Architects and Engineers: Modes of Cooperation in the Interwar Period, 1919–1939 9783035623260, 9783035623253

Citation preview

Architects and Engineers Modes of Cooperation in the Interwar Period, 1919–1939

Kulturelle und technische Werte historischer Bauten Hg. von Klaus Rheidt und Werner Lorenz Band 7

Roland May (ed.)

Architects and Engineers Modes of Cooperation in the Interwar Period, 1919–1939

Birkhäuser · Basel

This publication is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the framework of the Research Training Group 1913 «Cultural and Technological Signif icance of Historic Buildings», Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus–Senftenberg; Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space, Erkner; Department of Archaeology at Humboldt University of Berlin.

RTG 1913

Research Training Group Cultural and Technological Significance of Historic Buildings

Scientific committee Dr Bill Addis, Olga Arkhipkina M.Sc., Dr James Campbell, Ass.Prof. Dr. Michael De Bouw, Prof. Dipl.-Ing. José Luis Moro, Dr. Christoph Rauhut, Prof. Dr. Mario Rinke Concept: Roland May Project coordination: Albrecht Wiesener, Sophia Hörmannsdorfer Copyediting: William Hatherell, Jasmine Rice Layout, typesetting and editing: Sophia Hörmannsdorfer Cover design: Jörg Denkinger Printing and binding: Beltz Grafische Betriebe GmbH, Bad Langensalza Cover illustration: Zeche Zollverein, Essen, main entrance, 2011 (photo by Guido Radig [CC BY 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/3.0/deed.en], adapted by the editor). Library of Congress Control Number: 2022942558 Bibliographic information published by the German National Library The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. The book is also available as an ebook (ISBN PDF 978-3-0356-2326-0). ISBN 978-3-0356-2325-3

© 2022 Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, Basel P. O. Box 44, 4009 Basel, Switzerland Part of Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

987654321

www.birkhauser.com

Contents

Some Introductory Remarks on Architects, Engineers, Modes of Cooperation between Them, and the Importance of the Interwar Period for All This Roland May

7

Looking Back on Architect and Engineer Andrew Saint

25

Engineering Belgian Interwar Modernisms: Some Examples of Architect-Engineer-Contractor Relations Rika Devos

37

«Architect, do not imitate the forms of technology but learn the method of the structural engineer!» The Cooperation of Russian Avant-Garde Architects and Engineers Anke Zalivako

53

The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany Roland May

63

Architect and Engineer around the World, 1919–39: An Exploration in Photographs Roland May

85

Italian Modernisms: Structure and Architecture in the Interwar Period Tullia Iori, Sergio Poretti †

103

Not Just the Dirty Work: Architects and Engineers in Britain between the Wars David Yeomans

115

Eduardo Torroja and Architects, 1926–36 Ana Rodríguez García, Rafael Hernando de la Cuerda

129

The ‹Queen of Engineering› The Engineer Max Mayer’s ‹Science of Management› and its Impact on German Modernist Architectural Design around 1930 Gernot Weckherlin

147

Some Introductory Remarks on Architects, Engineers, Modes of Cooperation between Them, and the Importance of the Interwar Period for All This

A dispassionate study of the relationships between engineering and architecture in the twentieth century would be of great value to an understanding of our civilization.1 John A. Kouwenhoven, 1962

For the everyday culture of the Machine Age, the work of engineers served as a defining stimulus. Locomotives, automobiles, and aeroplanes provided almost unlimited mobility. Electrical appli­ ances revolutionised households and machine work made it possible for an ever-growing circle of people to have access to goods that had previously only been available to the well-heeled classes. In the field of building, engineering structures took on the role of major pacemakers. Thanks to the use of innovative building materials and construction methods, as well as to the economisation of construction processes through standardisation and prefabrication, the performance of buildings steadily improved in a way that seemed to logically correspond to modern times. The Civil Engineer: An Idealised Role Model of the Interwar Period That the Industrial Revolution would not only affect the technical aspects of building constructions, but also their architectural appearance, was already becoming apparent in the early 19th century. A telling example is the famous publication In welchem Style sollen wir bauen? (In what style should we build?) by the Baden state architect Heinrich Hübsch (1786–1866). He observed that the «technostatic experience is constantly growing»2 and concluded therefore that an «ingenious construction» would have to become a central criterion in the quality assessment of all future buildings.3

It would still take several decades before a rele­ vant number of architects developed sufficient awareness of the aesthetic and artistic qualities of buildings developed primarily on the basis of structural and/or technical considerations. Yet, step by step, the desire for a return to a coherent relationship between construction and form, as well as the wish for architectural forms in tune with modern times, became stronger. As a result, structures free of decorations and primarily designed according to operational conditions moved into the focus of attention – structures that fell largely within the responsibility of civil engineers. During the period between the two world wars, the attention for the works and attitudes of this still relatively new profession in the building industry reached a climax. This was the time when the Modern Movement in architecture achieved its breakthrough. It was also the time when the eulogies to technology, proclaimed with increasing vigour since the beginning of the industrial era, forcefully made their way into discourses on architectural design. And it was the time when Le Corbusier (1887–1965), still in the process of mutating from the artist-architect CharlesÉdouard Jeanneret into the architectural genius of the century, published an essay under the programmatic title Esthétique de l’ingénieur, architec­ ture (The engineer’s aesthetic, and architecture)4 – an essay that was apparently of such importance to the charismatic leader of modernism that he would reuse it two years later in 1923 as the opening chapter of his programmatic and extraordinarily influential book Vers une architecture (fig. 1).5 Most people were convinced that engineers would sooner or later come up with a technical solution to every current problem. In 1927 the German

8

Roland May

1  The role model of the engineer was apparently of such importance to Le Corbusier that he re-used a 1921 essay on «Engineering aesthetics, [and] architecture» from L’Esprit nouveau (left) two years later as the first chapter in his famous book Vers une architecture (right).

architect Gustav Adolf Platz (1881–1947) summarised the general mood in his widely read book Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit (The Architecture of Recent Times): «The spirit of our age today manifests itself most purely in the works of the engineer.»6 The epoch between the wars was marked not only by great enthusiasm for the latest technical developments, featuring in its architectural discourses an almost hymnal veneration of the civil engineer as role model. Also, our understanding of architectural history underwent a lasting change, as intellectual masterminds like Sigfried Giedion included the engineer in the ancestral

bloodline of future-oriented architectural production. In fact, their arguments formulated in this context not only became part of the historiography of the Modern Movement, but even turned into some of its central and long-lasting pillars. Given the very prominent role of civil engineering in the key epoch of high modern culture, however, it is strange that even specialists in the history of modern architecture are likely to have considerable difficulty in naming even a handful of prominent interwar engineers from the building sector. This phenomenon may have its roots in the fact that the presence of engineers in the

Some Introductory Remarks

modernist historiography of architecture has been limited almost exclusively to figures from the long-gone 19th century. Civil engineers who worked at the same time as Alvar Aalto (1898– 1976), Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953) or Giuseppe Terragni (1904–43) in contrast were, with very few exceptions, simply ignored. What makes matters worse is that very similar deficits can be identified on the part of the engineers. Some two decades ago, the eminent US historian of civil engineering, David P. Billington (1927–2018), summed up the matter as follows: Ask any architectural student who the great architects of the 20th century were and you will invariably get answers like Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. Put the same question to engineering students and you will normally get blank stares.7

Civil Engineers: A Rare Subject in Historical Research Thanks to Hans Straub’s Die Geschichte der Bau­ ingenieur­kunst (A History of Civil Engineering, fig. 2)8, a comprehensive overview of the development of civil engineering has been available to the international scientific community at least since 1949. Almost three quarters of a century later, the historiography of civil engineering, however, still holds the status of an exotic academic subject worldwide. Nevertheless, not least due to the rise of the young scientific discipline of construction history, the history of civil engineering has recently received a growing degree of attention. Beyond narrow expert circles, though, still only very few works gain broader attention. Such exceptions include, for instance, monographs on a very small number of particular personalities in engineering, such as Ove Arup (1895–1988), Pier Luigi Nervi (1891–1979) or Jörg Schlaich (1934– 2021). These personalities usually display a trait that is commonly not attributed to engineers, namely a strong sense for the cultural substance of engineering work. In other words, those aspects

of this sober field of building that – such as the design of a structure’s shape – extend beyond the mere fulfilment of a purpose. Other than architects, civil engineers are very rarely perceived or even appreciated by the public as designers of buildings. One of the reasons for this may be that engineers often carry out their work in the anonymity of large companies or public administrations. Another reason, according to the German engineer Gerd Danielewski (1926– 2016), could be that architects «in terms of selfportrayal and self-promotion have always easily outperformed civil engineers, who tend to work in the background».9 In addition, many architects – even when acknowledging the pioneering role of civil engineers in some aspects of architectural form – are deeply convinced of their own creative

2  The fourth edition of Hans Straub’s Die Geschichte der Bau­ingenieur­kunst, Birkhäuser, 1992. The first English edition was published in 1952.

9

10

Roland May

3  Poster for the much-acclaimed exhibition «Vision der Moderne – Das Prinzip Konstruktion» (Vision of Modernity – The Construction Principle), curated by Heinrich Klotz in 1986 at the German Museum of Architecture in Frankfurt am Main.

superiority. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) pointedly expressed this widely shared mentality within his profession in 1959: «In the field of design the structural engineers, with a few exceptions like Nervi, do not know what they are doing.»10 To a certain extent, this attitude was countered by an increase in complaints about the fact that in collaborative work, even on engineering structures, architects’ names were frequently mentioned, but only rarely those of the engineers involved. In the interwar period, many civil engineers were already dissatisfied with such a relegation to the second row. In 1986 Heinrich Klotz (1935–99), then director of the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt, even ennobled the «Construction Principle» (Prinzip Konstruktion, fig.  3) in retrospect as a central «vision of modernity».11 Consequently, a small but steadily growing group of civil engineers

eventually decided to emancipate themselves from architects and even from architecture itself. Out of this humus grew the claim to identify the design of load-bearing structures as an autonomous art form. About half a century ago, the aforementioned David P. Billington created the term «structural art» for this activity,12 a term which has since become widely used all over the world. Cooperation: An Indispensable Element in Modern Building Production In his numerous writings, Billington, who had trained under well-known personalities such as Anton Tedesko (1903–94) and Gustave Magnel (1889–1955), emphasised almost mantra-like that only engineers were capable of mastering this art

