Material Architecture

John Fernandez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781135144326
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Composed of a series of essays, this book deals with the broad issues affecting the nature of architectural materials and provides a focused review of the state of the art materials. It also provides designers with the tools they need to evaluate and select from the thousands of different materials that are available to them. The book is organized into three sections; 'Time' looks at how the materials used in architectural design have changed over the years showing how we have come to use the materials we do in contemporary design. 'Materials' covers all five material families; metals, polymers, ceramics, composites and natural materials giving in depth information on their properties, behavior, origins and uses in design. It also introduces a review of the cutting edge research for each family. 'Systems' outlines the technical design-orientated research that uncovers how new architectural assemblies can be designed and engineered. All of this practical advice is given along with many real case examples illustrating how this knowledge and information has been, and can be, used in architectural design.

Chapter 1

Matters of Research

The greatest invention of the 19th century was the invention of the method of invention.

Alfred North Whitehead, 1925

Gated Communities

Technical innovation comes by way of the accepted procedures of science-based engineering, and no small measure of creative thought. The “invention of the method of invention” has fundamentally changed the nature of the relationship between the contemporary designer and the materials of architecture – as it has affected every other intellectual discipline of inquiry, research and development. Formulating a hypothesis, organizing a research plan, articulating a new viewpoint, advocating for a shift in perspective requiring further work and engaging with a community of interested individuals through the dissemination of results constitute the basic conditions for innovative work – the method of invention (Bernal 1954; Kuhn 1962; Latour and Woolgar 1986; Latour 1987).

Figure 1.1

Tensile test setup for a structural fabric laminated glass sample proposed for a new kind of curtainwall assembly (see Chapter 5 for full explanation). While the testing of many materials for the purpose of establishing definitive values for all mechanical and physical properties has been substantially completed, the testing of original assemblies – new configurations of components – will never be complete as long as inventive and novel ideas spring forth from the architecture and engineering disciplines.

Building Technology Program, MIT.

Principal investigator: author.

Critical to this enterprise, for any discipline that supports a serious research community, is the effort of communicating with others engaged in similar pursuits. The nature of the distribution of information in research has changed a great deal over the ages because the nature of research has changed. From the lone inventor-gentleman in England and France of the 18th century to the richly subsidized laboratories of today's multi-national corporations and research universities, the breadth and depth of technical inquiry has greatly increased. As a result, the proliferation of means of communication – peer-reviewed journals, web-based collaborations, conferences and symposia – has responded to the enormous explosion of output from these research engines. Specialization has driven communities of expertise toward the refinement of research methods that produce strict delineations between a proliferation of subdisciplines. These intellectual “gated communities” of distinct core competencies characterize the landscape of research today.

Research in architecture and its array of associated disciplines have also changed dramatically from the time of the emerging manufacturing and technical production of the industrial revolution to the current firewall between much of technology research and design work. The shifts in its modes for communication – also journal and periodical based, web-based and spawning numerous specialized gatherings – have reflected the larger changes in research.

Many of the changes reflect the intensity of specialization that has become the conservative structure of architecture schools everywhere. No less assertive are distinctions made in architectural practices in which designers and technical staff may work together but understand the subdisciplinary delineation of their roles. Clear and strong divisions between design and technology (and, by the way, criticism, history and visual studies and others) have resulted in both productive and debilitating shifts away from the generalist center of design. In some contexts this has created the disciplinary equivalent of “gated communities”.

Figure 1.2

Barker Library at MIT is the repository for the dozens of peer-reviewed journals used to assess advances in the areas of materials, civil engineering, computer science and many other science and engineering fields.

The establishment of a separate camp further and further away from the most energetic discourses of design is arguably most pronounced in the architectural (or building) technologies. On the one hand, specialization of and within the building sciences has provided society with a much deeper understanding of the mechanics of all manner of phenomena related to the behavior of buildings. From the study of structures, strength of materials, energy flows, the physics of light and many other “practical” matters, we have come to be in much greater control of our buildings and, therefore, expect much higher levels of service than in the past. These scientific and engineering-based studies have delivered the tools and methods for engineering and constructing safer, more comfortable, more reliable buildings in greater numbers than ever before.

Figure 1.3

Rotch Library, Department of Architecture, MIT, showing a selection of the periodicals that constitute the primary vehicle for international communication in design.

Conversely, the intensity for specialization has fueled the enduring tendency for a growing segregation of technologies from design. While many notable exceptions to this trend can be easily invoked (the work of Santiago Calatrava, integrated design at Ove Arup and Partners, the work of a number of European architects, and a number of schools that consciously work against distinctions) globally the trend is readily discernible. That is, the diffusion of technologies away from the generalist and synthetic center of design has resulted in distinct and mutually exclusive groupings of researchers whose primary allegiance is no longer architecture per se, but a specific technology of building.

