1904. Architects: Heilmann & Littmann

28B. Munich: University School of Anatomy, 1907 AtvViiiwtc- TTpilmann & T.ittmann

EARLY R E I N F O R C E D CONCRETE IN GERMANY

29. Dresden: King George's School, c. i9I0. Architect: Erlwein

EARLY R E I N F O R C E D CONCRETE IN GERMANY

30. Breslau: Centennial Hall, 1913. Architect: M. Berg

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW A R C H I T E C T U R E

31. Paris: St. Jean de Montmartre, 1897. Exterior Architect: A. de Baudot (Cottancin System)

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW A R C H I T E C T U R E

32. Paris: St. Jean de Montmartre, 1897. Interior Architect: A. de Baudot (Cottancin System)

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW A R C H I T E C T U R E

33. Paris: St. Jean de Montmartre, 1897. Detail Architect: A. de Baudot (Cottancin System)

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE

34. Project: Presidential Palace, c. 1910 Architect: A. de Baudot

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW A R C H I T E C T U R E

35. Barcelona: Casa Mila, 1905-10. Roof detail. Architect: A, Gaudi

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW A R C H I T E C T U R E

36. Paris: Felix Potin Store, 140, Rue de Rennes, 1904. Roof detail Architect: Auscher (Hennebique System)

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE

37- Paris: 229, Avenue Rapp, 1901 Architect: J. Lavirotte (Cottancin System)

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE

38A. Paris: Ceramic Hotel, Avenue de Wagram, 1904 Architect: J. Lavirotte (Cottancin System)

388. Paris: 9, Rue Claude-Chahu, Passy, 1902 Architect: C. Klein (Hennebique System)

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW A R C H I T E C T U R E

39. Paris: 40, Rue Boileau, Passy, 1908 Architect: J. Richard (Hennebique System)

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE

40. Project: 'A Fa?ade for a Club in Ferro-concrete'. Architect: F. J. Lucas (Prize-winning submission for a competition organised by The Builder, 1908)

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW A R C H I T E C T U R E

4iA. Oak Park (111.): Unity Church, 1906. Architect: F. L. Wright

4iB. Pasadena (Gal.): Millard House, 1922. Architect: F. L. Wright

E C O L E DES B E A U X - A R T S , 189!

42. Analytical Study of Classical Architecture, 1891, Auguste Ferret

THE ARCHITECTURAL P R I N C I P L E S OF

CLASSICISM

43- Maisons-Laffitte: Chateau de Maisons, 1642. Architect: Francois Mansart

THE A R C H I T E C T U R A L P R I N C I P L E S OF CLASSICISM

44A. Florence: Palazzo Pitti, Garden Facade, 1558 Architect: B. Ammanati

44B. Paris: Palais du Luxembourg, 1615 Architect: S. de Brosse

THE ARCHITECTURAL PRINCIPLES OF CLASSICISM

45- Vaux-le-Vicomte: Chateau, 1657. Architect: L. Le Vau

THE A R C H I T E C T U R A L P R I N C I P L E S OF C L A S S I C I S M

46. Champs-sur-Marne: Chateau, 1703. Architect: J. B. Bullet

THE A R C H I T E C T U R A L P R I N C I P L E S OF CLASSICISM

47. Paris: Place de la Concorde, 1760. Architect: A. J. Gabriel (From P. Patte: Memoires, (1769), Plate XIV, p. 292)

AUGUSTE FERRET: EARLY MASONRY STRUCTURES 48. Paris: 119, Avenue de Wagram, 1902 General view, and detail of the fa?ade

AUGUSTE FERRET: EARLY MASONRY STRUCTURES 49. Paris: Apartment Building, corner of Avenue Niel and Rue Rennequin, 1904 Details of the fa$ade

AUGUSTE FERRET: EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAME STRUCTURES 50. Paris: 2$b, Rue Franklin, 1903. General view, and detail of the facade

AUGUSTE FERRET: EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAME STRUCTURES 51- Pans: 25b, Rue Franklin, 1903. Details of the entrance and staircase

AUGUSTE FERRET: EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAME STRUCTURES 52A. Paris: Garage, 51, Rue de Ponthieu, 1905. Fa?ade

52B. Paris: Theatre des Champs-Elysees, 1911. Fa?ade

AUGUSTE FERRET: EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAME STRUCTURES Paris: Theatre des Champs-Elysees, 1911 53A. Project for the facade, by Henry van de Velde (FromL''ArtFlamand et Hollandais, 1914, p. 139)

538. The facade as executed

AUGUSTE FERRET: EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAME STRUCTURES 54. Paris: Theatre des Champs-Elysees, 1911. Doorway detail

AUGUSTE: FERRET: EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAME STRUCTURES 55. Paris: Theatre des Champs-Elysees, 1911. Foyer

AUGUSTE FERRET: EARLY REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAME STRUCTURES Paris: Theatre des Champs-Elysees, 1911 56A. Interior of the large theatre (Opera House)

EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT although this was invisible on the exterior as a result of placing the infilling wall membrane flush with the outside face of the beams, both elevations were entirely of reinforced concrete, except for a thin finishing coat of cement. The few decorative motifs used were cast in situ from plaster moulds, and the whole character was one of great logic and simplicity. James Salmon seems to have been one of the more interesting of the lesser known architects of his generation. He had apparently made quite a name for himself as an Art Nouveau decorator, since five pages were devoted to his work in VArt Dtcoratif in 1899, and his lecture to the Glasgow Institute of Architects on 'The Decoration of Steel and Reinforced Concrete Structures', given in 1908, showed that his views were very similar to those held by the Glasgow School. 'The Scottish style, I mean especially that of the old roughcast castle, is eminently adapted to a development suited to reinforced concrete construction — the plain rough-cast surfaces, extending to the window sashes, and simple corbelling, the small cornices, the straight lines, the rarity of arches, and other details difficult to construct: above all, the freedom to do anything you like provided the shapes suit your material wants, and group well with the natural surroundings. Ruskin is fundamentally wrong when he says that architecture must be carefully distinguished from building. Building is architecture. If this new material, reinforced concrete, could induce us to drop all the ridiculous accretion of absurdities which we plaster on to stone, it will indeed have lifted a weight from a world overladen with "ornaments" and "decorators".'41 By the second decade of the century, reinforced concrete had begun to be regarded with more interest by architects of the old school, and was even cautiously adopted for the construction of churches, a type of building in which traditional structural methods were as hallowed as archaic decorative forms. A few of the lesser architects, knocking over several Lamps of Architecture in an unscrupulous quest for economy, had already set an example by using reinforced concrete barrel vaults to cover churches built to traditional designs, and this fashion was soon followed by more distinguished members of the profession who, with their greater scholarship, could use them more effectively, and quote all sorts of Byzantine precedents to justify the means. In 1902 a complete church had been begun at Exeter on the Cottancin system; a type of construction which could more properly be described as reinforced brickwork than reinforced concrete, but which used reinforced cement (i.e. without any stone aggregate) for vaulting. The Methodist church of St. Sidwell has been succinctly described by Professor Pevsner as 'Fanciful 1905 with a raised octagonal centre with cupola on top. The fa$ade with Baroque segmental pediment. Quite original; by a Frenchman Cottancin1'.42 Designed in fact by F. J. Commin and W. B. Coles, two local architects who won the commission in competition, the building is a 60 ft. square shell with internal cantilevered balconies, and rises to a height of 85 ft. above the pavement. The 83

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL contract was awarded to Cottancin because his tender was a thousand pounds less than that of any other contractor, but he went bankrupt before the walls were more than a few feet above the ground, and the church was not completed until May 1905, after having been the butt of much hilarity in the local pantomimes.43 In 1910 Professor C. H. Reilly built St. Barnabas' church, Shacklewell, North-East London, using reinforced concrete and brick to produce a rather Lombardic effect,44 and in the following year Edwin Lutyens built the Free Independent Church, Hampstead Garden Suburb, in which reinforced concrete columns were used to support a concrete inner dome.45 In neither case, however, did this indicate any particular interest in the possibilities of reinforced concrete design as such, and in 1912, Professor Reilly informed an interviewer that 'as regards reinforced concrete, I do not think it will for many centuries lead to new forms of architectural expression. I doubt if it will ever be used externally on any but engineering works. New needs like those to which the sky-scraper answers in America are more likely to alter the terms of architectural expression than any new materials'.46 The most significant church design of the period was probably the prizewinning 'church entirely of ferro-concrete' submitted in 1910 by C. P. Walgate for the Royal Institute of British Architects' Grissell Gold Medal. This valuable prize was originally established to encourage constructional brilliance, and although the success of this particular design was due less to the author's mastery of concrete theory than to the jury's obvious incomprehension of the principles of reinforcement, the choice of subject was itself a significant indication of the fashionable interest in the material at that time. The project submitted was in fact nothing more than a rather banal Byzantine pastiche., apart from the fact that the normal solid sections had little dots dispersed over them at regular intervals. These were evidently intended to indicate a mesh of reinforcement, and one can understand why the author took such pains to justify his uneconomic sections on aesthetic grounds. 'In designing the ferro-concrete church', he wrote, 'I followed tradition as far as applicable, because only thus is satisfactory effect ensured. The suitable treatment of any new material is found by practical experience and not by logical deduction. The Greeks imitated wood in stone at the commencement of their marvellously developed style of marble architecture. The interior is of marble and mosaic on Early Christian lines, with clear glass windows on account of the coloured surfaces. The exterior, being rendered, presents a new problem, and the design owes something to the Moresque. 'The concrete is intended to be comparatively poor, and consequently used in greater bulk, thus better resisting weather and giving fewer opportunities for dangerous errors in erection. The walls are double throughout, for warmth and the accommodation of pipes and wires in the interspace, which is wide enough to permit the passage of a workman. The vaults are domical and 84

EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT cylindrical, like Roman concrete vaults; all stresses being internally resisted to avoid thrust on the walls. The vertical supports are calculated without hooping, and sufficient bulk is allowed to satisfy eyes long accustomed to supports of materials having smaller resistances. In the nave marble columns are used as only dead vertical weight is carried. If reinforced concrete columns were substituted the Matrai system would give opportunity of finishing them with entasis, and to a thickness in accordance with classical tradition. Where reinforcement is simple a mesh is used to facilitate erection.'47 Walgate's contribution towards a new architecture in concrete was thus of a very negative kind, but it indicates the profession's, no less than his own incapacity to see the problem in its true light. In the event, the most logical forms have proved not to be as far removed from tradition as some architects of that time might have suspected, but it is surprising that in an age so appreciative of Gothic elegance, they should have excluded slender Gothic skeletons as models, and preferred Byzantine massiveness because of the superficial resemblances of concrete domes. The most important British reinforced concrete church erected before the war was not built in the United Kingdom, but in Georgetown, Demerara, where Leonard Stokes designed a Roman Catholic cathedral on the Considere system in I9I4.48 Reference has already been made to the popularity of concrete in those parts of the British Empire where sound building stone and skilled labour were equally unobtainable; now, to the advantages of simplicity of construction and availability of materials was added, with the introduction of reinforcement, the unique advantage of resistance to earthquake shocks. The endurance of reinforced concrete during earthquakes had been uncontrovertibly demonstrated at San Francisco, and in many regions where earthquakes occurred, buildings were often re-erected of the new material. After the catastrophic earthquake which struck Kingston, Jamaica in 1907, when all the government offices were destroyed, Edmond Coignet was called in to construct several important buildings, including the Queen's House (Plate 2OA), designed by Nicholson and Corlette, and the offices of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Co.49 (Plate 2OB). All the concrete was brought on the site by women carrying it in baskets, but in spite of such primitive procedure, a high standard of work was produced, and in the latter building the domed ceilings and exterior mouldings were all cast in situ, and given a finish to match natural stone. When war broke out, the popularity of reinforced concrete increased enormously, although after the declaration of hostilities many building contractors were under deep suspicion, since the Spy Scare was rampant, and every concrete factory roof was immediately regarded by the more impressionable as a gun emplacement. Noble Twelvetrees, the indefatigable editor of Hennebique's English periodical Ferro-Concrete, indignantly refuted such charges, but the circulation of his magazine was restricted mainly to those who were already involved in the plot, and the public, who had long been suspicious of 85

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL these foreign methods of construction, were able to spread their rumours without restraint, and give full vent to their distrust in the popular press. Those who had prophesied that the thin roof slabs would collapse under their own weight were now equally prepared to see them supporting howitzers, and any manufacturer who had both a concrete factory building and a German name was fortunate if he was not denounced on the spot. Nevertheless, the new British confidence in the structural strength of reinforced concrete was not accompanied by a similar faith in its aesthetic potentialities, and until recent years, few buildings consisted of anything more than frame cores surrounded by a masonry shell. When the Royal English Opera House had been constructed in 1888, the building itself, designed by Collings B. Young, had almost reached street level before the great T. E. Collcutt was appointed to design the brick and terra-cotta facades50, and this precedent of divorcing the concrete structure from its elevational expression became an almost inviolable rule for the next sixty years. Probably the only important non-industrial building constructed in England before the war with a facade entirely of reinforced concrete was St. Thomas' School, Birmingham, which, designed in 1914 by Harrison and Cox on the Hennebique system51, had also a number of other interesting features, including classrooms built on pilotis above the playground, and another play area on the flat roof. It is usually only in buildings of a more frivolous type, suchas those constructed at seaside holiday resorts, that we find concrete used in such a barefaced way, and fanciful examples at Spanish Gty, Whitley Bay (built in ipio)52, and the East Cliff Pavilion, Herne Bay (built in I9I3)53 showed clearly what municipal engineers could do when given the chance. Exhibitions still provided the best opportunity for engineers to show those facets of their imaginations which were usually repressed, and it was thus that the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition at Shepherds Bush displayed a gaunt free-standing spiral staircase designed by Mouchel54, whilst at the Festival of Empire Exhibition held in 1911 at Crystal Palace, a gallery and two gargantuan reinforced concrete staircases were built to the design of Bumard Geen.55 In more commonplace buildings, however, reinforced concrete was regarded as just an alternative to a steel frame, which could be inserted at the engineer's discretion within ready-prepared plans of conventional design. All the architect required of either system was that it should be discreet, and it was this common humility, rather than any similarity of design characteristics, which caused steel and concrete to be so frequently classified together in architectural reviews. In the United States, concrete construction was also an alternative to construction in steel, but with the difference that in America steel had already established a virtually impregnable ascendancy. The problem of the tall building had been thoroughly studied for a number of years, and the principal requirements of skyscraper construction, namely rapid assembly and easy supervision, were far better effected on the site with steel than with concrete, 86

EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT especially in a country where labour has always been relatively dear. Moreover, whereas it was the custom in England to fireproof steel frames with a thick concrete casing, the practice in America was still to use slabs of terra-cotta, so that here there was no glaring wastage of a heavy material capable of supporting a compressive load. There were, nevertheless, a few tall concrete buildings constructed in the United States, the first and most notable being the sixteenstorey Ingall's building (Plate 21) at the corner of Fourth and Vine Streets, Cincinnati, designed by Elzner and Anderson and built by a local firm of contractors hi I9O2.56 This remarkable structure was built to a height of 210 ft. above the pavement, with the lower three storeys faced in white marble, the top storey and cornice faced with white terra-cotta, and the intervening floors faced with glazed grey brick. Although Elzner, in particular, was a strong believer in exploiting the aesthetic potentialities of concrete surfaces, the architects were obliged to use facing materials for reasons of economy, and we may regret that when his opportunity for exposing concrete came, it should have been on the fa9ades of the far less important Terminal warehouse, Kansas City, built three years later. 'It is not incumbent upon us to face the concrete with marble, or brick, or terra-cotta', wrote Elzner in 1904, 'for as the state of art advances, the architectural forms, mouldings and what not, will be incorporated with the moulds for the structural work, and upon removing the formwork, the surface of the exposed concrete will be given the desired finish of rubbing or tooling, as the case may be. Thus we will have a truly rational architecture, in which there is no sham, no deception, a solid thing, no joints, every member incorporated with and a part of a living body; living because it is straining every particle of its substance in the performance of a great work, in its own self-preservation; a living architecture, indeed, and a rational one in every sense of the word, which will rise far above criticism and endure as long as the hands of man shall not be raised to its destruction.'57 The most strikingly rational attempt to exploit both the structural and aesthetic values of concrete was made in 1905, when the Blenheim building was added to the Marlborough-Blenheim hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey (Plates 22-24), by the architects Price and McLanahan of Philadelphia.58 It was not the first reinforced concrete hotel ever to be constructed, since Hennebique had designed the Imperial Palace Hotel, Nice, in 1900, but in its time it was the largest reinforced concrete building in the world, being 560 ft. long and 125 ft. wide, and rising in one part to a height of fifteen storeys. Unlike so many of the Californian buildings in which mass concrete was used because it was the cheapest way of imitating intricate historical ornament, the Blenheim hotel was designed primarily as a reinforced concrete frame on the Kahn system, and the decision to use a concrete fa£ade was prompted by a desire to avoid what the architects termed 'sham' coverings. When discussing the problem in a lecture to the Association of Portland Cement Manufacturers in 1906, Price criticized those who covered concrete with brick or stone, and said that 87

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL 'its proper ornamentation should be either cast in moulds as built, or such as can be run or fashioned on the work, with the addition of such colour ornament as may be obtained by the use of terra-cotta or other protecting material used as wall copings, roofs, pier caps, etc., and such other flat colour ornamentation as may be produced by the use of tiles, marbles, glass or other material which is evidently applied to the surface. In a material so plastic, the forms of openings and mouldings may be expected to vary much from those necessary to an architecture dependent on arches and lintels. There is more to be learnt in the Spanish, or Californian and Mexican varieties of Spanish, than any other accepted type. Their plastered walls, tile roofs and wall copings suggest concrete more than they do brick, and their domes and curved pediments are already suggestive of plastic rather than block construction'.59 It was advice which the cement manufacturers enthusiastically followed, and henceforth Spanish Colonial was to figure largely in their commercial brochures. The most cogent argument for the use of concrete in California was tragically provided by the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. Several of the demolished buildings were reconstructed of reinforced concrete frames, including the Macdonough Estate Building, Hopkins Building, Boyd Building, and Humbold Bank60, and when in 1908, the eight-storey Majestic Theatre Building was built in Los Angeles61, it was entirely constructed of reinforced concrete, with three storeys of office accommodation above the theatre ceiling, and a balcony cantilevered 30 ft. into the auditorium below. Concrete was to become a standard method of theatre construction in Southern California, and in the Music Box, Belasco and Chinese theatres, Hollywood, and the Mayan (Plate 25) and Metropolitan (now the Paramount) theatres, Los Angeles62, the grisly potentialities of concrete were illustrated to the full, from the stalactitic ornamentation of the walls and ceilings, to the footprint intaglios in the floors. In Pittsburgh, the first important reinforced concrete building was a tenstorey office block constructed for the Bernard Gloekler company.63 This structure, built in 1908, was originally intended to be faced with a mixture of cement and marble dust inserted into the front of the form-work at the same time as the structural walling behind. After using this method for the first few storeys, however, it was considered too complicated, and the rest of the building was completed using a ground stone aggregate for the whole structure which, when hammer dressed, gave a similar appearance on the facade. In New York, the Borough of Manhattan had issued regulations for concrete-steel construction as early as 1903, but the first reinforced concrete buildings erected there seem to have been the Schirner factory, 69 Bank Street, built by the Turner Construction Company in I9O564, and Miss Keller's Day School at 35 East 62nd Street, built in the same year.65 The architect of the latter, George Keller, designed it in the 'Italian Campanile' style, but although the fa£ade possesses little interest, the structure is very remarkable, in that to obtain a wide uninterrupted space on the ground floor, no inter88

EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT mediate columns were used there at all, those of the upper floors being supported at the lower ceiling level by beams spanning 40 ft. In 1907, the architects Howells and Stokes, who a year previously had built the Carnegie Public Library and the Waldorf apartments in Seattle of reinforced concrete, were invited by Samuel Green to design an office block on 34th Street, New York, between Broadway and Fifth Avenue (Plate 26), which he was building as a private speculation.66 The first building of its class in the city, the 'Monolith' building was twelve storeys high, with a veneer of limestone up to the third storey, and the rest of the facade discreetly ornamented with festoon patterns executed in situ with the aid of plaster of Paris moulds. The method seems to have been technically effective, but few architects tried to emulate this honest and enthusiastic attempt to use the concrete itself as a decorative feature, and the more reinforced concrete frame structures became common, the more customary it was to hide the skeleton within a covering of brick, as in the nine-storey 'Nothingham' apartment block on 30th Street, begun in 1906 by Snelling and Potter67, or the garage on West 93rd Street, built by the same architects in the previous year.68 In 1905 Ernest Flagg, one of the most successful Beaux-Arts trained American architects of the day, had complained bitterly when a thirty per cent rise in building costs obliged him to substitute a reinforced concrete skeleton for the masonry construction of the Naval Academy chapel at Annapolis, carefully modelled on the Dome of the Invalides in Paris.69 Even in those buildings where the concrete was left apparent, there was a strong temptation to follow the current fashion of reproducing European masterpieces, and it is without surprise that one reads how the reinforced concrete Phelps Publishing Company building at Springfield (Mass.), was designed to be 'a copy of the Royal Palace in Stockholm'.70 Since reinforced concrete was economically unsuited to compete with steel construction in the United States, except in factory design, the propaganda of the cement manufacturers tended to concentrate more on housing, and on the ease with which mass concrete could be moulded by amateur labour. As early as 1905, the Architectural Record had published an article entitled 'Villas all Concrete', and by 1909 the movement had become so popular that a town called Concrete was established in the state of Washington, where lots were sold with the proviso that the buildings thereon should be built of no other material.71 So well had the ideal of domestic concrete been sold to the American public that one citizen, filled with a pharaonic craving for immortality, expressed a desire to be buried in a concrete grave, and even (such is the power of American advertising) specified the exact brand of cement in his will.72 In 1908, Messrs. Deeds and Son, of Cuyahoga Falls (Ohio), built themselves a reinforced concrete mausoleum which, according to Concrete Engineering, 'is appealing strongly to the people that have seen it.'73 The designs advocated by the cement industry were not calculated to bring 89

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL about any important developments either in structural technique or architectural expression, since the principal aim was to imitate traditional styles as closely as possible, rather than to invent anything new. The most authenticlooking houses were those which imitated adobe construction, and * Spanish Colonial' concrete villas not only spread from southern California to the east coast, but even reached Aberdeenshire, where James Dunn, recently returned from a trip to the United States, constructed the * Spanish Villa' at Tillycorthie to the design of John Cameron and L. G. Mouchel in I9I2.74 More interest was to be found in a number of progressive attempts at prefabrication, the most intriguing of which being that of Thomas Alva Edison, who may possibly have been inspired by the Monocast houses constructed at Haworth (N.J.)j by the architect Augustus C. Pauli in about I9o6.75 In that same year, the New York Press announced that Edison planned to mould whole houses in a single casting of solid concrete, 'which will provide cosy houses for working men at a cost of from one-sixth to one-fourth of what the average mechanic pays today. The plan will be carried out in such detail that dormer windows, chimneys, spouts and ornamental designs will be moulded with the whole, and inside cupboards, fireplaces, stairways with ornamental balusters, mantelpieces and even bathtubs will be formed all in the one cast of which the house proper will be made. Even the plumbing and gas piping will be of concrete moulded in the original cast.'76 As a practical demonstration, Edison built a chicken house in his own backyard moulded in one solid piece of concrete with 'many compartments and doorways and decorated cornices of intricate design'.77 Of it, Edison remarked that 'members of my family laughed at me when I told them I was going to make a chicken coop out of concrete, but they are not laughing at me now'.78 What exactly put a stop to their hilarity is not clear, but evidently the sight of this curious edicule provoked no smile from Edison or doubts as to the feasibility of the system, and he straightway engaged the architects Manning and Macneille to design a house 'in the style of Fran£ois I' (Plate 2yA), with a floor plan measuring 30 ft. by 25 ft., and two rooms on each floor.79 The first trial occurred in 1909, using i in. thick cast-iron moulds which were planed, nickel-plated and polished (Plate 273). This form-work took four days to erect and four days to dismantle, but the actual pouring of the concrete, which was pumped in by compressed air, was achieved in six hours.80 The difficulty of casting so much intricate ornament naturally jeopardized the success of the venture from the start, and it is not surprising that this particular design was soon abandoned. Nevertheless, Edison's two assistants, George E. Small and Henry J. Harms, had enough faith in the method to carry out further experiments on their own account in France and Holland. Profiting from Edison's mistakes, they addressed themselves this time to the Dutch architect H. P. Berlage, a compatriot of Harms, who produced a twostorey house of the most simple cubist design, which was not only admirably 90

EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT suited to the method of construction, but very much in harmony with the contemporary movement in Dutch art. The form-work consisted of 2,600 metal castings of a size and weight convenient for handling, and was held together by 10,000 nuts and bolts. It took eight days to erect and two days to dismantle, so that including the time taken for pouring and setting, a house could be completed thirteen days after the preparation of the foundations. The first of these houses constructed in Holland was cast at Santpoort, near Haarlem; the first house in France was cast in the rue de Montjoie, St. Denis, not far from the concrete houses erected some fifty years earlier by Fra^ois Coignet.81 In Germany, the general pattern of development was at first similar to that of the rest of Europe; if the reinforced concrete was used in more ambitious ways than as floors, roofs, staircases or domes, it was usually covered externally in a traditional disguise, so that only buildings of a purely utilitarian character were accustomed to display their structures unashamed. The largest non-industrial reinforced concrete building constructed in the first decade of the twentieth century was probably the Passage Kaufhaus in the Friedrichstrasse, Berlin; an organization of sixty retailers with all their shops under one roof.82 Built in 1908, the foundations, pillars, floors and roofs, including a 100 ft. diameter cupola, were all in reinforced concrete, and since the municipal authorities would not allow plaster on the ceilings unless it was guaranteed not to fall off, the undersides of the concrete floors were merely painted. The fasades, both inside and outside, were however less austere, and the halls separating the long line of salesrooms were lavishly decorated in a number of contrasting historical styles. In March 1904, a most important innovation had been made when two Bavarian architects, Heihnann and Littmann, designed and built the Tietz store (Plate 28A) in the Bahnhofplatz in Munich.83 Externally this building was of little interest, being in the late mediaeval style then being popularized by Alfred Messel, but internally a sincere and successful attempt was made to adapt the structural forms of reinforced concrete to create an original decorative effect. The beams, some of which were curved on plan, terminated at each end in the bracket-like 'haunches' which were at that time considered an obligatory structural feature of the Hennebique and other systems, and the ceilings were coffered by means of pre-cast slabs used as permanent shuttering, thus producing forms in which, for the first time, the inherent structure was featured rather than disguised. Three years later, these same architects constructed the Anatomy School of Munich University (Plate 28s), which was inaugurated in February I9o8.84 Here, instead of again exploring the internal decorative possibilities of structural elements (an attitude which would in any case have been somewhat out of place), they concentrated on the contribution which reinforced concrete forms could make towards characterizing the massing and general composition. The result was a central feature consisting of a circular domed hall, surrounded by interpenetrating domed apses which sd