Some Introductory Remarks

form. Likewise, he did not forget to stress that the «Bauhaus and other such movements barely recognized the tradition of structural art».13 In line with his segregating impulse, Billington hardly ever mentioned an important detail: a relaxed relationship with architects, and even an appreciation of their work, can almost be regarded as a common characteristic of engineers with an ambition for design. And it was often precisely such engineers who frequently and willingly cooperated with architects. Transdisciplinary collaboration can indeed be seen as a central element of modern architectural production, if not more generally of any kind of production in the modern era. In favour of a concise narrative, this important aspect was and is all too often neglected, not least in unison with a simplistic focus on certain dominant personalities.14 Issues about the interaction between architects and engineers naturally arose parallel to the shaping of the two professions’ modern profiles. At the beginning of the 19th century, the boundaries were still blurred, and engineers like the famous bridge designer Thomas Telford (1757– 1834) also worked as creative architects. However, the trend towards an increased use of structural iron in construction, originating from key figures such as Telford, was also a major reason why civil engineers were soon fully occupied with trying to meet the ever-increasing demands on their technical and mathematical skills. Admittedly, Matthew Digby Wyatt (1820–77) remarked as late as 1850 that in building design work it was still «so difficult to decide where civil engineering ends and architecture begins».15 Yet it was precisely around this time that the process of separation between the two professions was achieving completion. The schism between static/constructive and aesthetic/spatial competences in the building sector has certainly been lamented from its beginning.16 At the same time, however, there were also many voices on both sides that gleefully defined and extensively emphasised any possible

difference between the two professions. A paradigmatic representative for such a stand was the well-known Austrian architect Josef Frank (1885– 1967). Highly polemical, the leading representative of the so-called Viennese School would in the year 1930 give free rein to his contempt for members of the civil engineering profession in – of all places – the modernist journal of the Deutscher Werkbund, Die Form: ‹The artist needs to be an engineer›. This is often emphasised by people who have no idea about the art of engineering. I have to say from my own experience that the engineer is one of the most unimaginative characters of our time. […] A collaboration between engineer and architect is therefore also hopeless, since both have different ways of thinking […].17

It should be noted, however, that Frank’s main field of activity was the design of residential buildings, an area of building whose constructions at that time were still largely based on empirically acquired craftsman’s knowledge. But if buildings were to combine qualities of architectural design with high requirements in terms of structural engineering (as in the case of prestigious bridges or large railway stations), then collaboration between the disparate siblings architect and engineer was virtually unavoidable. Given their supposedly much more prominent cultural role, architects initially almost automatically played first fiddle. Thanks to the affinity for technology in the Modern Movement and due to the ever-increasing demand for advanced engineering know-how, however, this hierarchy started to be called into question. Quite a few engineers were thus able (albeit usually not to the full extent) to step out of the large shadows of their fellow counterparts. Indeed, it is no big challenge to identify some names of civil engineers who have played a significant role in modern architecture’s development. Let us just mention the great Brazilian engineerpoet Joaquim Cardozo (1897–1978), one of the founding fathers of Brazilian modern architecture in the 1930s.18 Cardozo’s innovative approach

11

12

Roland May

was a decisive component in the design of edifices such as the Igreja de São Francisco de Assis (1942/43, fig. 4), built in the immediate aftermath of the interwar period in Pampulha, a suburb of Belo Horizonte. The tiny church is undoubtedly one of the most important milestones on the way to a type of modernist architecture that emerged in the interwar period and would spread throughout the world in post-war times: buildings whose often spectacular appearance was unmistakably based on the most advanced art of engineering. The architect of this precious temple – nobody less than the great Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) – was well aware of the importance of the engineers’ contribution in making his buildings a success. Not long before his passing, he would comment on this matter:

However, the architect does not work solely by himself. He is bound to the engineer who does the calculations. I imagine the project and he decides if it can be done: the engineer is the architect’s inseparable companion […]: we have discussions, but in the end it is the engineer who decides, because he is responsible for the work.19

Interdependencies, Conflicts, Demarcations If one takes a closer look, the issue of cooperation can be found in countless discourses on architecture in the interwar period. In this context, no small number of voices, especially on the avant-garde side, imagined that the frontiers between architecture and engineering, which had been established almost a century ago, could now dissolve again. But this remained a beautiful pipe dream: the division

4  Saint Francis of Assisi’s Church in Pampulha (1942/43) is a milestone of modernist architecture based on the art of engineering. Oscar Niemeyer (arch.), Joaquim Cardozo (eng.), photo from 2011.

Some Introductory Remarks

within the building industry’s planning disciplines could not be reversed (and persists to this day). Nevertheless, one important side effect was that the long-standing debate on whether architects and engineers should work together was increasingly replaced by the question of how they should do it. Between the whether and the how, a multitude of different modes of cooperation opened up. A perfect illustration of this is a monograph from 1929 on the outstanding German industrial architects Fritz Schupp (1896–1974) and Martin Kremmer (1895–1945), whose most famous work, the Zollverein Shaft XII complex in Essen, is shown on the cover of this volume. The somewhat awkward book title Architekt gegen oder und Ingenieur (Architect against or and Engineer) hints very descriptively at the wide range of possible approaches (fig. 5).20 It has already been noted that the architects in such processes were fundamentally convinced of the obvious superiority of their own design skills. But probably just as pronounced was the scepticism on the engineering side about the expertise, or even the interest, of architects in building’s technical aspects. The real substance behind the idea of designing architecture like an engineer, which was so fervently propagated by vanguard architects throughout the 1920s, was therefore repeatedly called into question. Even a committed long-time cooperation partner like Ove Arup would in retrospect express considerable disdain for the alleged engineering background of British avant-garde architects’ creations: The people who instigated the [Modern] movement knew next to nothing about science or engineering construction […]. It is as if there is a streak of dishonesty running through the architectural profession. They do not face facts, they fake facts. 21

This harsh accusation was certainly not entirely wrong. After all, many architects were predominantly interested in modern construction methods because of their aesthetic rather than their technical allures. Erich Mendelsohn’s epoch-making photobook Amerika, first published in 1926,

13

5  The somewhat awkward book title Architect against or and Engineer of a 1929 monograph on the architects Schupp and Kremmer outlines very vividly the contemporary discussions on the architect–engineer relationship.

is a prototypical demonstration of such an attitude. In a text accompanying construction site photographs of the Chicago Tribune Tower and an unnamed Detroit building, for example, one can read the following proclamation: The bare bones of the construction force the truth upon us. When it can still be seen without cladding, the skeleton shows, more clearly and splendidly than the finished building, the boldness of construction with iron or reinforced concrete. Of course, it remains merely a skeleton and still awaits an equivalent expressiveness of form. 22

«Of course», Mendelsohn could not refrain from remarking that even the finest engineering still needed the architect’s guiding hand. But that is

14

Roland May

6  Divergent views I: The construction site of the Chicago Tribune Tower (1923–25) in Erich Mendelsohn’s book Amerika from 1926 (bottom left) and in an article from 1924 by the engineer responsible, Henry J. Burt (right).

not the point here, especially since Mendelsohn’s comment on creating «an equivalent expressiveness of form» could, in this case, also have referred to the Chicago building’s neo-Gothic stone façade by the architectural studio of John M. Howells (1868–1959) and Raymond M. Hood (1881–1934). This façade, which received heavy criticism in vanguard circles, had been conceived in the framework of an international competition, in which modernists, traditionalists, and eclecticists competed for the future forms of skyscraper design (and in which the latter prevailed). In addition to creating the best architectural form, the technical tasks to be mastered in

this competition for the Chicago Tribune Tower were also truly challenging. However, the solutions offered to these tasks were hardly noticed in the public reception of the building, something that also applies to its underlying structural concepts. Thus, it is not surprising that the fascinating load-bearing structure made of steel (which was encased in concrete for fire protection reasons and could only be appreciated during the building’s erection between 1923 and 1925) seems to have attracted Mendelsohn’s interest exclusively as an aesthetic phenomenon. One can clearly understand this by contrasting the plate from Mendelsohn’s photobook, showing a visual

Some Introductory Remarks

15

7  Divergent views II: Presentation of the Alexander House in Berlin (1930–32, Peter Behrens [arch.], Ferenc Dómany [eng.]) in the architectural magazine Deutsche Bauzeitung in 1932 (left) and the engineering trade journal Stahlbau in 1933 (right).

idiom that recalls works by László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), with a page from the description of the construction by Henry J. Burt (1873–1928), who, together with Frank E. Brown (1888–1947), had been responsible for its structural design (fig. 6). Mendelsohn’s photography transforms an ephemeral state into a work of art in its own right, while the engineer Burt simply documents a stage in the progress of construction. Articles in civil engineering periodicals generally contain mainly calculations as well as drawings and photos of the construction process or the structure’s details. Here one can observe how the two sister disciplines look at buildings in fundamentally different

ways, something that Tom F. Peters pointed out already some three decades ago23: while architects are primarily interested in the final product, engineers attach great importance to the process leading to the finished structure (fig. 7). A Brief Overview of the Historiography of the Architect–Engineer Relationship The preceding remarks have already shown that the planning and realisation of an edifice are complex interactions with numerous players involved. The following section will briefly highlight a few

16

Roland May

publications that have paid particular attention to this fact, and especially to the question of the interplay between architect and engineer over the course of history. As already explained, recourses to the influence of engineering on modern architecture can be considered a core part of modern architectural history’s standard narrative. Needless to say, many new insights have been gained on this question over the decades; for instance in Peter Collins’s standard work Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, first published in 1965,24 or Kenneth Frampton’s instructive book Studies in Tectonic Culture,25 published three decades later. However, the crucial aspect of the relationship between the architect and the engineer in the modern age only started to be addressed in a more thorough manner in parallel with the revision of building history’s modernist canon. A more critical view quickly led to the somewhat unedifying realisation that this relationship was by no means a harmonious one, and one historical analysis even identified the two actors as the «personalisation of the antagonism between art and technology».26 At the same time, however, at a symposium entitled Bridging

the Gap held at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 1989,27 there were also attempts to draw lessons from history for the future of the relationship between the two professions, as their current state was perceived as increasingly unsatisfactory. In 2000, Ulrich Pfammatter published The Making of the Modern Architect and Engineer,28 which traces the modern professional profile of the two sister disciplines through a study of the continuously diversifying content of their educational curricula in the 19th century. Even if the word «engineer» was missing from the title of the original German edition published three years earlier, Pfammatter’s work can be considered as one of the first comprehensive works in which the two professions are examined both simultaneously and, to a large extent, on an equal footing. In a sense, this work marked the beginning of a whole series of articles and books that took up new perspectives on the topic. Mention shall be made here only of a collection of essays by Sergio Poretti entitled Italian Modernisms,29 which dissects the interplay between engineering structure and architectural form in an exemplary manner; the publication Cooperation: The Engineer and the Architect, edited

8  Some examples of the emerging interest in the relationship between architect and engineer: the symposium proceedings Bridging the Gap (1991), Ulrich Pfammatter’s book The Making of the Modern Architect and Engineer (2000), and the collection of essays Cooperation: The Engineer and the Architect (2012).

