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P R O C I D A Illustrations from " DOM US " (Milan), March, 1938.

Procida is one of those enchanting Mediterranean islands (made so familiar to us by Norman Douglas) which thrill for their architectural delight no less than for their literary associations.Bernardo Rudofsky has planned a house for Procida which will draw into its small classic fabric the multiple spirit of the Mediterranean. It is more a pavilion than a house; a vantage point from which the sun and air can be experienced. It provides at once an intimacy with its surroundings, and a withdrawing from them, which is startlingly direct and unsophisticated.The Etruscan flavoured plan is a simple progression of apartments, it is a design for indolent living. W ith its music room, its camera da pranzo and its mattress-covered rest room it suggests a mode of existence which cools the mind in contemplation.It is not possible to reproduce the charming photographs with which Rudofsky supplements his project. They show the " materials " of his setting— white cube houses ranging steeply down to the water's edge; fishing boats in the harbour; workmen quarrying stone; flowers, vines. The microcosmic life of an isolated community, plastic and untroubled, reaching back into time.But Norman Douglas, in " Summer Islands," conveys the atmosphere with superb economy :" The air on Vivara is ambrosial, and I know of no place in this neighbourhood which I would rather choose as a hermitage than this calm and fruitful islet. The view is superb; it embraces all Campania. Far away, melting into the horizon, the sinuous outlines of Tyrrhenian shores; the Ponza islands, with their grim memories of banishments; the legendary Cape of Circe; the complex and serrated Apennines; the Caudine Forks; Elysian Fields, Tartarus and Cimmerian gloom; the smoking head of Vesuvius with its coral necklace of towns and villages. Ischia, in this evening light, is an immense dome of dark green foliage, while on the other side of the bay, the whole Sorrentine peninsula is bathed in rosy splendour; the long-drawn shapely mountain looks like a thing of air, an exhalation. Not a mile of all this landscape but has its memories. Capua and Hannibal; Misenum and Vergil; Nisida and Lucullus; there Pompeii, here Puteoli where the apostle Paul touched land; the venerable Acropolis of Cumae confronts you; yonder Capri, firmly planted upon the waves near the hoary promontory of Athenaeum, where stood the Siren temple and that of Minerva, wonders of the world."Actually it is the prospect from Typhoeus he describes, but .as that island lies almost against Procida it is the same thing — and our setting is complete. Let us build in imagination..............

R.M.

A l e t t e r f r o m P l i n y

" My dear Gallus, you wonder why my Laurentine home, or, if you prefer it, my ' Laurens,' delights me so

much. You will wonder no longer when you learn the charm of the house, the convenience of the position, the

expanse of seaside. . . .

" My place is designed for use— not expensive upkeep. In front an atrium, modest but not mean: then a colonnade

in a D-shape, enclosing a jolly little garden-court. This is a splendid place in bad weather, sheltered by window-panes

and even more by projecting eaves. Central with this is a delightful inner court, then a pleasant enough dining­

room, jutting on to the shore— yes, and washed by the spray of the highest waves when there's an African blowing.

On every side are doors, or windows as big, so that in front and sides it has a view of three seas, you may say; and

at the back— inner court, colonnade, garden-court, colonnade again, atrium, the woods and the far hills. A little

set back on the left is a roomy bedroom, then a smaller one, with one window to let in the dawn, another to hold

the sunset; with a view, too, of the sea below— further off, certainly, but safer. The corner made by this bedroom and

the projection of the dining-room is a sunshine bath. This is the winter-garden— yes, and the playground of the

household. There is no whisper of wind here, except those that bring cloudy weather, and they must banish the

sunshine before they send us indoors. . . .

" Then you come to the cold bath— a spacious apartment with two plunge baths curving out in opposite walls

—-quite large enough, if you mean to swim in the sea just round the corner. Adjacent is the anointing room, the

heating-chamber, and the hot room, and then two chambers rather neat than magnificent. And next door is a

wonderful warm bath, where you can swim with a view of the sea; and near by a racquet court, which gets the

warmest of the afternoon sun. Here is a tower, with two pavilions below and as many in it, and, besides, a supper

room with a wide prospect of sea and stretching shore and delightful villas..........

There is another tower, too. . . . It looks on the garden and the terrace which runs around it. The terrace

is bordered with box— or rosemary where the box won't thrive. For where the box is sheltered by the house it

does very well. But in the open, and exposed to the wind and brine (far away though it is), it withers. The terrace

is bordered on the inner side by a delicate and shady vine-thicket, a soft carpet even for bare feet. The mulberry

and many fig trees adorn the garden. The countryside, indeed, is peculiarly rich in them, though no other tree will

grow. This aspect is as good as the seaside, and there's a breakfast-room here, away from the sea and enclosed at

the back by two verandahs, whose windows look out on the vestibule of the house and another garden, wild and

luxuriant. . . .

" At the head of the alley, and in turn of the covered walk, lies the garden-house, my very heart's delight. It

was my own idea. In it is a sun-chamber, looking one way on the alley, and one on the sea, both ways on the sun.

The bedroom door commands the covered walk, its windows the sea. In the opposite wall is a jolly recess, which

can be made part of the bedroom or cut off from it by glass doors and curtains. It holds a bed and two chairs: sea

at feet, villas at back, woods at head. Such are the views, and a window for each or for all at once. Adjoining is

a night chamber, for sleeping, cut off from any noise of servants' talking or murmur of the sea, from the rushing of

the storm or the glare of the lightning— yes, even from the light of day with the windows shut. The reason it is so

remote and secluded a retreat that there is an intervening passage between the walls of the room and of the

garden, and the empty space absorbs every sound. Attached to the room is a little hypocaust, which has a narrow

opening to let in the heat, or not, as you will. Then comes a bedroom with an ante-chamber stretching into the sun­

light, which strikes it at sunrise and lingers on, slantwise it is true, beyond mid-day. When I betake myself to this

garden-house I feel I am cut off even from my own villa, and above all is it delightful at the Saturnalia, when the rest

of the house echoes with the season's jollity and holiday shouts, for I feel that I am not spoiling my fellows' sports,

nor they my studies.