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL clustered around the base, and the whole character, both internally and externally, showed not only a logical, original and straightforward use of the material, but also a quite remarkable restraint, especially when compared with Hennebique's earlier excursions in this field. The climax to German reinforced concrete design before the war, and the event which produced the most powerful stimulus for future development throughout the world, was the construction of two immense halls in Breslau; the Market Hall, designed by Heinrich Kuster in 1908, with parabolic arches spanning over 62 ft., and the Centennial Hall, designed in 1913 by Max Berg, composed round a gigantic saucer dome, measuring 213 ft. in diameter (Plate 30). Neither of these structures would probably have been conceivable had it not been for the many remarkable roofing systems evolved for factory buildings by specialists such as Wayss and Freitag, or Dyckerhoff and Widmann. Even in such advanced buildings as the Evangelical garrison church at Ulm, or the art gallery in Stuttgart (where in each case the architect, Theodor Fischer, had used interior vaults of bold and original design), it had evidently been impossible to avoid reminiscences of traditional forms, whilst the exteriors of these buildings were completely veiled in brick and stone. In Breslau, on the contrary, monumentality was deliberately produced by an uninhibited exploitation of the new structural forms themselves, and in the huge gaunt three-dimensional arches of the Centennial Hall, or the delicately modulated parabolas of the Market Hall, men perceived for the first time a really new architecture: novel in form, vast in scale, with a delicacy of line and plasticity of surface evolved, not from any desire for arbitrary sculptural effects, but from the ineluctable demands of geometric and scientific laws. Nevertheless, the influence of these examples was not exclusively beneficial, since by concentrating attention on vaulting systems of vast scale, they tended to suggest cliches which were inimicable to a sound architectural development of the new material. The first sight of a Byzantine dome or a mediaeval vault resting immediately on the ground had not unnaturally produced a novel and dramatic experience, but it obscured the fact that the Byzantine and Gothic architects had been more daring, as well as more rational, in building their own vaults on vertical supports. The idea of a building consisting of nothing but a curved roof, without the traditional imposts or walls, was admirably suited to such vast enclosures, but was not inherent to concrete as such. Domes without imposts, and arches springing almost from the ground, had been exploited for some time; they had been projected by Boullee, and used successfully by both John Soane and H. H. Richardson in masonry construction; but these motifs could only become significant in reinforced concrete when maintained at a scale consonant with the possibilities of the material. Unfortunately, the less intelligent avant-garde architects began using parabolic vaults on every conceivable occasion, however derisory the span, whilst the theorists, tended to regard reinforced concrete as only expressive 92

EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT when used in vast works of engineering, and could only discuss the ethics of concrete construction in terms of grain silos, airship hangars and bridges. Stimulating though these monster structures undoubtedly were, they distracted attention from the architectural issues at stake, since few normal buildings were vast enough to require tremendous spans or daring cantilevers, and the audacious ingenuity with which Maillart bridged alpine gorges was inapplicable to most buildings of domestic scale. Thus the design of interesting reinforced concrete structures tended to be regarded more and more as the domain of the leading civil engineers, whose natural right it was to astound, and the reverence for the 'Engineering ^Esthetic', eventually obscured from the architect's mind not only the engineer's limitations but his own obligations in this particular field. For although the genius of such engineers as Maillart and Freyssinet derives as much from aesthetic intuition as from courage and logical design, it is nevertheless true that the engineer's intuition finds little scope in works of small scale, and this is particularly true of reinforced concrete as compared with steel. The reasons for this apparent paradox are two-fold: firstly, the possibility of using varying reinforcement in concrete allows such flexibility in design that the optimum section of any given beam or column depends less on the calculation of loads than on the many other architectural requirements involved. Secondly (and this is the most crucial difference between steel and reinforced concrete architecture), the engineer must always assume a shape for the concrete before designing its reinforcement. Given the section of a beam or column to within broad economic limits of dimension, he will then determine by calculation exactly how much reinforcement to insert and how it is to be distributed; but by no amount of calculation can he determine a unique optimum external profile to be given to a structural member, the choice of which must inevitably be the architect's responsibility. It may be contended, therefore, without underrating the tremendous achievement of the two halls at Breslau, that the most useful line of architectural development in Germany before the war was that being pursued by Heilmann and Littmann, who, incidentally, were not only architects but contractors as well. The importance of this combination of functions cannot be too highly stressed. To design a concrete structure is to design the form-work, and these two architects perceived that however closely they collaborated with engineers, they could never design rationally unless they were personally familiar with the process of construction itself. It was a method which, as we shall see, was being pursued at the same time in France by Auguste and Gustave Ferret, and on reflection, it must be apparent that this was the only discipline which could possibly give hope of success. It was a method which the more perspicacious engineers themselves recognized, as is shown by the article by the Italian engineer Danusso, which appeared in // Cemento in 1908. After observing that the problems of the new material had been resolved first by 93

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW MATERIAL practitioners, and only secondly by theorists, he went on to remark: 'One may even say that, at the very beginning, theory was rather an obstacle to the development of the new art, since it often happens that those who are accustomed to examining questions of stability from a scientific angle lose sight, little by little, of the real end of the research, namely objectivity, and limit themselves either to drawing conclusions which are good for other systems of construction, but unjustifiable when applied outside their true domain, or forming subjective hypotheses which are quite new, but which only too frequently extract sophism or error from the light of pure meditation.'85 Building construction, as Guadet pointed out, is as much an art as a science; art in the way it invents, combines and foresees; science by the strictness of verification and control. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, architects were well aware of the close relationship between the two, since they lived before the age of standard sections, and were obliged to master personally the principles of stone-cutting before they could design a three-dimensional arch or vault. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, the introduction of steel construction suddenly divorced the technique of structural design from the realities of structural execution, as engineers calculated the size of members by formula, and entrusted the work to a new class of operatives, for whom questions of final appearance were irrelevant. Constructional design was no longer a matter of geometry but of arithmetic; no longer a matter of shape but of graphs and equations. Little wonder, then, that when this same general method was applied to concrete construction in the following decade, it proved powerless to advance the evolution of a concrete architecture, or make any vital contribution in the search for appropriate forms. The newly established traditions of steel frame design were at that time too widely accepted for their extension to be questioned, but we can see now that the only way of achieving a genuine concrete architecture lay in rescuing structural design from the paralysing influence of drawing-office codes, and returning it to the building site where it belonged. It was not in the manipulation of abstract theorems, but in the study of executional methods, that new forms were to be created, yet this research could only be pursued by craftsmen, as opposed to the technicians, the new heroes of the age. The validity of such an apparently retrograde view could not be accepted without resistance, since such doctrines naturally affronted the most cherished assumptions of the period, and were only imposed after a stubborn and persistent struggle against contemporary trends. It is the history of this struggle which constitutes the remaining chapters and principal theme of this book and if, in the light of present knowledge, some of the early theories seem to be unduly obtuse, it is not because we are brighter than our forefathers, but because a few men of genius succeeded in transforming certain hitherto unquestioned beliefs.

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Part Two THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE

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CHAPTER FIVE

The Nineteenth Century

T

he various discussions which took place in the iSyo's concerning the architectural expression of concrete were not perhaps of tremendous consequence in the general history of nineteenth-century architecture, but they throw an interesting light on the Victorian mind, since they represent one of the few controversies concerned with a new architecture which did not peter out in frustration and disappointment. In spite of their tremendous achievements in planning and construction, the architects of the period were extraordinarily sensitive to their shortcomings as regards choice of architectural forms, and whilst certain modern historians may justifiably urge us to disregard contemporary self-criticism as in itself evidence of bad design, it is impossible to deny the dilemma in which this capable and ingenious generation considered itself to be placed. A new age had dawned, and a new architecture was needed to express it. How such a desideratum first formulated itself is not entirely clear, since it was not apparently the result of the prevailing anti-academicism, the industrial revolution or new structural methods. Etienne Boullee, who seems to have unwittingly started the idea, was a zealous academician who flourished late in the eighteenth century, and it was his immediate disciples who popularized his doctrine by relating it to the political revolution which had brought them to power. Nevertheless, Boullee's ideas were manifestly impractical, so that when the clamour for a New Architecture arose again in the i85o's, his vision of using completely novel compositions was very wisely abandoned. Instead, the new movement, promoted by Cesar Daly in France and Digby Wyatt in England, was based on 'Eclecticism', i.e., the selection of what was most appropriate from every style so as to form an entirely fresh grammar of design. In France this was tried against a background of Classicism (sustained by the Academy) and Gothicism (promoted mainly by a small but influential minority led by Viollet-le-Duc); in England, where the Academy was ineffective and taste had always been more a matter of sentiment than reason, Gothic and Classical lived fairly peacefully side by side; equanimity was only disturbed when some competition or other aroused latent animosities, and gave rise to acrimonious exchanges in the popular press. G 97 c.c.

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE The atmosphere of general frustration in which these 'Battles of the Styles' took place is only too well known. The only possible solution to the problem of avoiding the imitation of historic forms would have been to adopt that expedient we have generally accepted today, namely the reduction of all surfaces to a state of pristine nudity. This, however, the nineteenth-century architects could hardly be prepared to do in an age which considered that the sole purpose of banishing poverty was to enable more and more people to enjoy the traditional fruits of wealth. In the existing circumstances, namely the absence of any new cultural stimuli similar to those by which Renaissance art had flourished, the problem could at first only be conceived in terms of ornament, and whatever the Crystal Palace might have meant in terms of exhibition architecture, it was only after the general introduction of entirely novel structural methods in the i88o's that a radically new approach was possible for buildings of a permanent and monumental kind. When concrete was first introduced into England, many architects seem to have sensed that, despite the apparent poverty of the material, it was in some way a presage of the new stimulus they were awaiting. Indeed, when we compare the paucity of concrete buildings constructed before 1880 with the intensity of debate and the distinction of the debaters, we can only account for the disparity by assuming a subconscious awareness of the ultimate issue at stake. At first, whenever concrete was discussed in the technical journals, aesthetic problems were mentioned only incidentally in relation to technique, but the question of finding an appropriate appearance soon began to have an importance of its own, until it finally overshadowed developments of a more material kind. As Thomas Potter remarked in his book on concrete construction published in 1877, 'the later opposition to the use of concrete has resolved itself almost entirely into the question of "/Esthetics". The doubts about strength, durability, and other essential qualities have given way to nearly the only remaining important difficulty, viz., how to treat it in such a way that shall be reasonable and consistent, without imitating any other material, and without pretence of being something totally different from what it really is.'1 The Royal Institute of British Architects discussed the matter in 18712 and i8763, when the subject aroused so much interest that on the latter occasion the debate was adjourned twice, and thus extended over three meetings. The Architectural Association discussed the matter in i8684 and i87i5, the Northern Architectural Association discussed it in i8728, and on nearly every such occasion the editors of The Builder and the Building News took the opportunity of commenting on the conclusions reached and stating views of their own. In the latter periodical, the leading article which appeared on 23rd July 1875 was headed Concrete Architecture; a tide which alone was sufficient to indicate the prestige which the new material had by then acquired. It is of some significance that all this discussion and speculation was confined to the British Isles, and that French periodicals ignored the problem en98

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY arely. This may be attributed in some measure to the neglect of concrete construction after Coignet's financial failure, but it also reflects profound differences between the mentality of English and French architects at this time. In France, Classicism was still firmly established, in spite of the incursions of Viollet-le-Duc, and when controversies arose about choice of style, they were seldom tinged with those religious connotations which, since the time of Pugin, had become habitual in England. The second Empire was not a particularly pious age, despite the Empress's example, and no great architect of the time was noted for his attachment to religion. The piety of Victorian England, on the contrary, was a by-word, even if some of its manifestations might have been exaggerated or insincere. Revivalism in religion and reforms in political and social life naturally had their effect on every expression of Victorian thought, and on no form of art more thoroughly than on architecture, which must always be most affected by changing social patterns. For those in England who speculated about the nature of a new architecture or a new material, therefore, the problem tended to be primarily ethical, and it was not surprising that their leader should be John Ruskin, a man obsessed with the awareness of sin, and whose impassioned oratory seldom enunciated an architectural doctrine without evoking the name of God. Very few faults of architecture were, he proclaimed, mistakes of honest choice, but were almost always hypocricies7, and he took it upon himself to make plain the path of virtue to the profession. 'We address ourselves', he began in the Stones of Venice 'first to the task of determining some law of right which we may apply to the architecture of all the world and of all time; and by help of which, and judgement according to which, we may easily pronounce whether a building is good or noble as, by applying a plumb-line, whether it be perpendicular. The first question will of course be, What are the possible Virtues of architecture?'8 and salvation, Ruskin demonstrated at length, was only to be found in Christian Architecture, or in other words, Gothic. When the Victorians first learnt of concrete, they were not so much intrigued by the limitless possibilities offered by its plastic form, as intimidated by the unprincipled character of its fabrication, since such methods found no place in the annals of Christian architecture, and had no precedent except in pagan buildings and texts. Tempted though the bolder spirits might be by the many possibilities which concrete seemed to afford, it was difficult to escape the conclusion that an upright architect would eschew the material altogether, since according to Ruskin, any methods used by the Romans were anathema, whilst 'cast ornament' was to be unhesitatingly condemned. 'The violations of truth, which dishonour poetry and painting, are for the most part confined to the treatment of their subject,' he proclaimed, 'but in architecture another and a less subtle, more contemptible violation of truth is possible; a direct falsity of assertion respecting the nature of material or the quantity of labour.' Then, elaborating on the means by which architectural deceits could be produced, he 99