Some Introductory Remarks

by Aita Flury,30 which explores the current state and future of the relationship between the two professions; and the volume Perceived Technologies in the Modern Movement 1918–1975,31 published in 2014, which brings together contributions from a DOCOMOMO conference held in Karlsruhe the year before, revealing a marked increase in interest in construction history topics in contemporary architectural history research. In addition to these and other studies, which for all their strengths are also more or less limited to specific aspects, two works anchored the topic in a broader framework. Christel Palant-Frapier’s doctoral thesis on French consulting engineers in the decades after World War II, completed in 2009, broadened our view by including such important aspects as networks and cross-border transfers of technical knowledge, in addition to the core issues of architect–engineer collaboration.32 The undisputed opus magnum in the field of study treated here, however, is Andrew Saint’s book Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry (fig. 9), which was published at almost the same time.33 Starting from the 18th century, it paints a strikingly complex picture of the cooperation between architect and engineer as a fundamental constant of modern building in France, the United Kingdom and the USA. The Many Modes of Cooperation Despite these and other studies of the architect– engineer relationship, many important questions have only been answered to an unsatisfactory extent or not at all, not least with regard to the crucial period between the two world wars in the 20th century. For this reason, a research project was jointly carried out by Ralf Dorn and the editor within the framework of the Research Training Group (GRK) 1913 «Cultural and Technological Significance of Historic Buildings» at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).34 The main subject of this project was

9  To date the undisputed opus magnum on the relationship between architects and engineers: Andrew Saint’s formidable book Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry (2008).

cooperation and mutual influence between architects and civil engineers in the years 1918 to 1933, with a focus on the German modernist movement and its so-called Neues Bauen (New Building).35 Based on an extensive evaluation of contemporary sources and publications, this research project paid particular attention to the views on the «other ones», with Ralf Dorn addressing the matter from the perspective of the architects, and the editor from that of the civil engineers. In the course of the research, an increasingly urgent question was to anchor our own studies, which were limited to the German-speaking territories, in the contemporary international context. It was therefore decided to gather international researchers working on similar issues at a special symposium (an idea that was taken up and

17

18

Roland May

he was to take over from Walter Gropius as director of the Bauhaus, where he established the «coop principle»37): Pure construction is the hallmark of the new world of forms. Constructive form knows no fatherland; it is crossnational and the expression of an international attitude to building [Baugesinnung]. Internationality is an advantage of our era. 38

10  Cause and basis for this publication: an international symposium organised at Cottbus in 2015.

further developed by the following generations of GRK 1913 «postdoc tandems»)36. Modernist architecture is undoubtedly characterised by an ever-increasing tendency towards supranational standards, especially in the field of constructive elements. For this reason, some may ask to what extent the juxtaposition of «national characteristics» in the relationship between planning actors makes any sense at all. Indeed, the architect Hannes Meyer (1889–1954) denied any local character for the «constructive form» (kon­ struktive Form) as early as 1926 (two years before

A comparable line of thought seems to have led Philip Johnson (1906–2005) and Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903–1987) to invent in 1932 the catchphrase «International Style».39 Evidently, the term was extremely persuasive; after all, it is still widely used today. Yet everyday experience already makes us aware of the reality that many things tend to be done differently in other countries. Engineering structures, for example, those edifices that probably come closest to Meyer’s ideal of «pure construction», originate from an area that is supposedly permeated by rational scientific consideration and shaped by supranational standards such as the Eurocodes – and yet to this day, even directly neighbouring countries often exhibit significant differences in both design approach and practical implementation. An even more obvious case is the way planning and construction processes are carried out, as they reflect different ideals and traditions in each country. Of course, such differing circumstances directly influence the relationship between architects and engineers, as do the educational backgrounds and areas of responsibility of the two professions, which vary from one country to the next. Furthermore, in no small number of countries one will find professional profiles that are located somewhere in the grey area between architect and engineer. And finally, it must be taken into account that in addition to architects and engineers, numerous other protagonists are involved in construction projects, ranging from construction companies and their craftsmen via machinery rental firms to the approving and regulating authorities. Hence there were plenty of good reasons to gather a group of scholars on 3 and 4 December 2015 at Cottbus, a good hour’s drive from Berlin,

Some Introductory Remarks

for an international symposium on «Architect and Engineer in the Interwar Period, 1919–1939» (fig. 10). The aim was to compare fundamental questions about cooperation, competition, and conflicts between the two sister disciplines in different European countries. The unifying frame for all contributions was the focus on the period between the two world wars – in other words, the pivotal epoch in which the blossoming of technophile modernism initiated a new and lasting chapter in the architect– engineer relationship. Moreover, the contributions were mainly centred on the field of architecture, with the consulting structural engineer as the architect’s somewhat complementary counterpart. «Pure» engineering structures and the related question of the consequences of cooperative work in this field, on the other hand, could only be treated in passing. In addition, the number of countries covered remained modest due to the limited number of participants and the concentration on Europe from the outset. In other words, there is still much left to be explored in the future. All the more important is the fact that almost all contributions from the symposium could be included in this volume and that the production of the book – in spite of a long delay in the aftermath of the symposium caused by a number of different unforeseen obstacles – could be finally achieved. The papers have all been revised by their authors shortly before going to press, and although a very long time has passed since the original drafts were written, they have lost nothing of their relevance. Synopsis of the Contributions Contained in this Volume In the opening essay Looking Back on Architect and Engineer Andrew Saint (London) reflects on his own book Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry, which has been already acknowledged in this introduction and which remains, fifteen

years after its publication, the most important study on the relationship between the two professions. Saint introduces his personal approach to the highly complex subject. In addition, he presents some of the key insights he gained during his work on the book and wonders, in a self-critical manner, if they are still valid today or if they should be re-evaluated. In her contribution Engineering Belgian Interwar Modernisms: Some Examples of Architect-EngineerContractor Relations, Rika Devos (Brussels) takes a closer look at two aspects that are only rarely considered in international research on building during the interwar period. One of them is the rich Belgian heritage of modernist architecture from that period, which for the most part is clearly overshadowed by that of neighbouring France, Germany, and the Netherlands. The other is to include contractors as a third key player in the analysis of the relationship between architects and engineers. A peculiarity lies in the possibility of qualifying as an engineer architect, a profession that still exists in Belgium today. Nevertheless, in the Belgium of the interwar years, the relationship between architect and engineer was marked by sharp debates on the definition of the boundaries between the two professions. Propagating the ideals of an egalitarian spirit of collaboration as well as the development of an architectural language developed from engineering logic were of key importance for the architectural development in the young Soviet Union. In her paper «Architect, do not imitate the forms of technology but learn the method of the structur­ al engineer!» The Cooperation of Russian AvantGarde Architects and Engineers, Anke Zalivako (Berlin) explores the cooperation between avantgarde architects and engineers in that country which gave birth to Constructivism. In addition to young architects imbued with a revolutionary spirit, Zalivako identifies established engineers such as Vladimir Shukhov as driving forces behind the intensive interweaving of new building technologies and an architectural language

19

20

Roland May

that takes the building’s structure as a leitmotif. At the same time, however, she observes a marked lack of investigations into the exact circumstances of teamwork for this «model country of cooperation». In regard to architectural design, few other countries in the interwar period developed a comparable international impact to that of Germany. The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany by Roland May (Cottbus) takes a critical look at the Modern Movement’s enthusiasm for technology in the homeland of Werkbund and Bauhaus. Including examples by world-famous architects such as Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, he also focuses on hitherto unknown architect–engineer networks and the mutual influence of the two professions in the context of a movement, whose aspiration was nothing less than the creation of a totally new way of building. The political context, too often overlooked in studies on the history of civil engineering, is given special attention in the contribution Italian Modernisms: Structure and Architecture in the Interwar Period by Tullia Iori and Sergio Poretti (Rome). By means of telling examples, they demonstrate how the fascist regime and its ideology of autarkism influenced Italian engineering in the interwar period in a very broad way – both with respect to the structures working invisibly behind architectural façades and to spectacular projects of venturous engineering. Pier Luigi Nervi’s outstanding work is presented as the culmination point of this process, serving moreover as a significant hinge for the extraordinary post-war development of Italy’s art of engineering. In his paper Not Just the Dirty Work: Architects and Engineers in Britain between the Wars, David Yeomans (Banbury) examines a sub-group of civil engineers that emerged particularly early in the United Kingdom and which was (and is) of particular importance for a fruitful cooperation between architect and engineer: autonomous consulting engineers. The Modern Movement offered them

new possibilities to shake off their image as uninspired calculation servants and to become creative protagonists of a new era. Special attention is given to the three outstanding figures Owen Williams, Felix Samuely and Ove Arup. Their achievements not only blurred the boundaries between architectural and engineering work, but also laid important foundations for the international reputation of British engineering consultancies, which continues to this day. International importance can undoubtedly also be attributed to Eduardo Torroja, whose early work is the focus of the paper Eduardo Torroja and Architects, 1926–36 by Ana Rodríguez García and Rafael Hernando de la Cuerda (Alcalá de Henares). While Torroja is primarily renowned in engineering circles as a pioneer of thin-shell construction, here his equally important role as a mediator between architecture and civil engineering is discussed. In this context, special attention is paid to his role as the only civil engineer in the large planning group of Madrid’s University City. In addition, the journal Hormigón y Acero, co-founded by Torroja, is presented. With its consistent advocacy of the Modern Movement, equal treatment of architectural and engineering issues, and a profoundly international perspective, this magazine can be counted among the most remarkable building trade journals of the 1930s. The international transfer of ideas in civil engineering also plays a role in the concluding study The ‹Queen of Engineering›: The Engineer Max Mayer’s ‹Science of Management› and its Impact on German Modernist Architectural Design around 1930 by Gernot Weckherlin (Berlin), which focuses on the unusual German civil engineer Max Mayer, who, incorporating the latest economic theories, devoted himself to questions of optimising design and construction processes. His work had a very concrete impact on the development of architecture because it was complemented almost congenially by the activities of the architect Ernst Neufert, who was closely linked to Mayer. Neufert’s book Architect’s Data, still updated and published

Some Introductory Remarks

in many languages to this day, can be characterised as the ultimate attempt to make the engineer’s way of thinking usable for architecture in terms of standardisation and optimisation. As already pointed out, the contributions collected in this volume – despite presenting an impressive array of personalities, themes and approaches – can naturally only display a small section of the manifold architect–engineer collaborations in the interwar period. Some particularly lamentable omissions are dealt with in Architect and Engineer around the World, 1919–39: An Exploration in Photographs in the middle part of this volume. This section highlights further approaches as well as hotspots of cooperation at the time, for example in France, on which a contribution by Christel Palant-Frapier was originally envisaged for this volume, but unfortunately could not be realised. In addition, some revealing products of the contact between architects and engineers in other parts of the world are presented. Acknowledgements The editor would first like to thank Sophia Hör­ manns­dorfer, who has supported this project from the beginning in many and far-reaching ways. Publishing this book in English would have been impossible without the help of William Hatherell and Jasmine Rice. The members of the steering committee of the DFG Research Training Group 1913 «Cultural and Technological Significance of