" The seaside is bright with a pleasing variety of villas— now a terrace, now single houses— which have the

appearance of a multitude of towns, whether from the sea or the shore. Sometimes the sea is calm and smiling

for quite a spell, oftener grim with hurrying, fighting waves. Rare fish there certainly are not, but soles and excellent

prawns in abundance; while my land supplies come from my own estate, and milk especially. The herds in the

pastures see to that, as they roam by ' fountain, shade and rill.'

" Well, now, do you think I am justified in living here and loving my country home ? And you must be a man

about town to the finger-tips if you don't envy me it. Yes, do envy it ! So that, richly dowered as it is, my little

place may have the added commendation (and what could be greater ?) of entertaining you."

t o G a l l u s

PIANTA DELLA CASA Dl PEOCIDAB E R N A R D O R U D O F S K Y

Camera dell'ancella prospiciente !l sentiero che conduce all'entrata.

I

La camera da bagno non contiene nessun apparecchio. Nel pa- vimento c'e un abbassamento che accoglie I'acqua pel bagno. Attraverso la porta aperta entra il sole mattutino. Gli apparecchi igienici sono confinati nella camera accanto

II cortile e la vera camera da stare. II suo pavimento e formato da erba rasata con margheritine e veronica; in primavera ci saranno violette ed orchidee. II cielo coi suoi mille aspetti fa da soffitto. Contro il sole d'estate si puo difendersi con una tenda a vela, color ruggine. Un cammino permette il soggiorno anche durante le sere di mezza stagione. Cani, gatti e colombe vi trove- ranno un rifugio.

Prima di entrare nella camera da letto ci si scalza nello spogliatoio, perche il pavimento di quella e fatto interamente di materassi. Contro le zanzare e le mosche serve una zanzariera, che pende dal soffitto.

ti s >no completamente preparati e ogi i lavoro a tavola.

opcTtii sia verso il cortile, sia verso il sedie, ma contiene uno (o piu) bi " o triclinio ed un tavolino da

esta disposizione un complesso ;a c jntraddizione: in prima linea la

ienza parlare dell'estetica.

il cattivo tempo fa da camera c'e un divano in muratura che due ospiti.

R O B E R T M A I L L A R T THE ARCHITECTURE OF A GREAT SWISS ENGINEER

By P. MORTON SHAND(Reprinted from the R.I.B.A. Journal, September 12th, 1935)

Robert Maillart has probably built more concrete bridges (about forty in all), and has certainly transformed their structural design more proundly, than any man yet born. It is, moreover, a direct consequence of the far-reaching modifications he introduced that a wholly new formal aesthetic in bridge-building is now emerging. As a result the kind of visual “ object ” the word bridge will evoke in the age we are entering upon is bound to be a radically different one to that which it pictured in the mind of any preceding- generation. Maillart was also the originator of what, by no means accurately) we have grown accustomed to call Mushroom-Slab Construction; though in a far bolder, more logical and revolutionary form than is usually employed in Great Britain, where American practice has been rather blindly followed.

Born in 1872 at Berne, Maillart went to Zurich at eighteen to take a four years’ course in engineering. His first professional experience was in railway construction: an invaluable apprenticeship to practical realism. In 1897 he was appointed assistant-engineer to the Highways Department of the Zurich City Council, and took up his duties at a moment when the chief engineer had been instructed to prepare plans for a new steel road bridge over the River Sihl. Unasked, Maillart immediately worked out a design of his own in reinforced concrete. As this offered a saving of one-third of the original estimate he was allowed to carry it out and supervise the construction (Stauffacher-Briicke, completed 1899). That episode proved a foretaste of Maillart’s whole career as a bridge-builder, for there has hardly been a single case where any other motive than sheer saving in cost compared with other projects influenced the acceptance of his designs. Aesthetically he was always regarded as the blackest of black sheep by municipal and cantonal authorities alike. He now decided to devote himself exclusively to reinforced-concrete engineering, then still very much in its infancy, and gave up his post in order to join a company that had begun to specialise in this method of construction. While in their employment he designed the first concrete bridge built with hollow-ribbed arches. This in itself represented an unprecedented departure, but the bridge in question was also the prototype of that whole class in which arch and platform are directly articulated together so as to contribute a structural as well as a monolithic entity.

In 1901 Maillart set up in business on his own as a public contractor. Among the first undertakings carried out by Maillart et Cie was a sanatorium at Davos for which the famous French engineer Francois Hennebique had designed the concrete shell. This collaboration is not without historical significance, for Maillart’s contributions to concrete engineering may be said to begin at the point where Hennebique’s left off. Hennebique adhered to a beam-and-post framework which reproduced the essentials of traditional timber construction, with the result that his floors remained inert slabs. Dr. Siegfried Giedion* quotes Maillart’s summing up of the position when his own career opened:—

“ The engineer was so accustomed to use iron or timber, which only provide one-dimensional support, that designing in them had become second

* “ Construction and Aesthetics,” an article published in “ Circle.” Faber and Faber, 1937.

406

T a v a n a s aU p p e r R ( 1 9 0 6). C span 51 m

nature to him, and restrained him from exploiting other possibilities. This was the state of affairs when reinforced concrete was introduced, and for some time no change ensued.”

The earliest notable structure designed as well as built by Maillart et Cie was a bridge over the Upper Rhine at Tavanasa in the Orisons (1906), of which there will be more to say later on.