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE listed three categories, of which 'the use of cast or machine-made ornaments of any kind', being the most heinous, was reserved till last.9 Ruskin's ruling on the subject thus seemed unequivocal; no material was to be made to look like any other material, and although the critics had not the slightest idea as to what concrete should look like, they were unhesitant in condemning anyone who made it look like anything recognizable at all. It was generally agreed with Ruskin that 'to cover brick with cement and to divide this cement with joints that it may look like stone, is to tell a falsehood'10, and a correspondent who proudly informed the editor of The Builder in 1867 that he was going to try and make concrete imitate a first-class front of brick was coldly advised 'not to give himself the trouble of trying to make the front look like anything but what it is'. Thomas Potter could justifiably lament in 1885 that 'it is unfortunate that the introduction of concrete was for some reason fifty years too late, for then the cry of sham had not taken so deep a root as now; in many cases buildings for which it is admirably suited are built with other materials, because of the inevitable stucco'.10 In 1868 Phene Spiers told the Architectural Association meeting of which he was chairman that when he saw Sir Arthur Blomfield's house at East Sheen, lie was persuaded that some exterior ornamentation would be necessary, because not only was the concrete not all the same colour, but there were strata of unequal degrees of smoothness, some being rougher than others. He expressed the hope, however, that hi cases where stucco might be employed to improve the front, stone joints would not be introduced.12 In 1875 Charles Drake informed the Society of Civil and Mechanical Engineers that a finishing coat of cement upon concrete was simply its natural right, but was careful to add that any attempt to make the work look like stone-work was strongly to be deprecated.13 Nevertheless, he does not seem to have convinced his audience even of the potentialities of the material, since after discussion they concluded that while concrete was invaluable as a constructive material, its capability of aesthetic treatment was so small that architects were not likely to adopt it at all extensively unless it could be produced at a much lower cost; an unflattering rider which showed little confidence on the part of the engineers in the integrity of the architectural profession. The main cause of perplexity was due to the fact that few people considered bare concrete presentable in itself; firstly because of the drab colour of the cement, and secondly because of the irregularity of the texture. We have seen how F. P. Cockerel! considered the 'honeycomb' appearance of concrete quite natural, and there were few landlords who, like Mr. Whatman, M.P., of Maidstone,14 were content to forego a coating of stucco on their cottages, and simply provide them with a coat of paint. For most people, the problem seemed to be: 'what kind of covering is consistent with the honest expression of the material beneath?' and confronted with such a conundrum, it was not surprising that so many theorists decided to wait and see. For those architects and builders 100

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY who wished to use the material straight away, however, the problem was of some urgency, and the only way out seemed to be to find an analogy with some method which Ruskin approved. Here they were fortunate, in that later in The Seven Lamps of Architecture, Ruskin had discussed 'Surface Deceits' in the following terms: 'Surface deceits may be generally defined as inducing the supposition of some form or material which does not actually exist; as commonly in the painting of wood to represent marble, or in the painting of ornaments in deceptive relief etc. But we must be careful to observe, that the evil of them consists always in definitely attempted deception^ and that it is a matter of some nicety to mark the point where deception begins or ends.'15 Here then was the obvious dispensation. Provided one did not attempt to deceive; provided one did not cover the wall with a material which looked like some other material, then virtue was saved. It was thus that Ruskin, by his rather casuistic distinction, encouraged architects to deprive concrete of any structural character it might possess, and treat it as a core for more seemly veneers, or a background for coloured designs. The use of colour was in any case congenial to the age, since apart from Ruskin's suffrage in favour of the variegated marbles of Italian Gothic, the whole trend of fashion had swung towards lavishing polychromatic decorations on surfaces and forms. Early in the century, archaeological research had reconciled architects to the existence of colour on the exteriors of Greek temples and on the interiors of Gothic shrines, and this inevitably gave rise to such an excess of these decorations that architecture was at times completely submerged under alien disruptive designs. For his choice of motifs, the architect had only to turn to Owen Jones' vividly lithographed reproductions of the ornaments of every earlier style, whilst for his justification he could refer to Gottfried Semper, who in his lectures at South Kensington had laid down the maxim that to decorate and clothe was the same thing, since the clothing of reality was the essence of art. Such principles in their turn stimulated the industry of applied arts; indeed, it is about this time that the term 'decorative art' came into existence. New processes were invented for producing terracotta ornament and coloured tiles, and a wide range of standard patterns was soon freely available on the market. Eventually the architect had only to make his selection from a manufacturer's catalogue to find an acceptable facade ready to hand. Taking into consideration the growing advocacy of smooth facing materials for buildings in smoke-ridden industrial towns, it is little surprising that many of those who wished to use concrete should have found this a highly satisfactory way out of their predicament. In fairness to Ruskin, it should be pointed out that he merely permitted, but did not recommend the covering of structural materials, but his reasons for objecting to veneers on brick were precisely those which justified their use on concrete. 'While we have traced the limits of licence, we have not fixed those of that high rectitude which refuses licence. It is thus true that there is 101

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE no falsity, and much beauty, in the use of external colour, and that it is lawful to paint either pictures or patterns on whatever surfaces may seem to need enrichment. But it is not less true, that such practices are essentially unarchitectural; and while we cannot say that there is actual danger in an over use of them, seeing that they have been always used most lavishly in the times of most noble art, yet they divide the work into two parts and kinds, one of less durability than the other, which dies away from it in process of ages and leaves it, unless it have noble qualities of its own, naked and bare.*16 Architects were not slow to appreciate, however, that this disadvantage did not necessarily apply to veneered concrete, since the mosaic or colour could be set in direct contact with the structural mass, instead of as in brick, being applied by means of an intermediate coat of mortar to the alien surfaces of a built-up wall. Concrete embedded with mosaic could thus be likened to the setting which encloses a gem (a very Ruskinian analogy) and when covered with fresco formed as firm a unity with the painting as if it were canvas or board. We thus find that many of those who favoured the use of concrete considered that it most appropriately fulfilled its architectural function when encrusted with mosaic, covered with paint, or concealed under a facing of encaustic tile. Professor Banister Fletcher (senior), writing under the initials 'B.F.' in the Building News in 1872, was not prepared to commit himself to definite views at such an early stage, and sensibly advised that architects should first be assured of the advantages of the material, and then, when they found it must be used, try earnestly to make it the vehicle for expression, unsaddled by precedent, as its novelty demanded. But in the meantime he had no hesitation in affirming that its treatment as imitation stone was wrong. 'The material has a rough surface, and, unfortunately, not an even setting one, for the settlement of the material appears very uneven; so at present, it is all faced up, and presents thus a portland cement face. Surely this cannot be right. By the use of terra-cotta, by incised work, by, as has been suggested, coloured sand, by glazed ornamental tiles, sunk in to form stringways (but this mixture of glazed surfaces with the unglazed has its objections), surely we can develop an individuality of treatment that shall commend itself. *17 Since the unpleasant drabness of untreated concrete was the other main objection to its use alone, those who distrusted applied decoration tended to concentrate their research on means of colouring the surface of the fa9ades. In 1878 Charles Drake, who tried more than any other contractor to give the material an honest appearance, referred to some new buildings he was constructing on Wandsworth Common which would show how colour and other effective finishes might be obtained cheaply, and the ordinary stucco avoided,18 but more elaborate decoration was usually envisaged by the leading theorists, and great possibilities were seen by some in sgraffito, which was then all the rage in South Kensington, and had just been used to give the Royal College of Music its rather startling facade. Mr. Redgrave, speaking in the discussion on 102

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Alexander Payne's lecture in 1876, pointed out that 'the danger is that this kind of ornamentation is so easily applied and can be so readily spread over large surfaces, that you are liable to get the appearance of floorcloth on the front of the building'19, but Payne himself was not averse to the idea, which, as has been pointed out, had already been used with some success by F. P. Cockerell at Down Hall. The conviction that concrete surfaces needed a covering soon led to the idea of using the facing material as some kind of permanent form-work, and at the Annual International Exhibition of 1874, J. J. Lish exhibited his 'TiloConcrete', a wall faced with tiles and terra-cotta mouldings which were held in position by special metal frames whilst the concrete was being poured. What was really required, he urged, was a system of construction that would at once defy the corroding and destructive influences of the atmospheres of large manufacturing towns, meet the requirements of ornamental architectural design, and be far less costly than either brick or stone construction, and he caustically derided Charles Drake for his 'miserable cracked and blistered cemented fronts which do not even pretend to architectural style and elegance of a high character'.20 Logical and advantageous though such a system might be, it had one curious, far-reaching and lamentable consequence which first found expression in the early i88o's. In a leading article ominously entitled 'Constructional and Decorative Concrete', published on 3ist March 1882 in the Building News, the opinion was put forward that if a wall could be built quickly and easily of a concrete core faced with slabs of better quality concrete, it would not be long before builders would avail themselves of the material in lieu of bricks, provided that they were assured of sharp profiles and accurate joints. Admittedly, the writer went on, there were the architects' prejudices to get over. Why not build solidly, the architects would ask, of brick and stone, instead of veneering walls with thin slabs of a better material? Undoubtedly, the want of substance and solidity would destroy the sense of deep mouldings, light and shadow, and fine modelling effects in the mass, and it was in this way that the concrete manufacturer was out of sympathy with the art architect of the day. Since the beauty of all architecture was the expression of constructional ideas in the solid, any reduction of wall mass would always be regarded with suspicion, if not with dislike. Whether they liked the material or not per se, the leader continued, architects were bound in their own interest to accept facts. They should admit in a graceful manner, that, after all, it was better to master the material and mould it into artistic uses, than to get it pushed upon public notice in some of the intractable and inartistic forms it often assumed. As concerned colour, concrete had lately undergone considerable improvements, and in the coloured cement and marble mosaic specimens of paving and chimney pieces, a new field was open for the architect and ornamentalist. As in other cases, however, where coloured forms borrowed from one material had been transferred to 103

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE another, there was, the writer considered, a danger of inappropriateness in the decoration. With a modification of the material people would look for a difference in the ornamentation, and it was this idea, the article concluded, which the concrete specialist who went in for artistic reproductions of marble mosaic might with advantage make a guiding rule. Even apart from the general sentiments expressed, phrases like 'art architect', 'ornamentalist' and 'artistic reproduction' already indicated the rather gruesome directions towards which ideas were tending, but it was on 2yth October 1882, when discussing a letter from William Simmons (in which Simmons had stated that walls could not be architectural in any worthy sense of the word without a built face), that the editor finally gave unequivocal expression to the new policy at which he had been hinting for so long. 'Mr. Simmons observes, with some truth', he wrote, 'that concrete walls slabbed with marble or tiles are not properly architecture; there is no evidence of construction in a monolithic building; at the same time it would be a constructive falsehood to imitate features in that material. But there is no reason why the architect should try to make a concrete structure all of one piece, like a stone building. For concrete construction in the mass, no doubt the only legitimate finish is rough-cast or cement. It is impossible, it is true, to mould a complete building in all its parts in concrete; but it would not be going beyond the proper and artistic use of the material to employ concrete in the form of blocks which may be cast into simple and reasonable forms quite in harmony with the nature of the material, and in complete accordance with an architectural meaning. The error has been not to see the difference between using concrete as a monolithic mass, disguising it to represent stone or brick, and employing it as a material built in blocks or sections impressed by an art of its own.' Thus delicacy of conscience had pushed scruple to its ultimate extremes of absurdity. Since speculation on the architectural expression of monolithic concrete had so far been fruitless, and since the ethics of design did not allow the simulation of any other material, it was now proposed to abandon the system altogether, and use imitation stone, rather than develop the structural possibilities of concrete under a makeshift fa£ade. It was a policy which Norman Shaw, Ewan Christian, Alfred Waterhouse, and many other leading architects had helped to cultivate by patronizing the manufacturers of terra-cotta and other 'artistic' building materials, and it was one of the causes of the decline in interest in concrete at this date. The final degeneration of the new doctrine was typified by a Building News announcement in 1889 of Fambrini and Daniels' newly enlarged masonry works at Lincoln, which was to have 'the front elevations constructed principally of concrete masonry in various colours, interspersed with foliated capitals, panels, strings, etc., modelled and reproduced by the firm in their speciality.'21 Meanwhile, however, attention was being drawn to an entirely different approach to the whole problem which, had it been pursued, could have given 104

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY far more fruitful results. In a communication addressed to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1880, Imrie Bell, who had six years previously built a 44 ft. lighthouse in concrete at Corbiere, Isle of Jersey, reported that he was greatly struck by the want of attention paid to the art of producing a fair and finished surface to the exposed faces of the concrete, and concluded that this objectionable aspect of concrete building arose simply from indifference.22 It was possible, he claimed, and even easy, with due attention, not only to produce a fair surface, but to form mouldings, and even tracery and ornament, whilst at the same time making the face-work as durable as any other part of the block. This suggestion was of course by no means revolutionary, since although Imrie Bell had invented certain important improvements in technique, such as soaping the inside of planed form-work to prevent it sticking to the concrete, the whole question of moulding concrete in situ had been fully exploited by Coignet. Nevertheless, his announcement, which was commented upon at length in The Builder23, called attention to the fact that, by tacitly basing all their speculations on the assumption that concrete had to be covered, the theorists were approaching the problem in the wrong way. The solution, clearly, was not to use unskilled labour for the wall structure, and craftsmen for the applied decoration, but to build concrete walls with such craftsmanship in the first place that the need for a decorative covering would disappear. For some reason, however, neither architects nor builders seemed capable of rising to such a challenge, although the idea had been tried out to some extent by Sir Arthur Blomfield, and urged by him during the Royal Institute of British Architects debate of 1871.24 On this latter occasion Blomfield had explained that a great deal could be done without plastering the surface, by using a fine concrete which could be kept to the external face of the work, and left untouched when the form-work was removed. He admitted that it was impossible for several reasons to avoid showing the marks of the different levels at which the form-work boxes were fixed, but since this was a necessity of the method, he considered that it should be made a feature. The marks should be clearly defined, and advantage taken of them to vary the colour and composition of the surface concrete. Finely broken granite or quartz, fine sea-shingle, and coloured sands were suggested by him as materials which might be used. In general, however, such advice passed unheeded, and the only notable example of an attempt to create a monumental building of unfaced and unpainted concrete seems to have been the seven-storey block constructed in 1880 at 63, Lincoln's Inn Fields, by William Simmons.25 From what we know of Simmons' views, however, and from an inspection of the building, it seems more than likely that the facade was of pre-cast blocks, and although, thirty years later, this building was claimed to be one of the first reinforced concrete buildings in England, it is probable that this was only true with reference to the floors and flat roof. The merits of a flat roof had, indeed, been the main subject of Simmons' 105