The modes of communication used by this group closely reflects the science and engineering heritage of the subdiscipline. Peer-reviewed journals act as the vehicle of communication as they do for all the sciences and engineering fields. This contrasts greatly with much of the communication that is carried out by architects, through the publication of built work, essays and other writings in reviewed and non-reviewed periodicals, magazines and trade journals. The cultural distinction between the building sciences and the design field is also reflected in the work spaces used by these two populations. For the most part, the building technologies model their spaces after those in engineering. In contrast, the architects still retain a spatial organization more akin to the work studios of the fine arts than to any office or lab environment. As a reflection of the self-identity of these two distinct intellectual cultures, their spaces of work speak volumes of their aspirations, beliefs and interests. This trend, of specialization and segregation, has been noted many times (Watson 1997;Allen 2004). Why is it important to raise here? Have we not benefited more from the creation of productive satellites of specialization while maintaining the very high expectations for architectural design that characterizes construction globally?

Figure 1.4

The Building Technology Program graduate student space at MIT. This is the type of space in which much of the research conducted in building technology today is accomplished. The tools are computational, the media electronic, communication is web-enabled and the space is closely related to those in engineering. Desks are tightly arranged and suffice for the generally quantitative and analytical work accomplished here.

It is not the intention of this book to address these questions in a general way. This first chapter traces key shifts in the modes of research and communication in architecture and other disciplines for the dual purpose of offering the background to our current state of affairs and demystifying the path back to a more integrated practice of architecture.

The Built Word

The written word has always been used to advance communication and advocacy in the design arts. Since the beginning of the coordinated enterprise of construction, expert knowledge of building materials and supporting technologies have been conveyed from one cultural context to the next – often through the written and printed word. Transfer through time, across geographic and societal boundaries and from knowledgeable practitioners to novices in building construction, has accelerated with improved methods for disseminating the myriad types of technical advances generated within the last several centuries. A variety of media has facilitated this transfer. Among many methods employed through the ages, the buildings themselves have been primary artifacts along with architectural treatises, published papers and a continuing legacy of the instruction in craft and trade skills.

Figure 1.5

The Department of Architecture design studio spaces. The enduring spatial configuration, while transformed somewhat by the use of computers, attests to the commitment of educators to continue the legacy of the atelier environment. Work tables are suitable for the messiness of model-making, sketching and other media and the space closely relates to studio spaces in the fine arts.

While innovation in construction has always been, and to some extent continues to be, the result of the local confluence of a great diversity of economic, technological and cultural forces, the context for that innovation, and its mode of dissemination, has steadily shifted from a synthesis of architectural priorities and proven techniques to a process of increasing intellectual specialization within separately guided scientific disciplines. Beginning in the mid- 18^th century, the locus of innovation in construction and building crafts slowly began to shift from the trade guilds, craft workshops and construction site itself to the nascent production plant of the industrial revolution, and later the corporate-sponsored scientific laboratory (Frampton 1996). Also, with the rapid growth of the European city, the responsibility for building began to rest with specialists – the early contractors (Heyman 2002). For the first time, the process of the development of materials for construction was displaced to entities – the research laboratory and industrial production facility – whose primary modes of investigation are regulated, not by the multifaceted discourse of architectural thought and construction logic, but by newly emerged procedures of the scientific method and industrial capacities organized according to their own logic and needs.

… what, if any, is the organizational influence of technique upon a specific work of art? In other words, how important is professional skill and its specific use for a defined aim; but also how much does it matter that technique is a means toward something else, and at the same time carries the significance of its own history as an instrument? And finally, what place does the question of technique (by no means a technical problem) occupy in the process of forming a work? Naturally, all this began when distinctions were drawn between practical and conceptual action, between heights of ability and depths of reflection, which in the ancient world were united in the concept of technē.

(Gregotti 1996)

The advances of architectural technologies, as a particular body of technical and design knowledge, have also been transmitted through the ages in a great variety of ways. These methods have also changed dramatically over time and continue to evolve and the type of communication media used has been very much related to the type of architecture in question. Knowledge of the architecture of the ruling classes and governing institutions has always traveled through privileged conduits; published treatises, monographs, pamphlets, paintings, sketches and measured drawings. Knowledge of vernacular, popular and regionally distinctive architecture, especially that of residential and agrarian buildings of the feudal, agrarian and working classes, has been transferred by the multifarious workings of tradition.