Though the beam is a member inseparable from steel or timber construc­tion, concrete can dispense with it because the reinforcement of a stiffened slab, being under initial tension, is able to provide active support as well as contributing to its own. It was this momentous realisation that impelled Maillart to try to support floors with columns, instead of on walls. A warehouse at Zurich he built in 1910 was the first example in Europe of Mushroom-Slab Construction; in respect of which his experiments were at least as early as, if not actually earlier than, those of the American engineer C. A. P. Turner, besides being conducted on entirely independent lines. In American Mushroom-Slab Construction the floor is reinforced by what amounts to a gridiron of beams diagonally imbedded in it, and intermediate slabs are introduced between the heads of the columns and under the surface of the slab that rests upon them. Maillart redistributed the reinforcement to give the floor a uniform bearing surface in all directions, capable of taking every kind of stress, and thus abolished the old differentiation of the supporting function as between length and breadth. Maillart’s system is therefore the direct antithesis of American practice. The heavier the load a floor is called upon to bear the greater is the inducement to adopt his type. This explains why it is chiefly found in large multi-storied buildings with non-supporting walls, such as warehouses, depositories, and factories using heavy machinery. It is the properties peculiar to a uniformly stiffened concrete slab—the interplay and equipoise of invisible forces present in the floor itself—that constitute the basis of the Maillart system, not the characteristic of his trumpet-headed columns.

Bridge, h i n e

H e a r e t r e s .

407

Probably the finest embodiment of Maillart’s Beamless Flooring is the Federal Granary at Altdorf, built in 1912, where flights of octagonal columns are superimposed directly above one another floor by floor in progressively diminishing girth, massive as Norman crypt pillars in the basement and slender as Gothic clerestory groining in the attic. For perhaps the first time in the history of building head and shaft have been merged both in form and function; hence the need of a plinth disappears. Surely the abstract austerity with which these columns rise, the classic purity of their proportions, and the graceful fan-shaped corbelling of their capitals are as beautiful in their own way as those of any one of the Orders ?

The practical and economic advantages of this system of construction led to many important contracts, not only in Switzerland, but also in Spain, France, and especially in Russia. In fact, the firm soon had so much work on hand in the last country that Maillart transferred his headquarters there early in 1914. This compelled him to resign the lectureship in Reinforced- Concrete Engineering at the Federal Technical Institute in Zurich to which he had succeeded Professor Morsch in 1912.

Overtaken by the War, Maillart was unable to leave Russia until 1919, and then only with the loss of his business and his entire personal fortune. But though his offices and plant were commandeered at the beginning of hostilities he carried out a big group of factories at Kharkov in 1916.

Consequently Maillart was unable to start afresh as a public contractor on his return to Switzerland, and therefore went into practice as a consulting engineer at Geneva, with branch offices in Zurich and Berne. In this capacity he has been responsible for the design of a long series of bridges in his native land which are distinguished by entire freedom from aesthetic bias and the avoidance of any formal emphasis on their means of support. It is no exaggeration to say they are the most remarkable of their size yet built in any country whatever.

Robert Maillart was elected an Honorary Member of the R.I.B.A. in 1937; the same year as his eminent French colleague Eugene Freyssinet. They were the first foreign engineers on whom the Institute has conferred this honour. Though Freyssinet has only built one bridge, the famous Pont Albert Louppe at Plougastel, near Brest, it embodies the three longest concrete spans in the world. What relates it to the subject of the present article is that each of its 612-foot parabolic arches is formed by a huge hollow rib with bulkhead divisions: a type of construction first used by Freyssinet in his well-known airship sheds at Orly (1916), but originally employed by Maillart for a small Swiss bridge some fifteen years earlier.

As has already been mentioned, the first bridge of Maillart’s to evince marked originality was Tavanasa (51 metres clear span), finished in 1906; and it is a matter for keen regret that it should have been swept away by an avalanche in 1927. Here, as in several others of much the same type built by his firm in succeeding years, the complete slotting-out of the spandrels resulted in an appearance suggestive of a pair of metal skates placed toe to toe. Stripped bare of the last remnants of formal disguise, its construction is revealed as a thin slab, bent into an elliptical arch, joined to a horizontal one almost equally thin, which is the platform. Apart from the abutments their only articulation is a sort of incomplete membrane, like the scalloped webbing that unites the claws of a duck’s foot, formed by parallel vertical slabs of an irregular shape. That is all.

As Dr. Giedion says, the forms of Maillart’s bridges are always the result of logical resolution into their basic elements by the elimination of all bulk not directly functional. Each, whatever the nature of its design, is informed by the same belief: that there is no more need for arch-ribs to be solid than for separate longitudinal beams to carry the platform.

At this time it was virtually impossible to gauge the forces present in a suitably stiffened slab of any given dimensions by calculation alone. Perhaps Maillart’s greatest contribution to structural engineering is that he dared the risks of practical experiment beyond the limits then set by calculation in his buildings in order to determine these hitherto imponderable factors. It is significant that the Americans should have developed the stiffened slab into a flooring system of their own without ever attempting to employ it as a basis for bridge-construction.

“ Flat and curved surfaces are here juxtaposed so as to achieve an almost uncanny balance of strains and stresses,” is Dr. Giedion’s description of the very neat Baltschiel Bridge (43.20 metres span). To the same year, 1926, belongs the enigmatic-looking Chatelard Aqueduct, the strut-like piers of which are 30.44 metres apart. The assymetrical Salginatobel-Briicke (1930), of 92 metres—352 feet—clear span, in even more spectacular surroundings, represents a further step in his progressive clarification of structure. With its lean, athletic attenuation (the arch is under 8 inches thick) and dynamically taut elasticity of form it has an air of serene inevitability: a little masterpiece of pellucid proportion and stern economy of material.

The torsional strains that would have to be allowed for in a concrete bridge with a sickle-shaped platform had hitherto been held to defy compu­tation. In the 30-metres wide polygonal-arched Landquart-Briicke (1930), which brings the Rhaetian Railway into Klosters on a curve of 125 metres radius, Maillart overcame the difficulty by making the platform wide enough to accommodate the ellipse described by the metals, and battering the outer face of the substructure to compensate the uneven stresses arising. The Schwandbach-Briicke, of 37.4 metres span, near Schwarzenburg (1933), was, however, the first definite solution of the problem, for in it the whole structure, including the platform, is made to describe an ellipse.