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE letter to the Building News in 1882. The advantages which Fra^ois Coignet had envisaged so enthusiastically for his flat-roofed theatre were also perceived by some of his immediate successors as applicable to other buildings, and the roof garden, which was to be such a feature of twentieth-century projects, was by no means an unfamiliar idea in the Victorian age. After referring to the flat concrete roof recently laid on a large hotel in Reading, Simmons quoted approvingly from *a distinguished horticultural gentleman' who thought the roof of a house should be 'as firm as a rock, and not the most fragile part as it is at present'. Take a house, say, on the north side of Hyde Park', Simmons had written, 'with the whole of the top flat, and a sort of loggia thereon at its north side, only open to the south, with pillars supporting the roof (also flat) of this happy retreat in case of rain. For children alone, such a safe and secluded playground would be worth the making; but all would enjoy it. In hot weather, meals could be taken there with pleasure. As regards the way to the roof, the latter should be as easy of access as the best bedroom.'26 It was only a brief step from this to Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse. So far we have only been concerned with the attitude towards concrete surfaces, but there was also the equally perplexing problem of the choice of concrete shapes. In general there were three schools of thought; those who advocated simple geometric compositions, in which all the interest would be concentrated on flat decorative surfaces; those who advocated conformity to traditional historical styles, in which the composition and modelling would be guided by precedent; and those who advocated entirely original forms which would owe nothing to the past, but would derive their shape from the plasticity of the material itself. The first group, which was probably in the majority, took a logical enough attitude, since apart from the fact that the various types of patent form-work precluded any projections on the external surfaces, the fashion of applying titles, terra-cotta or patterned incrustations to cover the concrete demanded flat walls as a matter of course. However, when such coverings were used, it could more properly be argued that the choice of form was dictated by the properties of the facing materials rather than by the properties of concrete as such, and although there were a few theorists, such as Alexander Payne, who recommended flat surfaces for their own virtues, many architects regretted the complete absence of bold modelling which such a treatment entailed. Payne considered that the aim of concrete work should be to have as large flat wall spaces as possible, and suggested ornamenting these surfaces with patterned indentations which could be obtained by means of corresponding patterns nailed to the timber forms. To those who objected that the English sun was not bright enough to bring such decorations into clear relief, he retorted that there was plenty of soot to settle in the hollows and render them blacker, and rain to keep the surface of the wall white, so that no better mode of decoration could be found for a London climate.27 The second group, namely those who used cast ornament, were regarded as 106

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY completely subversive during Ruskin's ascendancy, and therefore had little influence until 'Queen Anne' was revived; as a result, it was unusual to find traditional ornament openly advocated for concrete before 1880, and when used at all before then was applied with the utmost discretion, or confined to string courses, hood-mouldings and the like. Such an intransigeant refusal to admit any suggestion of copying past styles seems curiously out of character with the accepted reputation of that age, yet critics such as George Godwin obviously regarded the imitation of historic forms in concrete with as much contempt as the imitation of the alien materials they represented. Criticizing the two-storey cottage which Tall exhibited at the Building Exhibition in 1882, he described its architectural treatment as 'a conglomeration of shams'28; in which the lower portion of the exterior was in imitation of coursed ashlar, the upper portion in imitation of half-timbered work with cross bracing, and the interior walls in imitation of wood panelling with moulded stiles. A year later, when commenting on Ernest Newton's recently published Sketches for Country Residences: designed to be constructed in the Patent Cement Slab of W. H. Lascelles, he was equally abrupt, and in an editorial leader entitled 'The Picturesque in Cement', he remarked: 'For the knowledge that these are designs for concrete houses, we are entirely indebted to the title page. For all that appears in the character of the design we might conclude that these were a set of brick houses in Domestic Gothic style, with mullioned windows, some of them half-timbered. The drawings are just like hundreds of other pretty drawings made by practised draughtsmen in the present day, many of which, in the same style, may be seen annually on the walls of the architectural room of the Royal Academy.'29 Nevertheless, in fairness to Newton, it should be pointed out that he did produce one novelty, which was later to be reinvented by Frank Lloyd Wright, and then become one of the most tiresome cliches of the architecture of concrete in the 1920*5; namely, the corner window. Of this, Godwin was no more tolerant, and wrote: 'The special distinguishing element of "a house for the Midlands" appears to consist in putting a number of the windows in the external angles of the walls, leaving the angle of the wall supported (to appearance) only by a mullion of the window. This may be piquant; its peculiar suitability to the Midlands we hardly profess to understand; but what is quite obvious is that such a way of placing windows is not very good building, and (consequently) not very good architecture.'30 The third group of theorists, namely those who advocated entirely original forms, provided some extremely perspicacious ideas, and although few of them seem to have understood the true nature of the problem they were trying to solve, they at least showed a desire to create a genuine new architecture rather than rely on ornamental novelties of a superficial or imitative kind. All architects who prophesied a great future for concrete were equally convinced that its architectural expression must be quite different from what had been seen hitherto, and most of them would have echoed Alexander Payne's 107

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE lament that few, if any, attempts had been made to treat concrete architecturally in a manner suited to its peculiar nature and properties. Payne's own solution to the problem was to erect as the basis of his structure, a permanent iron frame, and use this as a support for the temporary form-work of the concrete infilling. As an anticipation of the practical and aesthetic function later to be fulfilled by the reinforced concrete frame, it was extremely logical, but it could hardly be considered an answer to the problem of concrete design as it existed at the time, and hence received little support. It is significant that concrete seems to have been regarded quite early as being, by nature, a trabeated structure, and one which needed this kind of articulation if its true character was to be expressed. In the Royal Institute of British Architects debate of 1871, Sir Arthur Blomfield began his remarks by protesting against the idea of a concrete arch, and claimed that concrete was in fact a solid mass of artificial stone. It would be as rational, he said, to scoop out the underside of a York flagstone landing or a Portland stone lintel into an arched form to increase its strength, as to mould a mass of concrete into such a shape with the same object. Concrete construction was, he asserted, essentially monolithic, and the arch had no proper place in it, except perhaps as a mere decorative feature, clearly unconnected with the construction, which in any case probably carried with it its own condemnation. In saying this, he disclaimed any criticism of barrel vaults and domes which he regarded as very suitably constructed as solid concrete shells.31 This idea of concrete architecture as trabeated architecture was further developed in an extremely penetrating leading article published in the Building News in 1875. In this, the editor observed that concrete was only awaiting the verdict of the profession for its more general application to the walls of buildings. Brick and stone, he said, had antiquity in then: favour; the architects of the time had been educated in their employment, and current forms of architecture had been solely derived from their use and combination. Indeed, it was indisputable that the architectural designs of the age wholly depended upon them, and had grown out of them. It was precisely the difficulty experienced in thinking of a new material like concrete or cast iron which had made architects so unwilling to adopt such materials in their architecture. There was no question of claiming that any insuperable difficulty existed in the matter, such as that concrete and cast iron were naturally inartistic, or did not lend themselves to architectural forms. Such an idea would have involved the admission that architecture was only a mechanical art, instead of being elastic enough to embrace all materials. It would also have militated against all monolithic kinds of architecture, such as Egyptian and Greek, which depended upon a trabeated form of construction. The editor contended that concrete was equally as artistic as brick and stone and that it was only in the present imperfect conception of its use, based on recent efforts, that current prejudice was founded. He asked his readers whether any of the great historic 108

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY temples, such as the Hall at Karnak, or the Parthenon at Athens, would have been an iota less architectural if they had been built of concrete instead of marble or stone. He did not, he added, wish his readers to include the delicate mouldings and sculpture of these examples, but to restrict his meaning to the larger masses of columns and entablature and wall. Perhaps, he suggested, some people might think they would feel less satisfied with them as works of art if such materials had been used, but why? A little reflection would convince them that such a feeling was simply a prejudice — an association of grand forms with marble and stone, and nothing more. It was the same kind of prejudice which they entertained for a hundred other things in everyday life. If they could once get over this prejudice, architecture in concrete would be as possible as architecture in brick and stone. There was nothing to prevent, for example, columns and lintels being cast in mass, and walls being built in panels or blocks, or filled in between the jambs and framework of doors and windows. If they analysed the existing prejudice against concrete, they would find that a great deal of it arose from a well-founded dislike to those concrete works lately erected by the assistance of patent processes. It proceeded from the impression produced by these works, that they had been cast in a single mould, doors, windows, and all. There was a want of articulated construction, so to speak, in them, and the very essence of good architecture consisted, he claimed, in a proper articulation of the parts.32 Even allowing for the fact that general principles have been interpreted very differently in different ages, and that the exact kind of architecture visualized in this article in the Building News could well have been very different from what these broad generalizations might lead us to visualize today, the perspicacity and intuitive wisdom of the remarks are quite bewildering. In a few lapidary and pellucid phrases, four hierarchical principles were offered as guides to the true use of new structural materials; namely, that form must be subordinate to structure, that material must be subordinate to form, that ornament must be subordinate to material, and that all structural materials have the same intrinsic tectonic dignity, irrespective of cost; and on the principle that all good architecture is articulated, and all monolithic architecture is trabeated, the author implied, if he did not actually enunciate, the oracular formula: Concrete architecture must consist of articulated trabeated structures composed of monolithic columns, beams and frames, with infilling walls made up of pre-cast blocks. It was a conception which was entirely premature, since it demanded the development of the theory of reinforcement before it could be put into full effect, but as a general principle it was perfectly valid, and although the author became discouraged by the fact that it was ineffectual at the time, and was led to repudiate the whole theory seven years later, he deserves the fullest credit for having formulated it when he did, especially as no guidance was forthcoming from the practitioners themselves. Only one man ever really put such a system into effect, and it took him a lifetime of painstaking research 109

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE to develop it independently and bring it to ultimate perfection. We shall have cause to consider these principles in great detail as this study proceeds, for they proved to be the only logical approach by which a rational concrete architecture could be obtained. Convinced that his expose would solve all the problems with which a designer could be faced, the editor of the Building News launched a competition the following November for *A Concrete Villa'.33 It was not the first of its kind; only a few months previously, a similar competition had been organized by the Architectural Association, but no prize was awarded because most of the competitors covered the concrete with some other material, whereas the conditions had made it clear that this was not the aim.34 The Building News competition was however more successful, and the winner of the first prize was none other than concrete's most eager partisan, Thomas Potter, who after leaving Lord Ashburnham's employment had established his own contracting firm in partnership with Thomas Mallinson of Killarney. In their report, the winners claimed that their aim had been to depart from the long-practised method of external finish to concrete walls by means of stucco, and to adopt a simple treatment applicable under any circumstances35, but in fact they had been unable to think of anything more ingenious than embedding a 'halftimber' facing in the upper storey by means of deal planks plugged to the structural wall. Sensitive design in this competition had admittedly been somewhat hampered by the fact that, as was customary at this period, the drawings were required to be suitable for lithographic reproduction, but the results were a great disappointment to the promoters, who felt that the indications given in their recent editorial merited a far less superficial approach. 'The designs, as a whole, have not realized our expectations, though Classic, Renaissance, Gothic and Nondescript styles have been invoked,' they reported. 'As before hinted, the legitimate employment of concrete as a building material points to a style in which the solids are arranged in rectangular or simple masses. A wiry or "acrobatic" Gothic would be unsuitable. A trabeated form has far more claims than an arched treatment; and a mullion and lintel style, in which solid and void, light and shadow are obtained by a judicious combination of vertical and horizontal members, and the decorative features by a recessed fenestration or panelling, relieved by inlays of tiles or stamped ornament, seems a reasonable mode of composition. We question, indeed, if anything approaching an arched treatment of window and other openings is desirable. Anything, too, indicating a kind of construction obtained by small elements like bricks and small stones is subversive. Broad surfaces, a pilaster rather than a columnar front, windows subordinated to the wall, and a decorative character in which surfaces rather than lines are regarded, appear in unison with a material that must be used in a mass, whether on the "trench" or "block" system. The idea of framed timbering and a filling in of concrete, as adopted by the winners and one or no

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY two other competitors, seems a rational mode of obtaining effect and rigidity of structure not inconsistent with the nature of the material.'36 The editor thus still held to the principles he had so forcefully enunciated earlier, but his assurance had weakened, and the sight of the heterogeneous competition drawings had evidently already unnerved him, and plunged him into doubt. The conciliatory tone of his condemnations, and such references as that to 'block' construction, already give sign of the complete volte-face which was to occur in 1882, when, as we have seen, the idea of a monolithic concrete architecture was abandoned altogether. Few competitors seem to have experimented with the plasticity of concrete, by which it could be adapted to any shape it might be given, and indeed this quality seems to have been largely ignored by theorists in general. In 1871 Rowland Plumbe had insisted that concrete should be treated exclusively as a plastic material,37 but nobody except Imrie Bell seems to have realized that the fundamental problem of concrete was the design of the form-work, and even he seems to have been more concerned with the surfaces of the moulds than the shape they were given. For this in fact was the crux of the whole problem; it has been referred to before, and it will be referred to many times again in the course of this work. Concrete does not take shape until it is poured into form-work, and the design of concrete structures is thus the design of the moulds. It was only by concentrating on this aspect of the problem that the nineteenth-century theorists could have had any chance of finding a correct solution, but the tradition of 'patent apparatus' and cheap labour obscured from the minds of both architects and building contractors the real issue at stake. It was not until twenty years later, when the whole question was approached afresh by architects trained as building contractors and practising as such, that a valid and lasting solution of the problem finally made its appearance.