Historic Buildings» enthusiastically took up the editor’s suggestion to organise a symposium back in early 2015. In particular, Klaus Rheidt, Werner Lorenz and Albrecht Wiesener not only encouraged the realisation of the conference, but they have also tirelessly supported the production of this volume, even though this barely seemed a realistic objective for a long time. They deserve a very special ‹thank you› – as do the authors contributing to this volume, who had to wait a long time for it to be completed and yet were all immediately willing to review and update their contributions for publication. During the extended period of preparation of this book, Sergio Poretti passed away on 1 August 2017 after suffering a serious illness. It was indeed a privilege and a pleasure for the editor to have had the opportunity to work with Sergio and to bene­fit from his most inspiring thoughts. While finalising this volume, the editor furthermore received the sad news of Ralf Dorn’s completely unexpected death on 13 May 2021, two days before his 53rd birthday. Ralf had already left this book project in 2016 to devote himself to other tasks. However, through the joint project work in Cottbus as well as through his collaboration in the preparation, implementation, and follow-up of the symposium, he provided important impulses and contributions to the creation of this volume. Cottbus, May 2022 Roland May

21

22

Roland May

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Kouwenhoven 1962, 204. Hübsch 1992 [1828], 70. Hübsch 1992 [1828], 69. Le Corbusier 1921. Le Corbusier 1923, 1–11. Platz 1927, 98. All translations by the author. Billington 2003, 21. Straub 1952. Danielewski 2001, 226. Mies van der Rohe 1959, 11. Klotz 1986. Cf. e.g. Billington 1974. Billington 1985 [1983], 7. Cf. Doctors 2010. Wyatt 1850, 11. Cf. Collins 1965, 190. Frank 1930, 402. Cf. Matoso Macedo / Gomes da Silva 2014. Niemeyer 2012, 31. Völter [1929]. Arup 1979, 316–317. Mendelsohn 1926, caption for fig. 60, cited after Mendel­ sohn 1993, 74. 23 Peters 1991, 26 and 29.

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Arup 1979 O. Arup: The engineer looks back, Architectural Review 166, 1979, no. 993, 315–321.

Doctors 2010 S. I. Doctors: The Collaborative Divide: Crafting Architectural Identity, Authority, and Authorship in the Twentieth Century (Ph.D. diss., UC Berkeley 2010).

Billington 1974 D. P. Billington: An Example of Structural Art – The Salginatobel Bridge of Robert Maillart, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 33, 1974, no. 1, 61–72. Billington 1985 [1983] D. P. Billington: The Tower and the Bridge. The New Art of Structural Engineering (Princeton 1985) [original ed. New York 1983]. Billington 2003 D. P. Billington: Jörg Schlaich as a Structural Artist, in: A. Bögle et al. (eds.): leicht weit – Light structures: Jörg Schlaich Rudolf Bergermann (Munich et al. 2003) 17–27. Burt 1924 H.J. Burt: The Tribune Tower. General Description of the Structural Work, Journal of the Western Society of Engineers 29 (1924), no. 12, 451–464. Collins 1965 P. Collins: Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, 1750–1950 (London 1965). Danielewski 2001 G. Danielewski: Zur Entwicklung des Ingenieurbaus, Bau­tech­ nik 78, 2001, no. 4, 219–229.

35 36

37 38 39

Collins 1965. Frampton 1995 [1993]. Wilhelm 1983, 23. Gans 1991. Pfammatter 2000 [1997]. Poretti 2013 [2008] Flury 2012. Tomlow et al. 2014. Frapier 2009. Saint 2008. Ralf Dorn participating from April 2014 to March 2016 and the editor from August 2014 to March 2015 and from September 2015 to September 2016. See Dorn / May 2017; May 2017. International symposia The Art of Vaulting: Design and Construction of Large Vaults in the Mediterranean Gothic (30 November–1 December 2017, see Fuentes / Wunderwald 2019) and The Making of Identity through Rural Space (28–29 October 2021, organized by V. Egbers and Ö. Sezer, to be published). Cf. Möller et al. 2015. Meyer 1926, 222. Hitchcock / Johnson 1932.

Dorn / May 2017 R. Dorn / R. May: »Architekt gegen oder und Ingenieur«? – Eine Spurensuche zum Verhältnis von Architekten und Bau­ ingenieuren in der Zeit des Neuen Bauens, in: W. Lorenz et al. (eds.): Alltag und Veränderung – Praktiken des Bauens und Konstruierens. Tagungsband der Zweiten Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Bautechnikgeschichte vom 23. bis 25. April 2015 in Innsbruck (Schriftenreihe der Gesellschaft für Bautechnikgeschichte 1) (Dresden 2017) 91–105. Dürbeck 1933 A. Dürbeck: Die Stahlkonstruktion im Hochhaus «Alexander» am Alexanderplatz zu Berlin, Der Stahlbau 6, 1933, no. 12/13, 102–104, no. 14, 110f. Flury 2012 A. Flury (ed.): Cooperation – The Engineer and the Architect (Basle et al. 2012). Frampton 1995 [1993] K. Frampton: Studies in Tectonic Culture – The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture (Cambridge, Mass. 1995) [German orig. ed. Munich, Stuttgart 1993].

Some Introductory Remarks

Frank 1930 J. Frank: Was ist modern?, Die Form 5, 1930, no. 15, 399–406. Frapier 2009 C. Frapier: Les ingénieurs-conseils dans l’architecture en France, 1945–1975: réseaux et internationalisation du savoir technique (PhD diss. Université Paris I 2009). Fuentes / Wunderwald 2019 P. Fuentes / A. Wunderwald (eds.): The Art of Vaulting – Design and Construction in the Mediterranean Gothic (Kulturelle und technische Werte historischer Bauten 2) (Basle 2019). Gans 1991 D. Gans (ed.): Bridging the Gap: Rethinking the Relationship of Architect and Engineer (New York 1991). Hitchcock / Johnson 1932 H.-R. Hitchcock / P. C. Johnson: The International Style – Architecture since 1922 (New York 1932). Hübsch 1992 [1828] H. Hübsch: In what style should we build?, in: W. Herrmann (ed.): In What Style Should we Build? The German Debate on Architectural Style (Santa Monica 1992) 63–101 [German orig. ed. Karlsruhe 1828]. Klotz 1986 H. Klotz (ed.): Vision der Moderne – Das Prinzip Konstruktion (Munich 1986). Kouwenhoven 1962 J. A. Kouwenhoven: Made in America – The Arts in Modern Civilization (New York 1962). Le Corbusier 1921 Le Corbusier: Esthétique de l’ingénieur, architecture, L’Esprit nouveau, 1921, no. 11/12, 1328–1335. Le Corbusier 1923 Le Corbusier: Vers une architecture (Paris 1923). Matoso Macedo / Gomes da Silva 2014 D. Matoso Macedo / E. Gomes da Silva: Brazilian Engineering and Joaquim Cardozo’s contribution to Oscar Niemeyer’s Architecture, in: Tomlow et al. 2014, 56–63. May 2017 R. May: Die Bauingenieure und das Neue Bauen, in: KoldeweyGesellschaft (ed.): Bericht über die 49. Tagung für Aus­gra­ bungs­wissenschaft und Bauforschung vom 4. bis 8. Mai 2016 in Innsbruck (Dresden 2017) 222–229. Mendelsohn 1926 E. Mendelsohn: Amerika – Bilderbuch eines Architekten (Berlin 1926). Mendelsohn 1993 Erich Mendelsohn’s «Amerika» – 82 photographs (New York 1993). Meyer 1926 H. Meyer: Die Neue Welt, Das Werk 13, 1926, no. 7, 205–224.

Mies van der Rohe 1959 L. Mies van der Rohe: No Dogma [Interview], in: Interbuild 6, 1959, no. 6, 9–11. Möller et al. 2015 W. Möller et al. (eds.): The co-op principle – Hannes Meyer and the Concept of Collective Design (Leipzig 2015). Niemeyer 2012 O. Niemeyer: Il mondo è ingiusto. L’ultima lezione di un grande del nostro tempo. Ed. by A. Riva (Milan 2012). Peters 1991 T. F. Peters: Architectural and engineering design – two forms of technological thought on the borderline between empiricism and science, in: Gans 1991, 23–35. Pfammatter 2000 [1997] U. Pfammatter: The Making of the Modern Architect and Engineer – The Origins and Development of a Scientific and Industrially Oriented Education (Basle et al. 2000) [German orig. ed. Basle et al. 1997]. Platz 1927 G. A. Platz: Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit (Berlin 1927). Poretti 2013 [2008] S. Poretti: Italian modernisms. Architecture and constructions in the twentieth century (Rome 2013) [Italian orig. ed. Rome 2008]. Riedrich 1932 O. Riedrich: Die neuen Hochhäuser am Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Deutsche Bauzeitung 66, 1932, no. 46, 901–906. Saint 2008 A. Saint: Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry (New Haven 2008). Straub 1952 H. Straub: A History of Civil Engineering (London 1952). Straub 1992 H. Straub: Die Geschichte der Bauingenieurkunst, 4th ed. (Basel, Berlin 1992) [1st ed. Basle 1949]. Tomlow et al. 2014 J. Tomlow / A. Dill / U. Pottgiesser (eds.): Perceived Technologies in the Modern Movement 1918–1975 (Zittau 2014). Völter [1929] E. Völter (ed.): Architekt gegen oder und Ingenieur (Berlin [1929]). Wilhelm 1983 K. Wilhelm: Walter Gropius – Industriearchitekt (Braunschweig, Wiesbaden 1983). Wyatt 1850 [M. D. Wyatt]: Iron-work and the principles of its treatment, Journal of Design and Manufactures 4, 1850/51, no. 19 (Sep 1850), 10–14, no. 21 (Nov 1850), 74–78.

23

24

Roland May

Image Sources 1 Left: Le Corbusier 1921, 1328; right: Le Corbusier 1923, 1. 2 Straub 1992 [1949], book cover. 3 Poster for the exhibition «Vision der Moderne – Das Prinzip Konstruktion» at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, 1986. 4 Photo: rosino (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0). 5 Völter [1929], book cover. 6 Left: Mendelsohn 1926, fig. 60; right: Burt 1924, 452. 7 Left: Riedrich 1932, 905; right: Dürbeck 1933, 103. 8 Left: Gans 1991, book cover; middle: Pfammatter 2000 [1997], book cover; right: Flury 2012, book cover. 9 Saint 2008, book cover. 10 Programme booklet of the international symposium Architect and Engineer in the Interwar Period, 1919–1939 (Cottbus, 2015), front page.