V A L T S C H I E L B R I D G E ( 1 9 2 6 ) ,

4 3 . 2 0 m e t r e s c l e a r s p a n .

409

C H A T E L A R D A Q U E D U C T ( 1 9 2 6 ) .

T h e p i e r s a r e 3 0 . 4 4 m e t r e s a p a r t .

With the Rossgraben Bridge of 82 metres clear span (1932), also near Schwarzenburg, a slight but important change occurs in the form of the arch. The just perceptibly ogival accentuation of the crown evinced here becomes still more pronounced than those at Felsegg and Vessy. Maillart explained the structural reasons for this formal modification when he challenged the design of the Laifour Bridge in a letter to the French engineering review, “ Le Genie Civil,” that is reproduced a little further on. In the three-pin Innertkirchen-Briicke (1934), which crosses a turbulent upper reach of the River Aare on a 30-metre span at the lowest level compatible with safety from sudden spates, the peculiarly graceful ellipse of the arch is almost unbelievably flat. This bridge has a continuously eccentric line of thrust, and like the Schwandbach-Briicke is remarkable for having no separate decking slab: traffic being carried directly on the platform, which was given an extra 3 cms. thickness in consequence. The same eliminatory principle was taken even further in a flat-arched skew bridge, having a 22-metre central span, built in 1935 at a cost of under £2,200 by the Laufen Cement Works to carry a branch line over the River Birs, near Liesberg, where the rails are actually imbedded in the platform. Such an experiment could never have been carried out if the branch had not been a private one as the design was completely at variance with existing regulations. Indeed, the chief engineers of the Federal Railways roundly declared that the arch would collapse as soon as trains started to run over it. Maillart rather maliciously invited them to the official loading tests, for which he borrowed their heaviest type of locomotive, weighing 112 tons, and ran it backwards and forwards over the bridge at far higher speeds than would be possible when hauling trucks owing to the sharpness of the approaching curve. Batteries of recording instruments registered perfectly normal deflections and a degree of vibration less than a quarter of what adherence to the recognised formulae would have produced. It is rumoured that the Swiss Federal Railways are now engaged in modifying their by no means ultra-conservative standards in the light of this perhaps not altogether welcome demonstration of the suitability of concrete bridges for the fastest and heaviest traffic.

Another problem which Maillart must have solved with a certain homeric irony was the Lorraine-Briicke in Berne (1930), a very considerable undertaking that cost nearly £120,000. The design for this bridge had been settled by a competition held as far back as 1911. It discreetly echoed that of the classicised Nydeckbriicke, dating from 1844, about a mile higher up the River Aare; and was based on a central span of 82 metres with two small round-headed side arches. Although the increased cost of stone after the war had forced the town council to envisage the substitution of concrete, it obstinately insisted that the externals of the original elevations must be rigidly adhered to. Maillart found a characteristically ingenious answer to this municipal conundrum by devising a system of interlocking concrete voussoirs that required only a comparatively light centering—in itself a singularly elegant design. A single vertebra of these blocks was first run across the middle line of the planked staging, and this was followed by parallel rows on either side until the arch was complete; thus the falsework had at no time to sustain more than a fraction of the total weight. No trace of this “ ad hoc ” construction is visible in the finished bridge because the piers, spandrels, and superstructure have been completely enclosed with thin concrete walls to imitate solid masonry. Illusion was further enhanced by religiously exposing a most carefully selected aggregate.

In none of Maillart’s bridges is the direct supporting function of the slab when bent to an arch, or the amazingly shallow sectional depth which can suffice for the purpose, more immediately apparent than in a narrow foot-bridge of 40 metres span at Tossteg, near Winterthur, built in 1933. Being only accessible to pedestrians and cyclists, the load to be borne was too modest

a one to justify the extra expense of flattening out its gradient. Thin and supple to the eye as a flexed sheet of plywood, the arch follows the lowest span that will give reasonable clearance for flood-waters, and so close beneath the platform as to merge with the curve of its only slightly wider radius except at the ends. Something about the engaging sweep of this light-footed and gracefully tripping little bridge suggests that in the familiar Willow Pattern with its hump considerately reduced to help modern Chinese lovers to escape from irate fathers quicker and less breathlessly. It is a Bridge of Smiles, not of Sighs; the sort of large-scale toy a child would long to have for his very own.

Maillart’s two most recent bridges—the Felsegg-Briicke over the River Thur on the main St. Gall-Zurich road, of 72 metres span (1933); and the Pont de Vessy over the River Arve, in a Geneva suburb curiously named Le Bout du Monde, of 56 metres span (1937)—have still to be considered. The latter was constructed by a building estate to enable it to exploit a number of villa-plots doubtless all the more desirable for being previously inaccessible; and the former to take the heaviest loads of modem motor-lorry traffic. Both are of the three-pin type and of very similar design. The Felsegg Bridge is perhaps the more imposingly monumental—“ there are few contemporary buildings in which the solution of the structural problem approaches so closely to pure plastic expression ” is how Dr. Giedion describes it—while that at Vessy is probably the more sympathetic; but each is a complete and optically satisfying solution of its own particular problem. To compare them with the bridges Maillart built over the Rhine at Laufenburg in 1911 and Rheinfelden in 1912 (in which he was made to cloak his structure with a skin of dressed stone and the olde-worlde trappings of mediaevalised triangular piers) is to realise at a glance how far, if on the whole unwillingly, our generation has already travelled towards the rehabilitation of structural sincerity and a new kind of formal beauty in the course of a quarter of a century. Maillart had first to survey and build that road for himself as a lonely pioneer. When he was sent the perspective of Sir E. Owen Williams’s plan for rebuilding Waterloo Bridge his comment was: ‘ ‘ I do not feel quite sure that circular piers are altogether sound, structurally speaking; though if I saw detail drawings I might change my opinion. But what an astonishingly elegant design it is ! ” Had his own evolution been less far-reaching he could never have made that remark, or written the defence of his engineering principles prompted by an article “ Le Genie Civil ” had published on December 29th, 1934, describing the new Laifour Bridge over the River Meuse. As that letter traces his own aesthetic development as a designer with complete candour, and also provides several acid tests for distinguishing structurally logical bridges from those that merely wear modern dress, the present writer has welcomed the opportunity of reprinting it here in English:

“ If we want to get the best out of reinforced concrete in bridge construction we inevitably arrive at forms which are often quite different to those masonry forms we are accustomed to, and for that very reason prone to imitate. The difficulty of getting these new and unprecedented forms accepted, to say nothing of making them satisfy oneself, has impelled the engineer—and still more the architect called in to collaborate with him—to try to find ways of compromising between traditional and untraditional designs. This raises the question whether such a tendency is justifiable, and whether it would not be better to confine ourselves to forms deliberately based on purely structural principles.