in

CHAPTER SIX

The Twentieth Century

T

he analysis of modem architectural opinions presents considerable difficulties, because since the beginning of the century there have been so many of them, and so many means of propagating them, that it is hard to distinguish the multifarious currents, and hazardous to claim any one trend as typical over a wide field. Within and between each country, the periodicals circulate; to be read avidly by those who share the editor's views; to be cast violently aside by those who react against them. During the first quarter of the century, most of the architectural periodicals were highly conservative, and it was not until the 1930*8 that the determination to be and stay avantgarde gripped the more expensive magazines. The views on concrete design published by the earlier periodicals thus tended to be patronizing and pessimistic; yet even so, they were probably as faithful a reflection of the majority opinion as their successors today. It is worth noting, moreover, that the later issues were not always better informed, nor did they give a less equivocal lead as regards the most appropriate methods by which this now familiar material should be used. It is possible, by examining the contemporary periodicals, to study the history of concrete design from many aspects. One can state the opinions of the more influential artistic groups; one can discuss views expressed by the many International Congresses held during the time; one can study the suggestions made by lecturers who regarded themselves as particularly fitted to speak on the subject; or one can examine pronouncements made by distinguished architects who had gained their authority and respect in other fields. One can survey these views chronologically, classify them in accordance with the opinion expressed, or split them up into national groups so as to discuss each country's contribution in turn. Each method would portray a useful and realistic aspect of the problem, but none could be entirely adequate by itself. At the risk of producing a disjointed narrative, I have decided to try briefly all these approaches in turn. This will certainly not give an exhaustive account of public opinion at the time, but then all that is required is an adequate sketch of the background against which the more constructive proposals were urged. What can never be conveyed is the general apathy which the vast majority of 112

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY architects in Europe and America felt towards the whole subject. The idea of concrete as the hidden skeleton of a preconceived fa£ade satisfied most of the profession then, as it still does today. The use of steel frame construction still presented then, as now, a number of overriding advantages in many parts of the world. Those who struggled with the problem of a concrete architecture were always a select few, and if their prophecies were not always proved wise in the event, they at least deserve the credit for having seen that a problem really did exist. The first architect of distinction to enunciate a coherent theory of design applicable to reinforced concrete (as opposed to mass concrete), and put such ideas into effect, was Anatole de Baudot, whose church of St. Jean de Montmartre (Plates 31, 32), begun in about 1897 afld completed in I9051, is rightly regarded as one of the most original buildings of the period. Its importance derived not merely from the novelty of its forms, but from the status of its designer, for de Baudot was the unchallenged successor of Viollet-le-Duc whose disciple he had been, and could now, at the age of sixty-three, justly claim to exert as much authority over the younger generation of architects as any man living. Since 1887 he had given a series of popular lectures in the Palais du Trocadero in Paris, where Viollet-le-Duc's museum of plaster casts was housed, and in addition spent much of his time writing polemical articles in technical reviews, several of which he edited or controlled. His attacks on current academic standards were naturally not always palatable to all his contemporaries, but as a Diocesan Architect and Inspector of Ancient Monuments he could at least command their respect, whilst for the younger generation he typified that perennial revolutionary spirit with which the young of every generation must necessarily be inspired if they are not to follow tamely the fashions of the past. Basically, de Baudot's ideas were always conditioned by those of Viollet-leDuc, whether as regards the unique virtue of mediaeval principles, or as regards the hopes to be placed in the creative potentialities of new structural methods — then more or less limited to cast iron and steel. A complete faith in metallic construction was in the i88o's almost inevitable for this was the age in which the exploitation of its capabilities seemed supreme. The Forth bridge and the Palais des Machines were both under construction at this time, and although we tend today to think of both these structures as works of pure engineering, men like de Baudot were very conscious that it was Ferdinand Dutert, Grand Prix de Rome of 1869, who had designed the Palais des Machines for the 1889 Paris Exhibition (just as Eiffel had the benefit of the assistance of the architect Sauvestre)2, and that, to quote Dutert's obituary notice in VArchitecte: 'From the great skeleton to the smallest details, everything was as he drew it; the role of his scientific helpers was restricted to mathematical precisions as to the thicknesses of metal required.'3 On the other hand, de Baudot had little sympathy with what James FergusH 113 c.c.

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE son had, in the middle of the century, termed the 'Ferro-vitreous art'4, even though the Art Nouveau architects were about to bring it once more into fashion. Indeed, he not only regarded the large-scale combination of glass and metal as an unsatisfactory structural system, but probably considered it outmoded as an ideal. As early as 1849 the director of the Belgian Industrial Museum had claimed iron and glass as the only possible modern building materials, and pleaded for the total rejection of stone, brick and timber except for internal insulation. 'Surely Providence has foreseen this magnificent renovation by making the glass and iron industries develop in parallel,' he wrote in an article entitled Metallurgical Architecture. 'Glass is called upon to play a great role in metal architecture; instead of comprising thick walls pierced with big holes which diminish their solidity and safety, our houses will be glazed with numerous and elegant openings which will make them completely translucent. The openings, of every conceivable shape, filled with all types of glass — thick, double, diaphanous, unpolished, white or coloured, according to choice — will have a magical interior effect during the daytime, and will look even more superb at night from the outside, because of the play of lights.'5 In contrast to such Jules Verneian flights of fancy, Viollet-le-Duc had steadfastly refused to reject traditional materials completely, and had sought instead a rational means of combining metal and stone. It was to be expected, therefore, that Anatole de Baudot should pursue a similar course, and his church at Rambouillet, built in 1869*, may well have been the first practical attempt to put Viollet-le-Duc's ideals into effect. In its general appearance this church conformed to pseudo-Gothic precedents, as might be expected of an Inspector of Ancient Monuments, but it also made a gallant attempt to go beyond mere imitation by introducing a new structural principle into the supports, whereby iron columns were so arranged as to avoid the need for flying buttresses. The desired technical result was certainly achieved, but apart from the awkward complexity of forms which resulted, such attempts to obtain perfect equipoise between metal and stone were manifestly unsound, as de Baudot himself tacitly admitted when he later condemned Baltard's contemporary church of St. Augustin in Paris, where a similar system had been used.7 The sterility of such attempts to create new forms had become only too apparent by the time de Baudot began his Trocadero lectures, and it was at about this time that he instituted a different approach. Contemporary lack of invention was, he now considered, merely the direct result of public apathy and conservatism, whereby architects were prevented from finding forms appropriate to the contemporary state of civilization because they were denied the complete liberty which their mediaeval predecessors had formerly been allowed. He therefore, in 1890, launched a 'Programless Competition' in which those taking part could design any type of building they chose, and were quite free to set their own conditions.8 A jury of high repute and divergent tastes was 114

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY established which included, in addition to de Baudot himself, Charles Gamier, Emile Vaudremer, Claude Sauvageot and Gustave Lisch — namely two Grands Prix de Rome, an architectural historian and the designer of the Gare St. Lazare. Handsome prizes were offered, but except for an exotic billiard room in twisted iron which won first prize, most of the entries played safe by submitting pseudo-Gothic churches conforming to de Baudot's own past standards, thus using their mediaeval freedom of action in an unexpectedly literal mediaeval way.9 The motives which then induced de Baudot to experiment with reinforced concrete, and to conclude that this material was the natural end towards which his earlier experiments in iron construction had always been tending, seem fairly clear. In following out the theories of Viollet-le-Duc, he had for some time been considering various modifications of Gothic vaulting in which metal ribs would be substituted for stone. This led to the problem of finding a suitable web infilling, for which he eventually conceived the idea of adopting cement panels reinforced with an iron mesh.10 Experiments to determine suitable thicknesses demonstrated that a hitherto unattainable slenderness could be achieved, and this led to the use of reinforced cement for the ribs as well. The initial uses of his new method were quite undramatic, since they were confined to patching up ancient monuments and other humble repairs; but an unexpected opportunity of demonstrating the system to the general public presented itself at the end of the century, when de Baudot was invited to design a new church to replace St. Pierre de Montmartre, then scheduled to be destroyed. The new church of St. Jean de Montmarte, which C. F. Marsh, in the first English engineering treatise on Reinforced Concrete (1905) nicknamed 'the folly of the century'11, was not de Baudot's first use of the material in contemporary design, since he had already built at least three houses and the Lycee Victor Hugo, rue de Sevigne, in Paris, using the Cottancin system; but it was the first building in which the conditions of the programme had prompted him to devise any radically new forms. The novelty of the technique involved him in all sorts of wearisome litigation, but this at least had the advantage of giving well-merited publicity to his enterprise and courage. The whole devious and shameful process of official hindrance has been described in detail in La Construction Moderne12, but it is still worth recalling in general outline. Owing to some obscure contravention of a regulation concerning building alignments, whereby the cure of Montmartre should have obtained prior municipal dispensation for the site he chose, the police tribunal fined him a nominal five francs and then ordered the half-constructed church to be torn down. Execution of this judgement was, after long argument, apparently rescinded fortuitously by a general amnesty for such offences; but the Prefecture, whilst waiving the fine, still insisted on reserving the right to order demolition, and although a higher tribunal later gave judgement in favour of the defendants, "5

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW ARCHITECTURE the Prefect still refused to admit defeat. He was, wrote the editor of La Construction Moderne, 'Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee',* and stubbornly carried the matter to the civil courts, demanding immediate demolition and loo francs fine for each day's delay. As expert witness for the prosecution, he brought in J. A. Bouvard, who was supposedly an authority on modern construction, but whose iron frame barracks in the boulevard Morland, built in 1883, comprised brick infilling walls so thick that they were capable of supporting the floor loads without any help from the iron at all.13 It was of course apparent to all qualified observers that the Prefect's nominal grounds for complaint were merely a legal subterfuge for condemning a structural system which his inspectors considered insecure, but which they had no legal means to prevent. Yet as Paul Planat, the editor of La Construction Moderne, pointed out in a leading article, it was foolish to judge questions of stability with reference to traditional proportions alone, since it was easy to see that in principle at least, proportions must be quite different when materials worked in tension instead of compression. At first sight such proportions might well cause surprise, if not shock, since they contradicted all normal criteria so far established, and this was especially true in the present case, where the architect had refused to take an easy way out of his difficulties by dissimulating the thinness of his construction with applied ornament. He had persisted in presenting his structure as a problem solved with complete austerity, in order that the solution should be all the more clear, and reason alone, Planat concluded, should declare itself satisfied, if such a declaration were needed at all.14 One reason why the church of St. Jean de Montmartre appeared internally so unusually frail was that de Baudot was still using the Cottancin system which, as has already been pointed out, is not true reinforced concrete in the modern sense, since the compression members are of reinforced brickwork (i.e. pierced bricks threaded with steel rods), whilst the tension members are not of true concrete but reinforced cement (i.e. rods embedded in a mixture of sand and cement, without any stone aggregate). To the end of his life, de Baudot violently disapproved of normal reinforced concrete, objecting that when stone aggregate was used, the dimensions of the structural elements could no longer be standardized, whereas with reinforced cement, the proportions were not only invariable but far less thick.15 His other objection to ordinary reinforced concrete frame construction seems to have been based on the curious misapprehension that it would only be used as a hidden structural support. 'Reinforced concrete is more popular than its rival because architects lack interest in everything demanding a profound study of construction', he wrote; 'they recognize the superiority of reinforced cement, but its frail dimensions upset their habits of composition. Hence reinforced concrete triumphs, and its numerous specialists have only one competitive interest in common, namely who can make the most profit. To ensure the stability of their work, * Racine, Phkdre, Act I. 116

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY they address themselves to engineers who are skilled at calculations, but who have no say in the architectonic composition.'16 De Baudot used the Cottancin system with the utmost integrity in St. Jean de Montmartre, but the peculiarities of the system were such that his example could have only very slight relevance to the current search for appropriate reinforced concrete forms. His reinforced walls were of remarkable thinness, but they appeared externally as ordinary brickwork, which indeed to all intents and purposes they were. His vaulting webs were only a few centimetres thick, but this startling achievement was only apparent to those who had seen the working drawings, and since he had been led by his more deeply-rooted prejudices to model them on Gothic prototypes, the novelty of the method passed largely unperceived. Only the freely arranged archways of the nave and aisles gave any indication of the originality of the new structure, but since these were arbitrarily interlaced into purely decorative patterns (Plates 32,33), and evoked obvious mediaeval reminiscences, they could hardly be expected to stimulate healthy developments even in ecclesiastical architecture, and were positively harmful in their effects on buildings intended to fulfil the more mundane needs of the age.* Clearly, de Baudot's mind was too saturated with mediaeval archaeology for him to think of reinforced cement in any other way than as the amelioration of mediaeval archetypes, or to conceive of a superstructure in any other form than as a vault based on a series of traceried ribs. 'Henceforth', he had written enthusiastically in 1895, 'it WU Patent Concrete Stone (1866). 8. Building News, 28 June 1867, p. 440. 9. Thomas Potter, Concrete: Its Use in Building (1877), pp. 102-5. 10. Builders' Journal, 20 June 1906, Concrete & Steel Supplement, p. i; cf. also Structural Engineer, April 1955, pp. 134-7. 11. The Builder, 16 July 1859, p. 478. 12. The Builder, 6 October 1860, p. 638. 13. Lecture to the Adelaide Philosophical Society, quoted in The Builder vol. 35, p. 1133. 14. The Builder, 10 August 1867, p. 594; p. 630. 15. Building News, 27 July 1866, p. 499; The Builder, 18 July 1868, p. 535. 16. The Builder, 18 January 1868, p. 47. 17. Building News, 1868, vol. 15, pp. 34,764. 18. Building News, 1872, vol. 22, p. 296. 19. Revue Generale de I Architecture, 1866, vol. 24, columns 221-8. 20. Building News, 12 April 1867, p. 253. 21. The Builder, 13 April 1867, P- 253. 22. Revue Generale de I*Architecture, 1867, vol. 25, columns 226-31. 23. Nouvelles Annales de la Construction, 1868, column 62. 24. The Builder, 13 April 1867, p. 253. 25. Building News, 1868, vol. 15, p. 507; 1869, vol. 17, p. 44. 26. The Builder, 17 October 1868, p. 769. 27. The Builder, 12 February 1870, vol. 28, pp. 125-7. 290