Early in the development of construction technologies and throughout the pre-industrial world, buildings themselves played the dominant role in exemplifying accepted practice and transmitting techniques to a select design audience (Fitchen 1994;Mark 1993). Throughout the ancient world, into the medieval period and the Renaissance and continuing through the industrial revolution, the most widely recognized buildings were most instrumental in providing knowledge of architectural technologies to successive generations of engineers and architects. During those periods, the master mason, the builder, and the architect were most indebted to the knowledge gained from previous built work (King 2000).

And yet publications dating back to ancient Rome have also played a role in teaching, proselytizing and attempting to persuade interested individuals of the benefits of a particular point of view. Both design philosophies and construction directives have been the subjects of these publications. Augmenting the buildings as primary sources for architectural thinking, the architectural treatise and associated publications have played an important role in documenting advances in construction technique, codifying best practice and disseminating findings geographically and temporally. Beginning with Vitruvius, the techniques of construction and the properties of building materials have been an important component of architectural learning – included in the same volumes that discussed mathematical proportion and aesthetic ideals, city planning, infrastructure placement, military fortifications and many other “building-related” topics (Vitruvius 1999a,b). For example, while venturing far beyond mere construction topics in his famous books, Vitruvius stressed the importance of understanding the relevant physical properties of the primary materials of construction as a fundamental aspect of the act of building.

Hence I believe it right to treat of the diversity and practical peculiarities of these things as well as of the qualities which they exhibit in buildings, so that persons who are intending to build may understand them and so make no mistake, but may gather materials which are suitable to use in their buildings. (Vitruvius, Granger 1999a)

The treatise, through much of history, was engaged in presenting a more or less complete picture of the discipline of architecture; design principles and building techniques. The topics typically addressed included technical discussions of methods of construction, strategies for good practice on the construction site, descriptions of useful material properties and many other facts regarding the process of realizing a building. However, the technical information gathered within these documents spoke to a set of generalized and descriptive relations rather than results gathered from empirical studies of the kind that characterize modern science. The relations illustrated within treatises produced before the 18th century did not contain the kinds of investigations that would characterize the scientific revolution of Galileo and Copernicus and the regulated process of the scientific method. Therefore, early treatments of the technology of construction were presented as a set of relations based in “common sense”, construction experience and rules of beauty or notions of propriety. Only later, and through the eventual proliferation of specialized publications, did the science of building and construction emerge.

The writings of Alberti, Palladio, Carlo Fontana and others demonstrate the character of the treatment of construction issues quite well (Palladio 1570). For example, Fontana, writing in 1694 (Fontana 1694), addressed problems in the cracking of St. Peter's dome through a postulation of solutions that used geometric relations to establish the requisite needs of solidity (Perez-Gomez 1994). Fontana used this rationale for uncovering divine relations in the physical construct and design conception of the church. Alberti, also intent on providing useful information on building includes diagrams of typical masonry wall construction, timber details and other mundane construction details as well as suggestions on construction that depend quite a lot on common sense, or at least reasonable conclusions.

The ancients used to say, “Dig until you reach solid ground, and God be with you.”

(Alberti 1550)

And while the 18th century was to bring a revolution in the nature of technical knowledge and the methods of investigation, the descriptive treatise was to survive through many centuries, not as a more integrative document of design and technology but as a statement of architectural design motivation and intention. Technical communication began to be pursued elsewhere. For example, in the early 18^th century, parallel to advances in science, several efforts were under way to inaugurate a newly revived renaissance sensibility in architecture quite apart from the technological advances of the day. Writing in his Vitruvius Britannicus, Colen Campbell (1676-1729) argued the right of British architecture to assume the mantle of the ancient and renaissance orders (Campbell 1967). He raised Indigo Jones to the position of rightful heir to the perfection of Palladio's architecture. This kind of treatise has come to typify what we know of today as architectural writing. In fact, the writings of architects today strongly continue to argue for the legitimacy of particular forms and design approaches primarily based on nontechnical issues. During the passage of centuries, one type of knowledge did not fully succumb to another; while science was developing its own methods and beginning to publish findings, the architectural treatise did not lose its power to establish artistic authority.

However, individual thinkers and vanguard scientists of the time were initiating an irreversible germination of principles based on observation and experimentation. During the early 18th century discoveries made of the strength of materials began to find their way into scientific papers and a selection of architectural treatises. These discoveries, while still presented very much in the tradition of Vitruvius, Alberti and Palladio, used a nascent scientific m...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Frontmatter
• Acknowledgements
• Frontmatter
• Prologue Building Design
• 1 Matters of Research
• 2 Time and Materials
• 3 Material Families and Properties
• 3-1Metals
• 3-2Polymers
• 3-3Metals
• 3-4Composites
• 3-5Biomaterials and Loam
• 4 Material Selection
• 5 Material Assemblies
• epilogue Building Ecologies
• Bibliography
• Index