Articulated bridges constructed with hollow ribs divided into a series of box compartments enable considerable economies to be effected, because, apart from the arch itself, both the platform and the spandrels directly contribute to the general resistance of the structure. Thus, the whole bridge,

FOOTBRIDGE AT TOSSTEG (1933),

4 0 m e t r e s c l e a r s p a n .

and not merely the principal part of it, forms the arch. As may be seen, in a bridge over the River Thur at Billwil, which I built in 1933, this type of construction can be made to give an appearance that differs very slightly from conventional forms. Here the only noticeable peculiarity is the extreme slenderness of the arches. But in retaining a definitely parabolic arch and solid spandrels certain structural drawbacks have to be faced, which become accentuated with increasing breadths of span. The mean curve of the stresses encountered, which is centred in proximity to the crown of the arch, becomes more and more eccentric in proportion as the springings are approached, because this curve closely follows the interior curve of the arch. In consequence, the platform ceases to provide any useful collaboration in the parts in question. In fact its participation becomes actually prejudicial, since tests made on bridges of this type reveal the presence of tractions towards the abutments. They are therefore far from achieving the ideal of a full utilisation of the material employed.

413

The realisation that as a link between the arch and the platform solid spandrels serve no useful purpose, except in the middle of the bridge, and that close to the abutments they exert a useless dead weight which is positively a potential danger, has led to the practice of slotting triangular cavities out of them. Once the corresponding part of the platform is freed from traction- strains in this way, the construction gains in straightforwardness, while the elimination of the useless bulk of infilling economises the amount of concrete required. I adopted this solution as early as 1905 in the Tavanasa Bridge. That, in spite of its obvious economy, this model was not followed can probably be explained by its somewhat ‘ unusual ’ appearance. It was not till 1930 that I had another opportunity to adopt a similar type of construction—and, as it so happened, for a bridge of much large dimensions. Though in some quarters the Salgina Bridge called forth much the same objections as did its prototype, public taste had clearly progressed during the quarter of a century which had elapsed; for the bridge was enthusiastically accepted by the population of the district it serves, and even technical circles were far less severe in their criticisms than they had been in 1905.

A certain resemblance is immediately apparent between the bridge just referred to and that over the River Meuse at Laifour, built in 1934. What really matters, however, are not their superficial similarities but their outstanding differences. The description of the latter, published in the “ Genie Civil,” claimed that, from the aesthetic point of view, “ it preserves as nearly as possible the general lines we are accustomed to find in a bridge.” In point of fact the thickness of its arch has been so much reduced at the haunches as to necessitate a framework of cross-braced vertical supports above them—an addition which could have been avoided by making full use of the available height—while on the other hand the thickness at the points of articulation is much greater than is required by structural exigencies. It need not be disputed that in giving his arch as constant a thickness a possible the designer tried to approximate to conventional forms. But was this necessary ? And does the more structurally sincere design of the Salgina Bridge evince a marked inferiority in an aesthetic sense ?

But even the latter cannot lay claim to complete sincerity of form. Indeed, if both constant and shifting weights are taken into consideration, the extreme curves of the pressures exerted form two lenticular surfaces whose lower contours meet at an acute angle. The most rational shape of arch ought, therefore, to describe a similar lenticular contour, because this will assure the greatest uniformity in the imposition of strains—a form which logically presupposes the adoption of an ogival type of intrados. In the Salgina Bridge, however, the intrados has been rounded off under the crown of the arch in deference to traditional design.

It was only in the Bridge at Felsegg, built as recently as 1933, that I had the chance of realising a truly logical form. In this case the river crossing occurred on a highway built to carry the exceptional loads of heavy modern main-road traffic. There was, therefore, every inducement to employ the system of construction adopted to the fullest limits of its resources, and to be guided solely by structural considerations in the choice of it. Hence the decision to use a somewhat pointed form of arch. Though some people may find the form of this bridge unpleasing, the example of Gothic architecture (which employed the ogive purely for aesthetic effect and in direct opposition to static requirements) may be cited in the constructor’s defence.

Compared with the powerful simplicity of the wide span of this Felsegg Bridge, the type of support usually adopted for approaches—a series of vertical columns cross-braced to each other—seems a rather paltry device. Inclined two-legged buttresses, suitably reinforced on top, were substituted for these because they assure good lateral stability and reduce the number of separate foundation-points required.”

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T H E T R A I N I N G O F A N A R C H I T E C T

An Open Letter to H. S. Goodhart-Rendel. By Anthony Cox

This is not by way of a bread-and-butter letter for a delightful holiday at the A.A., for after all, I was a paying guest, wasn’t I ? No, it’s prompted by your paper on “ The Training of an Architect.” You will remember the meeting; the older members at the front of the stuffy lecture room murmuring assent and enjoying self-congratulatory smiles; the students at the back, rather quiet. And the votes of thanks, the sudden closing of the meeting; and in the sharp, excited atmosphere afterwards, the little groups of antagonism, people hanging about everywhere, talking.