Looking Back on Architect and Engineer

Andrew Saint

More than twenty years ago now I embarked on Architect and Engineer, A Study in Sibling Rivalry, as an outsider or Fremdkörper. I had had no personal professional formation in either architecture or construction, but I had thought and written a fair amount about aspects of the history of these disciplines, not least the human side of how they are practised, taught, and experienced. The origins of the book go back to 1995, when I was invited to teach at the Department of Ar­chi­ tecture at Cambridge. One of the better-known schools of architecture in Britain, it was then quite a small outfit with no more than about 30 undergraduate students in each year. All architectural schools have to find their own balance on the seesaw between art and technology. Cambridge at that time inclined towards the humanities. Quite a lot of history was taught (there is a good deal less today) and there was also some leading environmental research. But the soul of the school, as in all schools of architecture since the mid-20th century – not, it needs to be said, so much before then – lay in the studio and studio-teaching, with its distinctive, masonic rites of bonding, sharing, mutual development, criticism and learning. I had never been initiated in the rituals of the architectural studio, so I could hardly share in the studio teaching. What then was my contribution to the school to be? I believed in the value of history for budding architects, not so as to provide them with models to revere or copy but simply as a way of getting them to step beyond the limits of their own imagination and experience, to take some stock of the built environment’s infinite variety, and

to acquire some breadth of understanding about the many human factors that influence its creation. It hardly mattered what they learnt, I felt, so long as it was in some depth. I had found from bitter experience that architectural students, even in cultured Cambridge, had limited tolerance for the history of old buildings, dead styles and exact dates. So I began by focussing my teaching on the history not so much of architecture as of the architectural profession, on which I had written a sketchy book some years before, The Image of the Architect (1983, fig. 1),1 which probably

1  Cover of The Image of the Architect from 1983.

26

Andrew Saint

2  Aerial view showing Scroope Terrace, Cambridge. The right-hand end of the terrace houses the University’s Department of Architecture, while the much larger Department of Engineering complex appears behind, photo from 2019.

helped get me the Cambridge job in the first place. In my naivety I thought the students might show interest in the nature of the career they were preparing for. To my disappointment they proved just as indifferent to that topic as to straight architectural history. No doubt that was partly because professional history is dry stuff, lacking the visual stimulus that architects are always hungry for. But I gradually learnt a more dismaying truth: that architectural students are wise in not wanting to know much about what their profession is like, because the reality for most of them after they finish their studies is a fairly bleak one. Few architects make much money, little of what they do during their professional careers is truly creative, and almost none become Le Corbusiers or Fosters or Hadids. To put it bluntly, there are just too many architects. Indeed, I suspect that has

always been the case since schools of design first proliferated in 18th-century Paris. So perhaps the irrationality of studio teaching is not such a bad thing. When it is done well, students are taught self-confidence and courage, the ability to think laterally, «out of the box». They learn a certain imaginative attitude, a flexibility which stands them in good stead and can be translated into other jobs besides architecture proper. It is not constructive, I found, to confront a nineteen-year-old with the harsh realities of architectural practice. In order to operate at all, an architectural student must first nurture some sort of belief in what he or she is doing. All the same, I was reluctant either to retreat to pure history or to confine my teaching to the narcissistic world of illusion that is so widespread in architectural schools. And I was struck by some-

Looking Back on Architect and Engineer

thing else. Directly behind the Department of Architecture at Cambridge was the Department of Engineering (fig. 2), ten times as large and much more diverse. It included a respected structural engineering division. Just as in the outside world architects needed engineers to support, verify and guide their designing, as part of the process whereby their concepts can be translated into built reality, so also in the school the architects occasionally called on these engineers at the margins of teaching. Yet ideologically these two departments were poles apart. As is often the case in Britain, there was no shared background between architecture and engineering – the common European legacy of the polytechnical tradition, that started with the Ecole Polytechnique and soon spread to the German Technische Hochschulen (later technical universities) and beyond. That tradition has spread throughout the world, not least to the United States. But it is by no means universal, nor is it always the best stimulus for either discipline. One of the things I came to understand as I went on with my enquiries is the paradox that the most creative relations between architects and engineers do not always come from those who have a common educational background. As in marriage, a dialectical relationship built on contrasting points of view can be more stimulating than a totally harmonious one. To return to my story, in Cambridge the architects had a pragmatic respect for the engineers. They were taught to know they needed them a little bit at a certain stage in the design process, but otherwise they hardly thought about their existence. As for the engineers, few of them were even aware of the architecture school’s existence. After all, most branches of engineering have little or nothing to do with buildings. Of those that did know about what the architects got up to and how they were taught, some tended to be bemused, others were surprisingly respectful. Top-class engineers in my experience are often brilliantly cultured people, better read and more widely knowledgeable than architects.

This asymmetrical, often wary relationship between architects and engineers, present in Cambridge before my eyes, gave me the subject I was looking for, and I researched, learnt and thought about it for the best part of a decade. Belonging to neither camp, I saw myself not as an external judge but as an amateur storyteller looking at the phenomenon of collaborations and rivalry from the outside, weighing up the contributions from both sides. My outside position had many drawbacks, notably my technical ignorance and my innocence of the day-by-day reality of architect-engineer collaborations. I also lacked a theoretical perspective, the kind of initial hypothesis which academics often believe all rigorous enquiries should take as a point of departure. My aim was simply this: to pick the widest possible variety of collaborations between architects and engineers I could manage to study in reasonable detail, covering the last three centuries or so, sometimes longer; to tell the story of what happened as truthfully as I could; and at the end to draw what conclusions I could. I also decided to focus on three countries, Britain, France and the United States – not, alas, Germany, because my German was not good enough. That I thought would offer enough scope for comparison and give some security to my conclusions. I soon found that traditions and patterns not just of design but of construction differed greatly from country to country, and that these affected and confused the architect-engineer relationship. Nor was it accurate or always illuminating to reduce the relationship to a binary one, between two parties. Others are always involved in the realisation of all practical construction projects, first and foremost the contractors. Besides, to achieve any depth of understanding of what is nowadays called procurement in another country besides one’s own is extremely hard, and I made little attempt to do so. As far as I am aware, there is almost no literature on the comparative history of building procurement in different countries. The topic is almost too complex to conceive of.

27

28

Andrew Saint

One final point about my approach. I deliberately postponed my investigation into the teaching of architecture and engineering to the end. To those of a theoretical bent, that was to put the cart before the horse. Should not formation or Ausbildung come first? But I wanted to examine things the other way round, to look first at what happened on the ground. Educational institutions for training both architects and engineers, history shows, did not originate as autonomous intellectual creations. By origin they were practical institutions that emerged from and responded to a particular demand. In France professional formation is specially respected. Yet France’s Ecole du Génie derived from the Corps du Génie, and the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées from the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées, not the other way round. When academies and schools become well established, at a certain point they start believing that they are setting the agenda for their subjects rather than responding to outside demands. With practically oriented subjects like architecture and engineering, in my view it is precisely at that point that they become less rewarding to investigate. I cannot truthfully say I cracked the nut of how to interest architectural students in the topic of the relationship between architects and engineers. But I did get a big book out of my topic, Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry (2008). I now see that, like many books these days, it was too big. At the same time, it only scratched the surface, because the subject runs in all sorts of directions and could be enriched with countless examples beyond the ones I chose. All the same, I did get far enough beyond stories to come to some conclusions. I hope I may be excused for reiterating them, as I believe they are still worth reflecting on. Perhaps my most important conclusion was that there has always been a distinction between architects and engineers. People sometimes use the example of great maestros of the past who were capable in multiple disciplines – Michelangelo or Vauban, for instance – to argue that there was once no such difference. In fact, the distinction was

always recognised, but it was expressed more in terms of tasks than in skills or personalities. A mediaeval or Renaissance engineer was responsible for machinery, fortifications and the like; a mediaeval or Renaissance architect designed churches, palaces and so on. Not uncommonly the ability to tackle such different tasks was found in a single very talented individual, in which case he worked qua engineer on certain tasks, qua architect on others, and perhaps qua painter or sculptor on others again. The world was not as dense and busy as it is today, and people with exceptional skills were asked to fill more than one role. That does not mean that the roles were not differentiated. Naturally there were grey areas, because tasks overlapped, as they do to this day. Designing the machinery for building a mediaeval cathedral was not the same as designing the cathedral itself. But the skills interrelated and could well be combined in a single talented individual. Another conclusion, once again going against accepted wisdom, was that the primary reason for the eventual separation of architects from engineers was not changing technology, as is usually stated, but the growth of demand under capitalism. As Adam Smith brilliantly explained, dividing the various tasks in any complex sphere of production adds to efficiency and prosperity.2 However, this can only happen when demand is high and constant enough for separate specialisms to flourish and maintain themselves. So, from the time of the Industrial Revolution – Smith’s time – wherever private enterprise led building procurement, architects and engineers could increasingly survive without taking on other tasks as well, chief among them the physically and organisationally arduous business of actual building. That move towards specialisation did not mean that all overlap between roles and tasks disappeared. As before, some construction tasks, a lighthouse, say, needed engineers but not architects; others, like houses with their intricate internal planning, needed architects but not engineers. But for jobs of mixed character, an architect might need to call in an engineer or vice versa.