36 36 36 36 36 37 38 38 38 38 39 39 40 40 40 40 40 40 41 41 41 41 41 41 42 42 42

NOTES 28. Proceedings, R.I.B.A., 1876, p. 190. page 42 29. Building News, 4 July 1873, p. 8. 42 30. Building News, 25 June 1875, p. 714. 42 31. Ibid. 42 32. Building News, 4 July 1873, p. 8. 42 33. The Builder, 14 August 1875, p. 731. 42 34. The Builder, 31 August 1878, p. 908. 42 35. Ibid. 43 36. Builder's Journal, 20 May 1908. 43 37. The Builder, 17 August 1872, p. 641. 43 38. R.I.B.A. Journal, 1876, p. 235. 43 39. Builder's Journal, 20 May 1908. 44 40. Building News, 24 July 1874, p. 108. 44 41. Building News, vol. 15, pp. 725,743,764,781. 44 42. Building News, 16 July 1875, p. 75. 45 43. Building News, I November 1878, p. 446; The Builder, 2 November 1878, p.1157. 45 44. The Builder, 5 October 1867, p. 737. 45 45. Building News, vol. 22, p. 493; vol. 23, p. 1335 The Builder, vol. 30, p. 491,641. 45 46. Building News, June 1872, p. 493. 46 47. Building News, n September 1885, p. 431. 46 48. Proceedings, R.I.B.A., 1870-1, p. 187; Building News, vol. 15, p. 764. 46 49. The Builder, 2 October 1869, p. 777. 46 50. Ibid. 46 51. Ibid. 46 52. Building News, vol. 22, p. 144; vol. 50, p. 279. 46 53. The Builder, 2 February 1867. 47 54. The Builder, 16 October 1869. 47 55. Building News, vol. 18, p. 168. 47 56. The Builder, 9 December 1871, p. 964. 47 57. The Builder, 6 May 1871, p, 351; 1872, p. 477. 47 58. The Builder, 24 February 1872, p. 151. 47 59. The Builder, 4 January 1873, vol. 31, p. 17; also vol. 32, p. 500. 47 60. Building News, 12 April 1867, p. 253, The Builder, 13 April 1867, p. 253. 47 61. Building News, 11 April 1873, p. 417. 47 62. Building News, 6 January 1871, p. 16. 47 63. The Builder, 23 May 1857, p. 288. 47 64. Building News, vol. 13, p. 5 82. 47 65. Building News, vol. 15, p. 34; The Builder, 18 January 1868, p. 47. 47 66. Op. cit., vol. 15, pp. 461,548,564,579. 47 67. The Builder, 14 December 1872, p. 990. 47 68. Building News, 29 November 1872, p. 420. 48 69. Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1870-1, pp. 175-87. 48 70. Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1874-5, p. 214. 49 71. Ibid. p. 216. 49 72. Building News, 26 October 1877, p. 406 (illustrated). 49 73. Building News, 20 March 1874, p. 323. 50 74. RJ£.A.Journal, 1904, p. 92. 50 75. Ransome & Saurbrey, Reinforced Concrete Buildings (1912), ch. 2. 50 76. The Builder, 1876, vol. 34, p. 389; Building News, 16 June 1876, p. 594; Proceedings, R.I.B.A., 1875, p. 183. 50 77. Proceedings, R.I.B.A., 1878, p. 306. 51 78. Proceedings, R.I.B.A., 1876, p. 181. 51 79. Compare, for example, Sir Owen Williams' views on the subject in R.I.BJ1. Journal, 1924-5, p. 337. 51 291

NOTES 80. American Architect, 1885, vol. 18, p. 7. page 52 81. Op. cit., 27 May 1876, p. 501. 52 82. The Builder, n November 1871, p. 890 52 83. The Builder, 24 July 1886, p. 122; Nouvelles Annales de la Construction 1891, Columns 60-4. 53 84. The Builder, 7 January 1888, p. 14. 53 85. Op. cit., 7 January 1888, p. 6. 53 86. The Builder, 26 December 1868, p. 941. 54 87. Building News, 23 August 1872, p. 149. 54 88. The Builder, 29 October 1887, p. 598,30 June 1888, p. 468. 54 89. The Builder, 4 February 1888, p. 89. 54 90. The Builder, 14 February 1891, p. 126; Building News, 9 January 1891, p.64. 54 91. Building News, 26 June 1891, p. 355. 54 92. Ibid. 54 93. Builders'Journal, Concrete & Steel Supplement, June 1906. 54 94. The Builder, 2 May 1891, p. mi R.I£.A. Journal, 1891, p. 78. 54 95. The Builder, 27 May iSj6,p. 501. 55 CHAPTER THREE 1. American Architect, 1883, vol. 13, p. 159; 1926, vol. 129, p. 97. 2. The Builder, June 1872, p. 492; American Architect* 1926, vol. 129, p. 97. 3. Transactions, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1883, vol. 4, p. 388; Architectural Record, 1909, vol. 25, pp. 359-63. 4- Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. T. Hyatt, An Account of some Experiments with Portland-CementConcrete (1877), p. 27. 7. Ibid., p. 26. 8. Revue Generate de VArchitecture, 1869, vol. 27, column 214. 9. Svenson, Jaembeton, p. 5 (quoted by Ransome & Saurbrey, Reinforced Concrete Buildings (1912), ch. 2, 'France'). 10. The Builder, Match 1873, vol. 31, p. 241. n. The Builder, March 1878, vol. 36, p. 350. 12. Concrete and Constructional Engineering, 1906, vol. I, pp. 325-9. 13. Building News, February 1896, vol. 70, pp. 272-304. 14. Nouvelles Annales de la Construction, 1885, column 190. 15. American Architect, 7 November 1891, vol. 34, p. 84; Ransome & Saurbrey, Reinforced Concrete Building (1912), ch. I, passim. 16. Ibid. 17. American Architect, 1901, vol. 72, p. 61; Ransome & Saurbrey, op. cit., ch. 1. 18. American Architect, 1902, vol. 75, p. 87. 19. The Builder, October 1900, vol. 79, p. 334. 20. Ibid. 21. Ransome & Saurbrey, Reinforced Concrete Buildings (1912), p. 12. 22. Ferro-Concrete, 1921, vol. 13, p. 121. 23. Nouvelles Annales de la Construction, May 1884, column 66. 24. La Construction Moderne, April 1895, vol. 10, p. 343. 25. Ferro-Concrete, 1915, vol. 6, p 249 26. Ibid., p. 248. 27. Le Beton Arme, June 1898 (Issue No. i). 28. Le Beton Arme, November 1902 (Issue No. 54). 29. Le Beton Arme, May 1901 (Issue No. 36). 30. Ibid. 31. Le Beton Armi, October 1900 (Issue No. 29). 292

56 56 56 57 57 58 60 60 60 60 60 61 61 61 62 62 62 62 62 63 63 64 65 67 67 67 67 69 69 70 70

NOTES 32. Le Bdton Arme, June 1899 (Issue No. 13). page 71 33. LeBetonArmt, October 1900 (Issue No. 29). 71 34. Le Bitan Armt, June 1904 (Issue No. 73). 71 35. La Construction Moderne, June 1898, vol. 13, p. 439. 71 36. Le Beton Arme,'Dtcen&>&: 1898(IssueNo.7). 71 37. P. Christophe, Le Beton Arme (1899), p.168. 72 38. Concrete and Constructional Engineering, 1906, vol. I, p. 409; 1907, vol. 2, p.34572 39. Ferro-Concrete, 1918, vol. 9, p. 230. 72 40. Le Beton Arme, December 1904 (Issue No. 79). 73 41. LeBe'tonArme', January 1905 (Issue No. 80). 73 42. A. V, Magny, La Construction en Beton-Arme (1914)* pp. 179 et seq.; C. F. Marsh, Reinforced Concrete (1905), p. 33 et seq. 74 43. Le Beton Armt, January 1901 (Issue No. 32). 74 CHAPTER FOUR 1. Builder's Journal, 15 August 1906, Concrete & Steel Supplement, p. 55. 2. Le Ciment, 25 October 1896, Supplement, PI. 12,20. 3. American Architect, 1906, vol. 90, p. 102; The Builder, 8 October 1910, vol. 99, p. 398. 4. Ferro-Concrete, 1912, vol. 3, p. 211. 5. Ferro-Concrete, 1911, vol. 2, p. 16. 6. Builder's Journal, n January 1905, p. 19. 7. 77t« Builder, 19 August 1893, vol. 65, p. 134. 8. Building News, 30 August 1901, vol. 81, p. 273. 9. Bulletin, Socie'te'd'Encouragement pour I'Industrie Nationale, i866,p. 251. 10. Building News, 10 October 1902, vol. 83, p. 502. 11. The Builder, 18 October 1902, vol. 83, p. 337. 12. Journal, R.I.B.A,, 1903, vol. 11, p. 48. 13. Building News, 25 November 1904, vol. 87, p. 747. 14. Builder's Journal, 2 December 1908. 15. Builder's Journal, 21 June 1911, p. 658. 16. Journal, RJJSA., 1902, vol. 9, p. 161. 17. Journal, Royal Society of Arts, 19 June 1931, vol. 79,fpp. 720-34. 18. The Builder, 3 August 1907, vol. 93, p. 143. 19. The Builder, 17 August 1907, vol. 93, p. 198. 20. La Construction Modeme, 4 January 1908, vol. 23, p. 163. 21. The Builder, 3 ]\dy 1909, vol. 97, p. 5. 22. Ibid. 23. The Builder, 26 July 1912, vol. 103, p. in. 24. Builder's Journal, n January 1905, p. 19. 25. Ibid. 26. Builder's Journal, 31 March 1909, p. 283. 27. Building News, 6 July 1906, vol. 91, p. 12. 28. Builder's Journal, 6 November 1907, p. 264. 29. The Builder, 29 October 1910, vol. 99, p. 519. 30. The Builder, 24 June 1871, vol. 29, p. 484. 31. Building News, 23 August 1912, vol. 103, p. 243. 32. The Builder, I1 October 1912, vol. 103, p. 411. 33. The Builder, 22 February 1908, vol. 94, p. 202. 34. Builder's Journal, 22 April 1908, p. 368. 35. The Builder, 26 June 1912, vol. 102, p. 99. 36. Builder's Journal, 14 September 1910, p. 281. 37. TTteBui'Wer, 27 Augusti9io,vol.99,p.243. 38. The Builder, March 1912, vol. 102, p. 273. 293

76 76

76 76 76 77 77 77 77 77 77 77 77 78 78 78 79 79 79 80 80 80 80 81 81 8l 8l 81 81 81 82 82 82 82 82 82 82 82

NOTES 39. Builder's Journal, 20 July 1910, p. 72. page 82 40. Builder's Journal, 30 January 1907, Concrete & Steel Supplement, p. 11. 82 41. Builder's Journal, 25 March 1908, pp. 269-73. 83 42. Pelican Guide Books: Buildings in England: South Devon, p. 153. 83 43. St. Sidwell's Methodist Church (1955) Qubilee Handbook), p. 5. 84 44. Building News, 30 December 1910, vol. 99, p. 954. 84 45. Building News, 16 May 1913, vol. 104, p. 668. 84 46. Builder's Journal, 31 January 1912, p. 115. 84 47. The Builder, 19 February 191®, vol. 98, p. 202. 85 48. The Builder, 13 November 1914, vol. 107, p. 454. 85 49. The Builder, 8 October 1910, vol. 99, p. 341; Builder's Journal, 17 August 1910, p. 174. 85 50. Building News, 9 January 1891, vol. 60, p. 64; 13 February 1891, vol. 60, p.252. 86 51. Ferro-Concrete, 1914, vol. 5, p. 254. 86 52. Ferro-Concrete, 1911, vol. 2, p. 168; 1917, vol. 8, p. 245. 86 53. The Builder, 12 September 1913, vol. 105, p. 274. 86 54. Concrete and Constructional Engineering, 1908, vol. 3, p. 279. 86 55. Builder's Journal, 24 May 1911, p. 554. 86 56. Architectural Record, 1904, vol. 15, pp. 531-44. 87 57. Ibid. 87 58. Concrete and Constructional Engineering, 1906, vol. i, part 3, first page of advertisements. 87 59. American Architect, 1906, vol. 89, p. 119. 88 60. LeCimentArme',i9O%,p.l69. 88 61. Concrete and Constructional Engineering, 1909, vol. 4, p. 94. 88 62. F. Onderdonk, The Ferro-Concrete Style (1928), pp. 101-11. 88 63. Architects' and Builders' Magazine, 1906-7, vol. 8, p. 224. 88 64. Concrete Engineering, May 1927, p. 7. 88 65. Architects' and Builders' Magazine, 1905-6, vol. 7, pp. 64-9. 88 66. Building News, 6 July 1906, vol. 91, p. 457; Architects' and Builders' Magazine, December 1907, vol. 9, p. 102. 89 67. Architects' and Builders' Magazine, 1906-7, vol. 8, p. 471. 89 68. Architects' and Builders' Magazine, 1905-6, vol. 7, pp. 296-301. 89 69. American Architect, 1905, vol. 88, p. 51. 89 70. Architects' and Builders' Magazine, 1908-9, vol. 10, p. 413. 89 71. Builder's Journal, 14 April 1909, p. 328. 89 72. Builder's Journal, 25 May 1910, p. 532. 89 73. Concrete Engineering, Jvly 1908, p. 183. 89 74. Ferro-Concrete, 1913, vol. 4, p. 123. 90 75. Architects' and Builders' Magazine, 1906-7, vol. 8, p. 300. 90 76. Building News, 24 August 1906, vol. 91, p. 249. 90 77. Ibid. 90 78. Ibid. 90 79. Building News, 6Deccmber 1907, vol. 93sp.77i. 90 80. Builder's Journal, 21 July 1909, p. 55. 90 81. The Builder, 28 June 1912, vol. 102, p. 765; 13 December 1912, vol. 103, p. 71991 82. Builder's Journal, 17 February 1909, p. 148. 91 83. Concrete and Constructional Engineering, 1906, vol. I, p. 27. 91 84. LeCimentArm4,i9O%,p.%6. 91 85. Le Ciment Arme, 1908, p. 31. 94 CHAPTER FIVE 1. T. Potter, Concrete (1877), p. 5. 2. Journal,RJ£^A., 1871,?. i8z. 294