It was an historic occasion, really. For some time we had been promised a statement on education. We hoped for a sort of philosophy of architecture, which would give sense and shape to the teaching in the school ; an analysis of the condition of architecture to-day, of the type of education fitted for that condition, and of the methods most suitable for getting it across.

Many of us were disappointed. Some of us were rather angry. And then later, thinking about the inferences and implications of what you had said, we were very alarmed. Frankly, we thought that if you were to get your way, it would be the end of anything we had ever hoped to see in the school. We didn’t feel that way just because we disliked the idea of competition and irrevocable esquisses, and the abandonment of group working, but because we believed that behind all these things lay a conception of architecture fundamentally opposed to the only conception which meant anything to us, a conception which we thought wrong and dangerous. That may sound presumptuous, but we were very serious about it all.

As this is an open letter I had better outline some of the main points you made, and though it will be a mere nibble at the substance of your paper, it will serve to cover the questions I wish to raise here. You began by saying that the minimum requirements of architectural education should be to produce people capable of designing and looking after building works and safeguarding the client’s interests: but that in addition it should produce people with the maximum technical mastery of planning and expression. The principles underlying all sound architectural training were, you believed, those generally recognised in France.

Of your credo you put forward three main principles; firstly, that since the architect was an artist, everything must be taught from an architectural standpoint; secondly, that designing was best learnt by means of designing, and that design problems should be typical rather than topical, since the latter often involved time-wasting research. The programme, you said, with a preliminary requirements talk, should give the student all the necessary information, and enable him to tackle it like an arithmetical or algebraic problem in which the thing to be done is sugar-coated by a mildly exciting little story. And thirdly, that students should learn from each other as well as from the teaching staff. You qualified this by saying you believed students should be tied during design subjects to their preliminary sketches, because it was a disciplinary measure, forcing them to make the quick decisions necessary in practice, and more importantly because it gave students liberty, each with his own esquisse as charter of independence, to help each other as much as they choose in the subsequent process of study. Without this irrevocable esquisse, you claimed, students would have to be kept to their own drawing boards.

Of group working, you said that the specialisation involved should only come at the end of the course, and that the special tasks allotted to members of groups should be those at which they were least good.

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Finally, you believed that competition was an instinct inherent in people to-day, and that its great value in a school lay in its ability to teach students to be good losers. “ To win a competition may not do one much moral good, but to fail in one is often most salutary.”

Why were people disappointed and alarmed ?We were disappointed because the paper dealt primarily with methods

of education considered in terms of good and bad principles, and did not approach education as a function of a contemporary situation from which appropriate methods should follow naturally. For methods mean little out of their context, and we felt we were being led up blind alleys by talking about how things should be taught, before we were clear what those things were going to be.

And we were alarmed because the context we were left to infer seemed to be in terms of a flourishing Beaux-Arts system rather than in terms of a system natural to the conditions here in England to-day. As an example I might quote your recommendation of the “ irrevocable esquisse,” a concept that has as its basis the development of the great idea, and would give rise to a system of designing which would be the complete negation of the scientific method, upon which alone, I believe, we can build an architecture appropriate to contemporary needs.

Living in the period of scientific and industrial development which began in the nineteenth century, we are furnished with a wealth of technical resources undreamed of in any previous civilisation. The potentialities of these resources are only just now being generally recognised. And as a result of this period of development we find ourselves in a society that has acquired needs that can only be adequately satisfied by the proper use of these resources. Small wonder that the particularised formal preoccupations of our grandfathers have gone by the board. The building needs of society have grown more exacting, and there is every reason to suppose that this process will continue, and that the architect’s work will become less and less an affair of aesthetic preference, and more and more an affair of precision depending upon exact analysis.

You will probably object that many architectural problems appear to remain unchanged, so what is all this fuss about ? But problems have no objective existence; they only exist as a mental analysis of conditions per­ceived with varying degrees of clarity and exactitude; and when one’s attitude to a problem changes, the problem itself changes. So the architect, under the impact of entirely new conditions, has evolved a technique of thought which colours his attitude to all conditions, and makes every problem a new problem. This holds good for all buildings, big or small; for the factory accommodating thousands and the privy accommodating one. And it will continue to hold good until the new norms have been established.

At the risk of sounding anarchic I ought at this point to say how cautiously I approach the question of the establishment of new norms. Some people would have it that the stage has now been reached at which modern architecture, or the new architecture, call it what you will, has in some respects crystallised into a style, and that the time is ripe for a new formal academy. I greet this with the greatest scepticism, for although certain new norms do seem to have appeared I think we shall be treading very dangerous ground if we do not constantly regard them with acutely critical minds. Social conditions and technique are not static, and it is unfortunately all too easy to allow architecture unhealthily to grow in on itself, out of harmony with the life which surrounds it.

Norms in the past, besides being the outcome of relatively slowly developing technical and social conditions, have also been composed always of a relatively small range of materials with a limited number of possible

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combinations. To-day the profusion and complexity of materials and the constant production of new materials allows of endless possibilities of combination and arrangement, and should tend to prevent the emergence of any clearly defined styles or groups of combinations, and make the architect s method, not one of aesthetic or rule-of-thumb selection, but one based on knowledge as exact as that of the scientist or aeronautical engineer.

“ The architect, however good a politician he may be, is also an artist.I don’t quote that as a red herring for an exciting chase across political country, although I think that all of us will have to be a deal better politicians than I’ve noticed so far, if we want to avoid being blown sky high in the horribly near future. I quote it because of this artist business. You may think that after what I have been saying about the new responsibilities of the architect as regards precision and a scientific method of working, I should disagree with you that the architect is an artist. Actually I dont; because I believe that a purely functional architecture is an impossibility. I am sure that when we are faced with a problem of design we can never, in the last resort, answer it in such a way as to say, “ This is the absolutely right and logical solution to that problem.” However rationally we may approach our architectural problems we shall always find ourselves in situations where an aesthetic judgment will necessarily have to tip the scales one way or the other.