Looking Back on Architect and Engineer

We can divide these constructions of mixed character into two types: those with an obvious architectural component and an obvious engineering component, e. g. a railway terminus with a ceremonial front to the city and a wide span behind; and those which were by and large architectural, but needed some help on the engineering side to achieve their effect, say the wide span roof or cantilevered balconies of a theatre. In the second type the contribution of the engineer or technician might well be significant but not manifest at all. Contrary to received opinion, I also concluded that engineers did not always take the lead in introducing the so-called new materials, iron (and steel) and concrete, into construction. Those materials were first tried out by a variety of ingenious people, encompassing architects, builders and amateurs alongside many engineers. Only late in the 19th century, with the advent of structural steel and reinforced concrete and the triumph of exact calculation for structures, did the engineer start to play the regular and specific role he or she exercises today in respect of most major buildings, subordinate yet at the same time vital, by rationalising and economising structural solutions. At that point the nature of the relationship between the two professions changed. The way I like to put it is this: previously, in broad terms, architects and engineers had been the same people working on different tasks; now they became different people working on the same tasks. That is a big generalisation: exceptions of all sorts can be found, but that was the direction of travel. The second half of the 19th century was the critical period of growth, change, and instability, when architects in particular became unreasonably anxious that engineers were about to steal their clothes or at least their limelight. The famous «protest of the artists» concerning the Eiffel Tower illustrates the level of social anxiety surrounding changes happening in the world of architectural construction. A structure was to be erected in the centre of the most art-conscious city in the world, not only out of scale with everything

3  Eiffel Tower: initial design by engineers Koechlin and Nougier (right) and executed version (left), postcard from 1939.

else but actually called after an engineer. But if those who protested against the tower had reflected objectively, they might have noticed that in the 1889 exhibition – of which the Eiffel Tower formed part – architects were actually taking an increasing part in designing the new iron buildings compared to those built for previous Paris exhibitions. They might also have observed that architecture in the narrower sense of that word, meaning the outcome of someone who called himself an architect, in fact played a significant role in the tower’s design (fig. 3). It was only after Gustave Eiffel’s colleague, the architect Stephen Sauvestre (1847– 1919), designed the non-structural arch that hangs off the lowest stage of the tower and added other

29

30

Andrew Saint

embellishments, that Eiffel felt ready to present his original tower design. Of course, architecture is the subordinate skill in the Eiffel Tower, just as engineering is subordinate in countless structures that are primarily architectural. But, as in many contemporary and subsequent structures, the two professions were interacting here side by side. Sometimes that relationship was about integration, sometimes it was about juxtaposition. But one condition now commonly obtained. To repeat, architects and engineers were no longer the same people working on different tasks; they were different people working on the same tasks – sometimes collaborating, sometimes competing. The Eiffel Tower is pertinent to the theme of the inter-war relations between architects and

engineers, because it came to be represented by Sigfried Giedion3 and others, mistakenly in my opinion, as the triumph of engineering over architecture. That triumph was construed as not just technological but aesthetic and moral as well. It became one of the manifesto calls of the Modern Movement that architecture had to learn to subordinate itself to or at the very least learn from engineering. How did this alleged triumph of the engineers come about? Certainly, the engineers never called for it or claimed it themselves. To get to the heart of the matter, we need to look beyond the propaganda of the modernists (Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier and so on)4 and to pay attention to the underlying economic conditions of procurement. Steelframed structures for high American buildings, for

4  Aerial view of Amsterdam Central Station after the addition of a second shed in 1922, photo before 1940.

Looking Back on Architect and Engineer

example, did not prevail just because they were clever alternatives to masonry construction, but because they offered investors ways of getting buildings built cheaper or faster. So, architects had to adjust. Louis Sullivan (1856–1924), for instance, reacted by welcoming the change, running with it, and spending the money saved by the new methods of construction on adding extra ornament and therefore human delight to the buildings’ surfaces. That strategy could never work for long, because it defeated the economic object of using the new forms of building technology to save money or, if you like, to make more money. By 1900 Sullivan’s career had more or less collapsed. Adding enrichment to structures became a less plausible course for architects to pursue, as clients found less meaning and value in the enrichment. The beginning of the end for a symbolic or representational language of architecture did not start with modernist ideas. It was caused by the growing complexity of buildings and the economic pressure to design them specially for functional and economic ends. The propagandists who endorsed an engineering aesthetic were merely running on a tide already created by the forces of capitalism. I remember the moment in writing Architect and Engineer when this became clearer to me. I was looking at Amsterdam Central Station (1882– 89, fig. 4), a typical example of the great series of European urban railway stations which runs from Paris to Antwerp, Leipzig, Stuttgart and Milan. All of them present a richly embellished front towards the city and a wide-span train shed or sheds behind – architect’s work in front, and engineer’s work behind. Amsterdam is unusual in one respect, in that it is not a terminus but a through station, so the shed runs parallel to the long façade. Aesthetically, what surely matters most in such cases is not that the engineering shows through to the front, as modernist critics used to insist, but that the separate parts cohere – that they join well together. Now the architect of the Amsterdam front was the celebrated P. J. H. Cuypers (1827–1921), a

scholar and an ornamentalist, and what lifts the Central Station above many similar jobs is the wealth of its iconography. There is a great deal of applied sculpture and colour, inside and out, and a carefully graded decorative programme for the various waiting rooms. It is all wonderful stuff in the tradition of palaces. Yet, perhaps not one traveller in a thousand stops to look at it. What might have been appropriate for Cuypers’ contemporary Rijksmuseum is lost on the station, where you need to be something of an expert in Dutch history to read and enjoy all that is going on. Then you go through to the train shed, designed by an engineer called L. J. Eijmer (1843–89), with the widest span in the world when it was opened in 1889 – the same year as the Eiffel Tower. And you need no education at all to go «wow». To understand why the span of the train shed is significant, we need knowledge, too. But the aesthetics of the space have nothing to do with that knowledge. The «wow factor» is available to all – it is simple, naïve even, but democratic. Eijmer’s shed is not better than Cuypers’ station front, indeed in any but a technical sense it is far less subtle. But its time has come. John Ruskin thought architecture should be avoided in stations because railway travel was all about hurry,4 which in his view was just not what great architecture was about. It’s a point of view worth reflecting upon. Perhaps the shed of Amsterdam Station and all the engineers’ architecture which we have learnt to enjoy is architecture for a society in a hurry, which is content to say «wow», to experience the so-called shock of the new and then moves on. The retreat of representational architecture did not mean that architects were redundant. Structure will always be of minor or subordinate interest in many building types. These range from types in which symbolism and tradition continue to hold their value, e.g. churches, to those in which clarity or intricacy of arrangement and reconciliation of differences are at a premium, e.g. houses. Buildings still have to be planned, and engineers have seldom shown themselves to be subtle at that.

31

32

Andrew Saint

5  Sainte-Geneviève Library in Paris, Reading Room, engraving by Édouard Renard, 1851.

These are architectural strengths. Yet, they were seldom the ones which architects chose to emphasise when confronted with the new building technologies between the 1890s and the 1930s. On the surface, the attitude of the propagandists was: build as the engineers do, and make buildings look as though their entire meaning lies in their structure and materials. Added to that was a factitious new rhetoric about space or Raum (the idea works better in German): emphasising not the construction itself, but the inexpressive, vacant area enclosed by or placed around it. That was a curiously reductive standpoint, and those who embraced it can hardly have perceived how far they were endorsing the rawest aspects of capitalism.

During the half-century between the making of the Eiffel Tower and the outbreak of the Second World War, architects were confronted simultaneously with the constructive potentialities of new materials and techniques as well as with the decline of symbolic languages and codes of traditional architectural meaning. There was a relationship between the two trends, but it is surely a coarse form of positivism to interpret them as one and the same or to judge architecture by the extent to which it embraced the former and abandoned the latter, as is often still done. To take an example, when iron first became a common added tool in the kit of construction, architects and others used it not only to create

Looking Back on Architect and Engineer

spans and spaces which could not have been made before, but also to enrich and extend the languages of architecture. Much effort went into this exercise in different western countries during the 19th century. There were always difficulties, for instance, in combining iron with masonry, because the materials had such different properties and required different treatments by way of proportions, connections and colouring. Their conjunction at first looked curious, almost startling, and people had to get used to it. But the architects kept at the problem, often with beautiful results. The efforts of, say, Henri Labrouste in the Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève (1843–50, fig. 5) or Otto Wagner in the Vienna railway system (1892–98) showed that an able architect could superbly combine iron with masonry and express structure with representational styles. Today we underestimate how long it took before the dogma prevailed that combining the old language of architecture with the new technologies of building was misguided. Between the world wars it was standard practice throughout Europe, not just in the dictatorships, to clothe steel frames in classical dress of different weighting, adjusted to the budget and symbolic significance of the building in question. Certainly the new structural practices, notably framing, influenced the deployment of the old languages (reducing the depth of mouldings for instance) as load-bearing walls turned to cladding. Hence the phenomenon of so-called «stripped classicism». We too easily forget or ignore the persistence of that line of development. The proportion of urban buildings in Europe with an explicitly classical look built in 1925 was probably greater than in 1725, perhaps even than in 1825 when Neoclassicism was in highest international favour. All the same, by 1925 intelligent designers knew they were living on borrowed time. The old cultural values were becoming harder to uphold. The only coherent alternative was to try and extract some sort of shared meaning from the materials of building themselves. Both options involved relations with engineers and engineering, but of different kinds. Where the

old languages of architecture were still deployed, the architect still retained ultimate primacy of expression. When structure and materials came to the fore, there was a better chance for equal collaboration. But it was less clear what the architect stood for or what the relation between the partners might be. Architecture has never really escaped the ideological ferment into which it fell between the world wars. Hitherto it fed off a set of representational values which, however shifting and insecure, could nevertheless be recognised and read. It is customary to criticise eclecticism, but the confusion of eclectic architecture was nothing like the confusion that followed. As representation lost force, architecture became increasingly self-referential. Its values and direction became articulated not by patrons or society but by architects themselves. They had to find something to hold on to. Structure and technology became the common new basis of architectural values, because they provided the minimum without which buildings could not exist, alongside the maximum of opportunity and novelty. But it was the rhetoric of engineering that architects embraced more than its reality. The fast-changing circumstances of the interwar years led to many different relationships between the architecture and engineering professions and to a great deal of experiment, some of it brilliant, some of it brave, much of it immature. The responses depended everywhere on the type of the building or construction at issue. Naturally, the aesthetics and methods of engineering were most convincing for large, plain, practical structures – factories, silos and warehouses, bridges, new types of structure like aircraft or airship hangars, and, not least, buildings to be built in series, notably low-cost housing taking advantage of industrial methods, for which there was urgent demand in most European countries during the 1920s. Since engineering was closely linked to the techniques of practical construction, clients turned in the first place to engineers and large contractors when procuring structures of that kind. Architects involved in