98 98

NOTES 3. Journal, RJMJl., 1876, p. 179. page 98 4. The Builder, 18 January 1868, vol. 26, p. 47. 98 5. The Builder, 24 June 1871, vol. 29, p. 351. 98 6. The Builder, 12 October 1872, vol. 30, p. 799. 98 7. J. Ruskin, The Stones of Venice (1880 (New York) ed.), p. 43. 99 8. Ibid., beginning of chapter 2. 99 9. J. Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (Everyman ed.), pp. 33-5. 100 10. Ibid., p. 46. 100 11. Building News, 20 March 1885, vol. 48, p. 438. 100 12. The Builder, 18 January 1868, vol. 26, p. 47. 100 13. The Builder, 10 July 1875, vol. 33, p. 617. 100 14. The Builder, 18 January 1868, vol. 26, p. 47. 100 15. J. Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (Everyman ed.), p. 44. 101 16. Ibid., p. 51. 102 17. Building News, 9 February 1872, vol. 22, p. 108. 102 18. The Builder, 14 September 1878, vol. 36, p. 970. 102 19. Journal, RJJB^A., 1876, p. 245. 103 20. The Builder, 18 April 1874, vol. 32, p. 336. 103 21. Building News, 3 May 1889, vol. 56, p. 640. 104 22. The Builder, 31 July 1880,vol. 39, p. 129. 105 23. Ibid. 105 24. Journal, R.I3.A., 1871, p. 181. 105 25. Building News, 30 September 1910, vol. 99, p. 469. 105 26. Building News, 6 October 1882, vol. 43, p. 429. 106 27. Journal, RJ£^A., 1876, p. 182. 106 28. r/MjBttz7cfer,25Marchi882,vol.42,p.335. 107 29. The Builder, 30 June 1883, vol. 44, p. 874. 107 30. Ibid. 107 31. Journal, R.I.BA., 1871, p. 181. 108 32. Building News, 23 July 1875, vol. 29, p. 77. 109 33. Building News, 12 November 1875, vol. 29, p. 543. no 34. Building News, 19 November 1875, vol. 29, p. 575. 110 35. Building News, 17 March 1876, vol. 30, p. 2645 24 March 1876, vol. 30, p. 289. no 36. Building News, 24 March 1876, vol. 30, p. 290. in 37. The Builder, 24 June 1871, vol. 29, p. 484. in CHAPTER SIX 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

La ConstructionModerne, 15 April 1905, vol. 20, pp. 340,351,363. Gazette des Architectes, 1884, p. 299. L'Architecte, 1906, p. 41. J. Fergusson, History of Architecture (1865), vol. i, p. 41; vol. iii, p. 482. Revue Generale de I Architecture, 1849-50, vol. 8, column 30. Revue Generale de I'Architecture, 1869, vol. 27, column 188. A. de Baudot, LyArchitecture, Le Passe, Le Present (1916), p. 142. Encyclopedic d'Architecture, 1889-90, p. 184. Ibid., 1890-1,passim. Ibid., 1890-1, pp. 116-19 C. F. Marsh: Reinforced Concrete (1905), p. 429. La Construction Moderne, 26 October 1901, vol. 17, pp. 37,85. Revue Generale de VArchitecture, 1883, vol. 40, column 172. La Construction Moderne, 23 November 1901, vol. 17, pp. 85-7. A. de Baudot, L'Architecture, Le Passe, Le Present (1916), p. 163. Ibid., p. 164. Revue Scientifique, 25 May 1895, p. 645. 295

113 113 113 114 114 114 114 114 115 115 115 115 116 116 116 117 117

NOTES 18. Revue Generate de I'Architecture, 1854, vol. 12, column 327. page 19. Revue Generate de I'Architecture, 1863, vol. 21, column 164. 20. L'Art D4coratif,Maich 1902, p. 202. 21. Ibid. 22. UAn Decoratif, June 1908, p. 203. 23. L'Art Decoratif, February 1901, p. 190. 24. La Construction Moderne, 24 December 1904, vol. 20, p. 149. 25. The Builder, 11 January, 1902, vol. 82, p. 35. 26. Art et Decoration, July-December 1901, pp. 140-6. 27. Emile Bayard, Le Style Moderne (1922), p. 146. 28. Comptes-Rendues: VI6 Congres International des Architectes (1904), Theme iv. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Minutes: VII International Congress of Architects (1906), Theme iii, part 9. 32. Ibid., Theme iii, part 3. 33. UArchitecte, 1912, p. 60. 34. Bericht fiber den VIII Internationalen Architekten-Kongress (1908), PP- SSS-'/S. 35. F. R. Yerbury & T. P. Bennett, Architectural Design in Concrete (1927), p. 18. 36. Ibid., p. 24. 37. Ibid., p. ii. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., p. 6. 40. Architects1 Journal, 24 November 1926, p. 617. 41. The Builder, 10 October 1908, vol. 95, p. 367. 42. Concrete and Constructional Engineering, 1909, vol. 4, pp. 369,370. 43. Building News, 30 December 1910, vol. 99, p. 954. 44. The Builder, T.Q October 1908, vol. 95, p. 367. 45. Building News, 30 December 1910, vol. 99, p. 955. 46. The Builder, 22 March 1912, vol. 102, p. 319. 47. The Builder, 12 February 1926, vol. 130, p. 272. 48. Journal, Royal Society of Arts, 19 June 1931, vol. 79, pp. 720-34. 49. The Builder, 28 October 1927, vol. 133, p. 648. 50. The Builder, 4 November 1927, vol. 133, p. 687. 51. The Builder, 26 December 1930, vol. 139, p. 1076. 52. Builder's Journal, 31 December 1913, p. 566. 53. American Architect, 1910, vol. 97, p. 247. 54. F. R. Yerbury & T. P. Bennett, Architectural Design in Concrete (1927), p.8. 55. Architectural Review, November 1932, vol. 72, p. 224. 56. Builder's Journal, 5 November 1913, p. 425. 57. The Builder, 18 August 1911, vol. 101, p. 179. 58. Ibid. 59. Architects'Journal, 24 November 1926, p. 661. 60. Builder's Journal, 14 June 1911, p. 611. 61. Transactions, Concrete Institute, 1911, vol. 3, p. 246. 62. Ibid., p. 250. 63. The Builder, 7 February 1913, vol. 104, p. 175. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Ferro-Concrete, February 1919. 67. Building News, 29 January 1909, vol. 96, p. 168. 68. The Builder, 3 April 1925, vol. 128, p. 522. 296

118 119 120 120 121 121 122 122 122 122 123 123 123 123 124 126 126 127 127 127 127 128 129 129 129 129 129 129 130 131 131 131 131 131 132 132 132 132 132 133 133 133 134 135 135 136 136 136 137 138 140

NOTES 69. Journal RJJB.A., 1924-5, vol. 32, pp. 329-40. page 70. Ibid. 71. American Architect, 1905, vol. 87, p. 103. 72. American Architect, 1912, vol. 101, pp. 33-42. 73 American Architect, 1913, vol. 104, p. 193. 74. American Architect, June 1931, p. 49. 75. American Architect, 1918, vol. 113, p. 674. 76. Architectural Record, 1896-^7, vol. 6, p. 73. 77. Architectural Record, 1928, vol. 64, pp. 99-104. 78. American Architect, 1908, vol. 93, pp. 17,25. 79. Architectural Record, 1911-12, vol. 29, p. 401; vol. 30, pp. 165, 487; vol. 31, p. 69. 80. Architectural Record, 1928, vol. 63, pp. 153-60. 81. American Architect, 1908, vol. 93, pp. 17,25. 82. Architectural Record, 1908, vol. 23, p. 252. 83. American Architect, 1908, vol. 92, p. 219. 84. Architectural Record, 1908, vol. 23, p. 252. 85. F. Onderdonk, The Ferro-Concrete Style (1928), p. 7. 86. Ibid., p. 29. 87. Ibid., pp. 46,47. 88. Ibid, p. 27. 89. Ibid., p. 51.

140 141 141 141 141 141 141 142 144 144 144 144 144 146 146 146 146 146 147 147 147

CHAPTER SEVEN 1. L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, October 1932 (Ferret issue), pp. 7-9. 2. Ibid. 3. Vicomte Delaborde, Notice sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de M. Henri Labrouste (1878), p. 18. 4. Le Corbusier, Oeuvres Completes (1910-1929), p. 8. 5. L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, October 1932 (Ferret issue), pp. 7-9. 6. Techniques et Architecture, October 1949 (Ferret issue), p. 57. 7. L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, October 1932 (Ferret issue), pp. 14-16. 8. E. Viollet-le-Duc,-EnrmiCTW (1872), vol. ii, pp. 47,48,55. 9. E. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire Raisonnd de I'Architecture (1875), vol. i, p. ix. 10. E. Viollet-le-Duc, Entretiens (1872), vol. ii, p. 199. 11. Paul Gout, Viollet-le-Duc (1914), pp. 12-18. 12. L'Architecte, I November 1864. 13. Revue Generale de I'Architecture, 1852, vol. 10, column 35. 14. E. Viollet-le-Duc, Entretiens (1863), vol. i, p. 451. 15. Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 68,70. 16. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 85. 17. Ibid., vol. i, p. 186. 18. Unpublished documents communicated by Jacques Poirrier. 19. E. Viollet-le-Duc, Entretiens (1863), vol. i, pp. 179,183. 20. Ibid., p. 284. 21. Ibid., p. 285. 22. Cf. J.Maritain, Art and Scholasticism (1943), p. 9. 23. P.Jamot,y4.G.Perm(i927),p.4. 24. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (1931 ed.), p. 180; J. Guadet, Elements et Theorie de I'Architecture (n.d.), vol. i, p. 130. 25. J. Guadet, ibid., vol. i, p. 174. 26. La Construction Moderne, 19 April 1936, p. iv. 27. Ibid., p. v. 28. Vitruvius, Bk. II, ch. i. 297

153 153 153 153 153 154 155 155 155 156 156 156 156 156 157 157 157 157 158 158 158 158 160

160 162 163 164 165

NOTES 29. Alberti, Bk. VI, ch. xii. page 30. Alberti, Bk. Ill, ch. ix. 31. J. F. Blondel, Architecture Francoise (1752), vol. i, p. 72. 32. J. N. L. Durand, Nouveait Precis des Lecons d'Architecture (1813 ed.), pp. 40-2. 33. J. F. Blondel, Architecture Francoise (1752), vol. i, p. 252. 34. Minutes of 29 December 1687 (Proces-Verbaux, Academe Royale d'Architecture (ed. H. Lemonnier, 1911), vol. ii, p. 153). 35. L. Hautecoeur, Histoire de I'Architecture Classique en France (1943)] vol. iv, p. 196. 36. P. Patte, Memoires (1759), p. 300. 37. Ibid., p. 312.

165 165 166 166 168

169 170 170 170

CHAPTER EIGHT 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

S. Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (1941), p. 250. La Construction Moderne, 19 April 1936, p. v. P.Jamot,^.G.P«rr«i(i927),p.4. L'Amour de I'Art, 1923, p. 411. M..Dormoy,L'ArchitectureFrancaise(i95i'),p.94. La Construction Moderne, 1904, vol. 19, pp. 103,162. Nouveaux Reglements de Voirie Expliques (1902), article 22. L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, October 1932 (Ferret issue), pp. 3-6. L'Architecte, 1906, p. 23. La Construction Moderne, 2 January 1904, vol. 19, p. 162. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (1931 ed.), p. 13. Le Btton Arm4,Decemba 1903 (issue No. 67). LeBetonArme",Novembei 1902(issueNo.54). Information from Claude Ferret. La Construction Moderne, 19 April 1936, p. v. Information from Claude Ferret. Revue Scientifique, 25 May 1895, p. 645. Nowvelles Armdes de la Construction, 1896, column 174. Ibid. Henri Peyre, Le Classicisme Francois (1942), p. 81. Ibid., p. 84. Architects' and Builders' Magazine, 1905-6, pp. 296-301. Techniques et Architecture, October 1949 (Ferret issue), p. 76. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (1931 ed.), p. 203. J. F. Blondel, Architecture Francoise (1752), vol. iv, p. 97. L'Architecture Moderne, May 1913, vol. 5, p. 183. Documents published by P. Jamot,/l.G.Perr«r(i927),appendix,pp. 81,82. Ibid., pp. 83-7. Le Genie Civil, 5 April 1913, vol. 62, p. 441. L'Architecture Moderne, May 1913, vol. 5, p. 183. W.C.Behrendt,Af