But let’s remember William Saroyan: “ The idea in the beginning was what ? To achieve what ? And when they tried to achieve it through art did they ever dream that it was going to turn out that instead of trying to achieve what they were trying to achieve through art, they would forget what they were trying to achieve, and devote all their time and energy to achieving art ? Did they dream it would turn out that way ? ”

So my agreement that the architect is an artist is considerably qualified. The architect should be no more an artist than any other designer, and con­siderably less than, say, a good gossip. He should not be first and foremost an artist, but only incidentally an artist. He isn’t asked to build in order to let his soul breathe, but in order to satisfy certain external material conditions. That is a minimum, I admit, but, heaven knows, they take some satisfying to-day. If he doesn’t make their complete satisfaction his object, he isn’t even an honest workman. His soul may have been breathing fire and brimstone, but that won’t have helped. This qualification may sound very trite and obvious, but I think it’s important, because it seems to be so often forgotten, even by the so-called progressives. Architecture may not result automatically from a scientific approach to planning and technique, but it is only through that approach that we can reach the stage at which architecture can begin.

What is this phrase, “ a scientific approach to planning and technique,” that trips off the tongue so blithely. It’s easy to smile at it and say it served its purpose in the early days of the modern movement when everything was in the melting-pot, but that we really ought to have seen through it by now. The trouble is we’re trying to go too fast; trying to erect around ourselves a stable architecture as a classic refuge from an unstable world, when what we ought to do is relinquish this nice dream of security and finality and regard° architecture as something flexible, constantly in movement. Our aim should be the establishment of a method of working which will create a new vernacular architecture; vernacular in the sense that it is truly indi­genous to the conditions from which it springs, and the means by which it aims to satisfy them, and therefore, to-day, a dynamic tradition as opposed to a formalistic one. It should be no more and no less than up-to-date, in the best sense. “ But we want to get somewhere ! ” people may object. It’s a false analogy, I know, but the Red Queen said to Alice: ‘‘ Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.”

Let us go back to some of the questions that seem to be disturbing the A.A. at the moment. There are four points from your paper with which I want particularly to deal. Firstly, the question of research, secondly, the “ irrevocable esquisse,” thirdly, group working, and finally, though I approach it with trepidation I might feel were it a stick of dynamite, that old enemy, competition.

I think the question of research is of primary importance, because it seems to me to be the thing on which one’s attitude to designing ultimately hangs. Naturally, I ’m assuming that by research we don’t mean going to the library and looking at plans, which is what it used to mean. You say that “ everything a student needs to know in making a design ought to be in the programme, or, where that is impracticable, ought to be covered by a pre­liminary lecture on special requirements.” Now I ’m not denying that such a method would be possible, but surely it would limit the field of the student, to a quite ridiculous extent ? Surely it is a mistake to regard education as a graded succession of neat and tidy little problems, so that after five years of it the student has had a crack at almost everything, and life no longer holds any terrors for him ? I’m inclined to think that in education solutions aren’t always important, and that a lot more time could be spent in exploring the nature of problems. Your suggestion would discourage the student from taking this analytical and experimental attitude to his work. Research is so in­timately linked with the proper process of designing that no vital architecture can be produced without it, for it doesn’t merely mean finding out what has been done before (as often as not a misleading business), but analysing in as objective a manner as possible, the precise requirements of each part of a general problem. It must be the whole basis of designing to-day, since there are no solutions that we can regard as universally valid. And the broader the basis the better, as long as the mind can cope with it.

The “ irrevocable esquisse ” as a means of teaching students to make up their minds quickly and (I blush to write it) to prevent them cribbing from each other, struck me as an extremely barbarous educational principle, and certainly as far as cribbing is concerned quite unnecessary, unless some fiercely competitive system is introduced. Any tendency towards a type of design working whereby a student is penalised if he does not stick to his original sketch is surely going to encourage a dangerously superficial attitude to architecture ? I do not believe it is possible for students to lay down a sound foundation at the beginning of a design unless the programme is so emasculated that it is valueless. And if the conditions are not limited, such a system would actively discourage students from making alterations, during the progress of their designs, that clearly become necessary as their knowledge of the programme grows. It would be a rigidly repressive system, and would only seem to be possible when working within an established tradition of design, in which general solutions have been achieved, and are tacitly recognised, and the important part of an architect’s business is to arrange variations on a theme. Such a tradition, I insist, clearly does not exist to-day, and consequently the process of designing cannot be development and modifi­cation radiating from a central idea, and checking up on limiting conditions one by one as it encounters them, but must necessarily be a process in which unorganised factual data are made to converge slowly towards an unknown centre, becoming progressively more organised, until finally, at the centre, they produce a new synthesis.

In your remarks on group working you did not stress a very important aspect of this method of working. In my experience of group working its most valuable contribution to education, and its essential difference from individual designing, lies not in the fact that each student can specialise in a separate aspect of a problem, and consequently produce a more elaborately worked-out solution than would otherwise have been possible, but in the fact

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that such a system provides opportunity for detailed argument and discussion on a specific problem that cannot be obtained in any other way. It is this inevitable argument that should make a certain amount of group working an essential part of each year of the school course. I agree with you that we are surrounded by competition to-day, and that under these circumstances the instinct for it seems to be in most of us. I admit, myself, that I like a place in the sun, and appreciation of my work. Who doesn’t ? Most of us want to be considered a little different from, and a little better in some way than our neighbours. That seems quite harmless, for privately most of us think we are. But I cannot see how that can be any argument for imposing a marking system on a school. Because it is an imposition; and if it was withdrawn term by term as each fresh group of students entered the school,I am sure they would work better without it, and that very few of them would feel it was unnatural not to have it.

Any attempt to arrange students in a precise order of merit must be superficial and unsatisfactory, for one cannot possibly take properly into account the different attitudes of individual designers towards the same problem. It may be easy enough sometimes to pick out one or two out­standingly good examples, but I strongly suspect that it is a heartbreakingly hopeless task to sort out the ruck into some semblance of order. And such a waste of time for those who have to do it. And so bad for the ruck—a source of constant frustration, disappointment and misunderstanding, tending to restrict experiment, and a constant discouragement to the not-so-brilliant student, even though he may behave like a good loser, and take his defeats in a gentlemanly way.