33

34

Andrew Saint

such commissions were usually working at the margins, making initial lay-out sketches, adding some late trimmings, or just working up drawings within an engineer’s or surveyor’s office. That kind of inferior position led some architects to suppose that they had to behave and design like engineers if they were not to lose all relevance in the changing patterns of procurement. Yet in plenty of buildingtypes architectural skills remained pre-eminent, and the disciplines of construction were or ought, logically, to have been subordinate. Everyday structures of various kinds – individual houses, schools, offices, and any buildings which required the juxtaposition of different uses, sizes, and spaces – all needed to be co-ordinated and unified under architectural control. These areas of procurement may have seemed not to be at the cutting edge of construction, but they stayed in strong demand, except perhaps during the worst years of the interwar slump. Just as there were differing building-types – some better-fitted to be controlled by engineers, others by architects – so also inter-war collaboration between the two professions varied in kind from one type of job to another. The variables ranged from local traditions of procurement and the choice of techniques to the individual temperaments of the personalities involved. An example of this is the contrast between building in steel and in concrete. Steel-framing had become standard practice by 1920, especially for multi-storey buildings, but it seems to have generated little experiment or genuine collaboration between the professions. It was well suited to the grander buildings in the classical tradition. Any architect with a basic grasp of its methods could expect to hand over fairly finished drawings to the structural engineer for the frame to be applied to them and then passed on to the steel-erecting firm without much discussion. There was a relation between architects and engineers over steel-framed buildings, but seldom much engagement. Concrete was a different matter. Reinforcedconcrete technique came to maturity later than

metal-framing and was undergoing all sorts of development between the wars. Concrete could also do many jobs besides framing buildings; it could expressively shape, span, fill, and profile, and therefore was of great interest to architects. It is no accident that most of the admired inter-war architecture all over Europe (less so in America), ranging from Auguste Perret (1874– 1954) and Le Corbusier (1887–1965) in France or the Russian constructivists to the collaboration between Berthold Lubetkin (1901–90) and Ove Arup (1895–1988) in Britain, relied upon innovations in or expressions of concrete techniques. In all these examples and more the relationship between architect, engineer and builder differed. But in each case the relationship was experimental, and that of course made it stimulating at the time and makes it still interesting to us today. Stimulus and interest are one thing, however; success is another. And I would like to end these reflections by asking whether we are yet in a position of judging inter-war architecture with real maturity, especially that portion of it in which structural experiment and innovation were brought to the fore. Almost a hundred years later, surely we can look back at this ferment of activity and review it without the old positivistic prejudice that the forward-looking or experimental was good and the traditional or conventional was bad. Undoubtedly the advent of new forms of construction was a stimulus and a discipline for architects. But it was one thing to respond to and learn from that renewal and another to follow its demands uncritically. There is of course no such thing as objectivity in judging the value of buildings. But even though experiment and innovation may be desirable conditions for successful architecture, they are by no means necessary and they are certainly not sufficient. Many other criteria come to mind, such as practicality in use and sustainability in any one of its various senses. It can hardly be judged a failing if a building is bombed or torn down because authorities choose to drive a road through its site. But if

Looking Back on Architect and Engineer

it is so flimsily constructed that it decays within a few years of its construction, as was the case with Bernard Bijvoet (1889–1979) and Jan Duiker’s (1890– 1935) famous Zonnestraal Sanatorium at Hilversum (1926–28, fig. 6), that surely ought to be pertinent to our long-term judgement of its merits, irrespective of any admiration we may have for the merits of its design.

That point is worth stressing, I believe, because the traditional balance of modernist architectural and art-criticism continues to weigh so heavily on the side of avant-gardism, experiment and innovation, with an almost contemptuous ignorance or disregard for the record of buildings in use. For the interwar period that convention has continued unquestioned for a peculiar reason: that the experimental

6  Zonnestraal Sanatorium, Hilversum, middle section and north wing of the Dresselhuys Pavilion, before restoration in 2003 (top) and after restoration in 2009 (bottom).

35

36

Andrew Saint

vein in architecture has been associated with progressive politics, freedom, and democracy and a more conservative approach with reaction, conservativism, and fascism. Germany, Italy, Russia, and Spain are the nations where these values have proved most enduring and difficult to question, for obvious reasons, but Britain, France, and Holland and other countries are not exempt from the same simplifying tendencies. Of course, it must be right to study and prize buildings and structures which embody fresh thinking and challenge conventions, to admire innovators and collaborators imbued with the ambition and energy to strike out on new paths. It must also

1 2 3 4 5

be correct to understand buildings in the context of their times, to remember the purposes and régimes they first served and, where appropriate, the political record of their creators. But we need also to remember that buildings are more than abstract essays in design, more even than works of art. They are there to stand out in all weathers, to adapt to changing purposes, and to accrue a history round them as they do so. Architects, engineers, and indeed clients who build with that kind of long-term view in mind surely deserve just as much respect as those whose primary aim is to put before the public something that is merely striking and original.

Saint 1983. Smith 1776. Giedion 1928. Loos 1908, Le Corbusier 1923. Ruskin 1849.

Giedion 1928 S. Giedion: Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton (Leipzig 1928). Le Corbusier 1923 Vers une architecture (Paris 1923). Loos 1908 A. Loos: Das Werk des Architekten (Wien 1908). Ruskin 1849 J. Ruskin: The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London 1849). Saint 1983 A. Saint: The Image of the Architect (New Haven, London 1983). Saint 2008 A. Saint: Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry (New Haven 2008). Smith 1776 A. Smith: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Vol. I/ Vol. II. (London 1776).

Image Sources

1 Andrew Saint: The Image of the Architect. New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1983 (Cover). 2 © James Campbell, Cambridge, 2019. 3 Post card commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower, Art des Fêtes, Série No 6, 1939. 4 Nederlands Instituut voor Militaire Historie / Wikimedia Commons. 5 L'Illustration 17 (1851), no. 411, p. 29. 6 Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, Amersfoort / 516191 and 540737.

Engineering Belgian Interwar Modernisms Some Examples of Architect-Engineer-Contractor Relations

Rika Devos

At the end of the interwar period, Belgian architecture critic Pierre Bourgeois (1898–1976) remarked: «Architects and engineers don’t know each other.»1 The word ‹sufficiently› should be understood as implicit in this sentence, as Bourgeois evaluated the increasing rapprochement between the two professions in order to face new technological challenges in building. Challenges in Building in Belgium in the Interwar Period By the end of the 1930s, various complex projects as well as discussions in Belgian architects’ and engineers’ journals had put the intensifying collaborations between architects and engineers on the agenda.2 However, for both professions the challenges of designing and building in the interwar period in Belgium were determined by harsh and pervasive socio-economic conditions: the difficult reconstruction after World War I and the economic crisis of the 1930s necessitating a reduction in building costs and causing unemployment in the sector.3 Simultaneously, the debates leading to the law recognising the diploma of architecture (1936) and the protection of the free profession of architect (1939) took place. It is in these discussions that diverging ideas about the relation between ‹technology› and ‹art›, and the desirable collaboration between engineers and architects, are made explicit. In contrast to the situation for architects, consulting engineers had been recognised as independent building experts in Belgium

since 1913, and in the interwar period engineers commonly signed articles and plans as such.4 Amidst these economic and legal issues, the question of how building design should deal with new scientific insights in engineering, with the rising potential of steel construction elements and reinforced concrete, and the increasing standardisation and commercialisation of building elements, was a challenge common to both architects and engineers, and not only in Belgium.5 Irrespective of schools and styles, a general idea among architects was that they should rely more on engineers’ skills, because «the architect can no longer pretend to hold all knowledge and power».6 It is the aim of this text to explore the collaboration between architects and consulting engineers in the interwar period in Belgium in the light of the rise of modernism. This essay investigates a variegated selection of buildings with particular construction challenges in which the collaboration between architects and engineers was made explicit. To this end, architects’ and engineers’ journals of the period are consulted, and the discrepancies between contemporary writings, practice and historiography are tested, aiming for a broad preliminary understanding of the various types of collaboration and contact between the two professions. The projects selected either demonstrate then novel ways of building, illustrate the practices some of the actors reacted against, or highlight the relative importance of theoretical discussions on collaboration to building practice. The findings based on contemporary publications are cross-referenced with research in the archival fund of the Brussels contractor Blaton,

38

Rika Devos

which contains an important collection of materials relating to building projects for the period 1927– 54.7 This research provided detailed insights into the ways design and building were organised by this company. This archival input also unavoidably underlines the importance of a third actor in interwar building: under the blanket term of ‹contractor› several professional profiles are hidden, including skilled draftsmen and important engineers. A Belgian Icon of Building in Reinforced Concrete: Heysel Palace V Belgian interwar engineering history remains a largely unexplored territory, but Palace V, built for the 1935 World’s Fair, counts among its outstanding structures (fig. 1). The building is part of

a monumental ensemble of five halls in art deco style designed by Joseph Van Neck (architect, 1880–1959) and Louis Baes (engineer, 1883–1961). Main element of the structure of Palace V are 31 m high arches in reinforced concrete, spanning 86 m and covering a total surface of 14,220 m². The first design proposal by Van Neck dates from 1931/32 and suggests eleven parabola-shaped concrete arches with two hinges, supporting a stepped roof with partitions of equal height.8 Van Neck aimed for a naturally lit, monumental and columnfree exhibition space. By that time, he was a wellestablished architect, a former president of the Société Centrale d’Architecture de Belgique (SCAB) and professor at the Brussels Académie des BeauxArts. The engineer, Baes, also had a sound reputation, although his career as a ‹builder› was limited. Baes was an ingénieur civil des mines, a graduate

1  The ensemble of the Heysel palaces just before the World’s Fair, Palace V in the middle, Brussels, 1935. J. Van Neck (arch.), L. Baes (eng.).

Engineering Belgian Interwar Modernisms

of the Ecole polytechnique de Bruxelles, where he was professor in stability of structures and material properties, including reinforced concrete. He was also well known among architects, as professor at the Académie for courses in construction and graphostatics and, exceptionally, as an honorary member of the SCAB. Baes suggested some changes to the architect’s preliminary design, «without preconceived ideas»,9 taking into account «an agreeable form» and an optimal resistance to bending. He proposed six pairs of arches with three hinges (figs. 2 and 3), shaped as a basket-handle arch rather than a parabola, motivated by the wind loads and the fact that the load of the roof was not uniformly distributed.10 Importantly, Baes also proposed to construct the arches in pairs, from a reusable steel formwork.11 The efforts of the contractor, the

Brussels-based Engema (Entreprise générale des matériaux), should also not be underestimated. In the call for tender Baes included a formula allowing alternatives for the arches. Detailed calculations for the formwork and the structure, as well as the technical plans, were to be executed by the study offices of the contractor.12 Several entrepreneurs intervened on behalf of the main contractor. In the Blaton archive, for instance, a series of alternatives for the arches (in steel) and the formwork suggests that they were contacted by Engema to study these options. In contrast to most descriptions of interwar buildings, the role of Baes as consulting engineer is mentioned explicitly in contemporary journals. In the circles of the academic architects to which Van Neck belonged, however, it was understood that, always, «the architect has to remain the master of

2  Palace V during construction: the third couple of arches being constructed over the formwork, Brussels, June 1934. J. Van Neck (arch.), L. Baes (eng.).

39

40

Rika Devos

the work».13 The engineer’s task consisted of making the design of the architect structurally sound, organising the building site and optimising structural form, but always following the architectural parti. This was also clearly the case in the design of Palace V and Baes’s explicit reasoning on the form of the arches can be understood from this context. To some observers, this approach could no longer be maintained in the light of the new challenges in building. They advocated that architects and engineers should collaborate more closely and that the «architect has to change his first idea uninterruptedly, inspired by the suggestions of the technicians».14 The ‹academic› concept of responsibility and authorship of the architect was challenged by the new engineers’ contributions, and not only in projects where the structural effort was as prominent as in Palace V.