If half-a-dozen men are crazy about the same girl, and one of them has the good fortune to get her, we don’t arrange the other five in a descending scale of eligibility. We can’t. And even if we could, God forbid that we should.

What is wanted is a really detailed opinion of each design (and I use “ opinion ” advisedly), instead of a pencilled mark which tells students nothing except that in relation to their neighbours they are closer to, or farther from some abstract standard that they can’t quite understand. I was present at a jury once and confess I couldn’t understand it even then. Yes, I know that criticism is given as well as marks, but what I want to suggest is that this criticism ought to be fuller, and that marks add nothing but confusion. Maybe they are useful as records at the administrative end of the business, but that’s not the end from which we should argue.

What sort of education does this mean for us ?

I don’t intend to fill up more space by detailing the course that I think should follow from the general principles I have been trying to put forward, because that would make this letter too much of a mouthful. But the germ of the course (and I dramatise it for the sake of emphasis) would be the principle that nothing should be taught, but that information should be available; that the school should not be conceived as a system of static ideas gravitating from Senior Masters through Unit Masters to the students, but as a unity of masters and students working together for the same end—an end not of victory and the establishment of a style, but of the refinement of a method of attack. That should be our object at the moment; to try to do any more would be to run before we can walk. We should not be interested in pretending to produce mature architects. The next stage will emerge in its proper time, and by then we shall be able to see how to deal with it. This is only opportunism to those who, historically, would put the cart before the

motive horse because they don’t like the look of the horse’s hindquarters. Inverting the metaphor, beauty should be like the barrow of the labourer who, when asked why he trailed it behind him when everyone else pushed it before them, said: “ Because I’m sick of the sight of the bloody thing.”

Reprinted from “ Focus,” No. 1, Summer, 1938, London. Published hy Percy Lund Humphries & Co., Ltd., 12, Bedford Square, London, W.C.l.

“ Focus ” No. 1 will be reviewed in our next issue.

P R O F E S S I O N A L N O T E S A N D N E W S

British Architects’ Conference, Dublin, 1939.The following letter from the Secretary, Royal Institute of British

Architects, is published for the information of members:—“ Your members may be interested to know that our Annual Conference

next year and the Centenary Celebration of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland are to be held in Dublin, and a very interesting programme is being arranged. The date is from the 21st to the 24th June, 1939.

“ We are always glad on these occasions to have the company of visitors from overseas, and if any of your members are likely to be in England at that date I hope they will communicate with me and let me send them copies of the programme of the Conference.”

F r o m " T h e E n g l i s h G a r d e n," b y R a l p h D u t t o n ( B a t s f o r d )

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B O O K R E V I E W S

“ THE ENGLISH GARDEN,” by Ralph Dutton. Published by B. T. Batsford,Ltd., London. Price 7s. 6d.

This well-illustrated book deals with the development of the garden in England from the Roman conquest to the time of Queen Victoria. The reader is presented with a neatly drawn cross section of the changing theories which formed the basis for the arrangement of the gardens shown.

The history of a development extending over hundreds of years, when compressed into such a small space, automatically leads one to reflect on the manner in which what are considered essential truths at one stage undergo modification, until eventually a completely conflicting outlook is accepted. No better illustration of this somewhat unstable attitude may be given than the change which took place in the setting of Renaissance houses, when the formal concept of garden planning gave way to a passion for informality. Originally many of the houses of the period mentioned were provided with a formal setting which bore some relationship to them, before making contact with the surrounding parklands. With the change in outlook, terraces, parterres, etc., were swept away, and we are presented with the spectacle of classic houses rising like islands out of acres of green sward. The obvious discord between house and landscape indicates, I think, that the later garden designers did not feel the problem of relating formal architecture to nature as acutely as their predecessors, who, although erring on the side of excessive regularity, yet achieved more unified results.

The early chapters contain interesting information regarding the nature of gardens and the types of plants cultivated by the Romans during their occupation of England. Here again one can only regret the manner in which the knowledge of horticulture, culled from the development of civilisation in the Mediterranean, passed swiftly into oblivion. So much was lost with their departure from the island to await rediscovery later.

Further interesting information is given regarding the monasteries established in England during the Middle Ages. A plan of one of these dated 830 A.D. is reproduced here, and displays a fine sense of arrangement. The manner in which the elements of the plan have been organised as a series of rectangular units which are then related to each other in the layout is strangely reminiscent of some recent projects in France by Tony Gamier.

J.F.

“ EUROPE RE-HOUSED,” by Elizabeth Denby. Published by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London. Price 14s.

“ Europe Re-housed” surveys the measures which are being taken on the Continent and in England to alleviate the acute shortage of suitable housing accommodation for the average working class individual. This shortage, as everyone knows, is a legacy of the migration from country to town which occurred during the industrial revolution on the one hand, and the enforced cessation of all efforts tov/ards improvement during the Great War.

The approach to the subject which has been adopted discusses the present inadequate conditions, the manner in which they have evolved, and then

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follows on to a survey of the methods which are being applied to alleviate the position. Housing schemes are discussed thoroughly from an economic point of view, and next with respect to the methods by which they are administered. The book is fully illustrated and valuable relevant statistics in the form of diagrams fill out the discussion and assist the reader to view the whole subject in perspective.

From an architectural point of view the book lacks the more detailed information regarding the construction, finishes, and reports on the success or otherwise of experiments which have been carried out with new methods and materials, while the opinions expressed on the architectural quality of the projects described are not authoritative.

As an addition to the subject of housing, however, the book forms a valuable contribution. It illustrates concisely and clearly the seriousness with which the subject is being regarded by the important countries of Europe.

J.F.

An illustration from " The English Garden," reviewed on the opposite page

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Journal of the SA Architectural Institute PUBLISHER: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

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