Belgian Modernisms: also an Engineers’ Affair? Van Neck, and with him most of the architects identifying with the Brussels Académie, did not consider himself a modernist architect. However, in the light of the ongoing discussion about modernism and academism, it is important to underline that positions were not clear-cut in Belgium. The historiography of Belgian architecture generally recognizes that the Modern Movement progressed «in scattered order»,15 with on the one hand ‹radical› modernists aiming for social change and a new, ‹neutral› formal and spatial vocabulary, and on the other hand architects merging modernist concepts with regionalist or classicist approaches. The interwar period launched an austere modernist architecture aiming at building for

3  Palace V during construction: the top hinge before removal of the formwork, Brussels, May 1934. J. Van Neck (arch.), L. Baes (eng.).

Engineering Belgian Interwar Modernisms

the masses, but it also saw the heyday of refined art deco. Irrespective of their ideological backgrounds, however, architects relied on the expertise of consulting engineers according to the demands of the project. Belgian modernist architects took an active part in the early Congrès Internationaux de l’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). The very fact that CIAM III took place in Brussels in 1930 stems directly from the leading role played by Pierre Bourgeois’s betterknown brother Victor (1897–1962) in those years.16 With Huib Hoste (1881–1957), Victor Bourgeois assisted at the first meeting of CIAM in La Sarraz in 1928, where the challenge of new technological methods and materials in building was explicitly assessed. The first full Belgian CIAM delegation consisted of five architects,17 but also two engineers: civil engineer and urbanist Raphaël Verwilghen (1885–1963), and Alfred Nyst (1877– 1972), who was trained as a mining as well as an electrical engineer and as an architect. All were involved in the Journées de l’Habitation Minimum, preparing for CIAM III and continuing on the CIAM II theme of the ‹minimum dwelling›,18 but also touching upon social housing, a burning issue in Belgian reconstruction efforts. At the plateau of Tribouillet in Liège, the group contributed to the Exposition Internationale d’Habitations à Bon Marché,19 «a sort of Weissen­ hof, but much smaller and more scientific»,20 which was visited by the symposium participants. Here, the minimum dwellings built by Louis-Herman De Koninck and Nyst (fig. 4) are telling of the ambiguous position attributed to engineers in these modernist initiatives. De Koninck was known for his close collaboration with contractors and experiments in standardisation of building materials. In this design, aimed at reducing building costs and raising efficiency in a radical manner, the reinforced concrete walls were at once structure and finishing material. The houses were built in 103 days. It is unclear how De Koninck and Nyst collaborated, but both were labelled «architect» of the project.21

41

4  Three experimental houses in concrete at the Exposition Internationale d’Habitations à Bon Marché, plateau of Tribouillet, Liège, 1930. Louis-Herman De Koninck (arch.), Alfred Nyst (arch.).

Already in 1919/20, the experimental building site of La Roue in Anderlecht (Brussels) was set up explicitly to test and compare new building materials and procedures for workers’ housing, involving a close collaboration between architects and contractors. Various projects for garden cities followed, some adopting a clearly modernist idiom, such as Hoste’s Little Russia (Zelzate, 1920– 23) and Victor Bourgeois’ Cité Moderne (Brussels, 1922–25). Both projects experimented with béton maigre: concrete with cheap additions like ash or slag. Hoste relied on the expertise of two Russian engineers, Dimitri Peniakoff (1865–1925) and Alexis Veretennicoff (1860–1927), but this appears to be an occasional engagement only, inspired by the commissioner. As for the Cité Moderne, no name of an engineer is known, but the contribution of the contractor Verhaeghe was identified as decisive. In both projects, a German system of on-site poured concrete, Non Plus, was used.22 Both projects were exhibited at the early CIAM congresses. The venue of CIAM III can be considered significant for the diversity of contemporary Belgian building culture: it was organised in the Palais des Beaux-Arts, one of Victor Horta’s (1861–1947) art deco masterpieces, finished only a few months

42

Rika Devos

5  The building site of the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, 1925. Victor Horta (arch.), Jules van Dyck (eng.).

before (fig. 5). The design and construction of the Palais (1922–29) was a breakthrough moment for building with reinforced concrete in Belgium, but it is also telling of the nature of engineers’ engagement in the organisation of construction works. Detailed archival research was necessary to reveal the name of the engineer, Jules Van Dyck (a civil engineer who graduated from the Ecole polytech­ nique de Bruxelles in 1913), who was not an independent engineer in this project, but an employee of the contractor.23 Again, it was the general contractor, Armand Blaton (1863–1929) and his firm’s study office, who took charge of the many challenges of the structure. Horta had designed a composite structure for this 30,000 m² prestige building. Worried that strikes in either the steel or the

concrete industries could cause delays, Horta opted for mixing systems: concrete for the fine arts section and steel for the grand concert hall.24 Yet in mid-1923, Blaton convinced Horta to erect a full concrete building.25 Again, the building specifications allowed bidders to propose alternative systems, with the maximum dimensions of the architectural design as the sole restriction. Several construction challenges were met in this building: foundation piles to be placed on a complex site in the urban centre, large spans for the concert halls, the integration of special techniques like air conditioning and acoustic measures, the construction of a floor for heavy sculptures, and the careful execution of highly detailed concrete members that were to remain visible. Horta used the time needed

Engineering Belgian Interwar Modernisms

to develop Blaton’s counterproposal to revise the large concert hall, resulting in the ovoid form that made it famous. Part of the acoustics study for the main hall was performed by a young trainee in the office, Hugo Van Kuyck (1902–75), then graduated as an architect and still studying to become a civil engineer. Training, Testing, Building and the Problem of Beauty The diversity of Belgian progressive architecture can also be discerned in, but does not coincide with, the different institutions offering education in architecture: apart from the Académie des Beaux-Arts, architects could also graduate from the St-Lucas schools (from 1862), working in an Arts & Crafts tradition, and the Brussels Institut supérieure des Arts décoratifs, founded in 1927 with Henry van de Velde (1863–1957) as its first director and sometimes referred to as ‹the Belgian Bauhaus›.26 These schools were places of exchange between the professions: engineers taught in architecture schools, as showed the example of Baes, but architects were also involved in the education of civil engineers. Such was the case in the Ecoles polytechniques of Ghent (from 1835), Liège (from 1835), Leuven (from 1864), and Brussels (from 1873). Some of these faculties also offered a course for ‹architect engineers›, schooling students in architecture based on the scientific training of engineers. This approach was a problem in the eyes of many who defended the free profession of the architect. Adolphe Puissant, former president of SCAB, did not care for nuance: We condemn the engineer architect. We think […] that both titles are antipodal and cannot be juxtaposed; we think that, by doing so, two cultures are mixed up, two absolutely different disciplines. 27

Notwithstanding the difficult economic situation, research facilities at Belgian universities expanded considerably in the 1920s and 1930s.28 This situation coincided with a period of intense

43

scientification of knowledge about building materials and the behaviour of structures,29 but also with new insights and ideals in the training of engineers, calling for laboratories for testing. In these programmes, architects and engineers engaged in the same academic context displayed strong, but often different, ambitions to create exemplary buildings to house science. Liège University’s new Institute of Chemistry and Metallurgy (1931–35) at Val Benoît (fig. 6) was designed by the engineer architect Albert Puters (1892–1967), a professor in the Faculty of Sciences. The engineer was Professor Ferdinand Campus (1894–1985). His ambitions were linked with new concepts in the training of engineers, resulting in a demanding building programme, involving flexible open floors and large windows, an open façade, and floors with spans up to 16 m with a net load of 750 kg/m². Campus explained how these conditions led to the abandoning of the initial reinforced concrete structure. But while he played a leading role in the planning of the building and its facilities, through his descriptions of the design process it is clear that the overall volumes and façades were fixed by the architect.30 Campus’s team provided the building with a loadbearing structure that extended the design of the architect, but apparently without questioning its approach.

6  The Institute of Chemistry and Metallurgy of Liège University, c. 1935. Albert Puters (arch.), Ferdinand Campus (eng.).

44

Rika Devos

7  The building of the Faculty of Sciences and Applied Sciences of the Université Libre de Bruxelles near to completion, 1924. Eugène François (eng.).

8  The Central Library of Ghent University or ‹book tower›, c. 1939. Henry Van de Velde (arch.), Jean-Norbert Cloquet (eng. arch.), Gustave Magnel (eng.).

The building campaign for the Faculty of Sciences and Applied Sciences of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) demonstrated a radically different, and contested, division of tasks (fig. 7). Professor Eugène François (1870–1954) took a leading role in the design of what was the first building on the new Solbosch campus (1922–24).31 François was ingé­ nieur des arts et manufactures (graduated from Liège university) and chair of civil engineering at ULB. Unlike Baes, he was an established, practising consulting engineer. The new faculty building with labs and classes was presented as «industrial, extendable and transformable», a «neutral» building, without «sumptuous» façades.32 Yet this absence of ‹aesthetic care› was considered unfit for a university building by Paul Bonduelle (1877–1955), architect and professor at the Académie: «from an aesthetic point of view, we got a rather painful impression of the building»,33 he stated, while expressing his disapproval that no architect had been involved. As a result, in the following building campaign at Solbosch, the Educational Foundation, Inc. established by the Commission for Relief in Belgium clearly defined the role of the architect and the consulting engineer, and demanded an architectural style inspired by the historic styles of Belgium. The architect was Alexis Dumont, who set up a long and fruitful collaboration with François. Also at Ghent University, new laboratories for the Ecole polytechnique were to be built. The team dealing with the design of the so-called Technicum (1934–38) again involved two professors of the faculty: Jean-Norbert Cloquet (1885–1961), an engineer architect, and Gustave Magnel (1889–1955), civil engineer and international authority on reinforced concrete.34 This building campaign ran simultaneously with the construction of the central library of the university, known as the ‹book tower› and one of the first scientific libraries with a depository in this model (fig. 8).35 This icon of Belgian modernism was designed by, and attributed solely to, Henry van de Velde, then professor in architecture history at Ghent. Cloquet was responsible for the building specifications, execution and

Engineering Belgian Interwar Modernisms

supervision, Magnel for the concrete structure, and Gommaire Van Engelen (1877–1963) and Maurice Wolters (1886–1967) for the technical equipment.36 Three elements in this project are of special interest in relation to the issue of collaboration: the 63 m-high tower with its specific concrete structural grid conceived and optimised as a giant book stack; the outer shell of the tower, built out of exposed, rough concrete showing the joints of the sliding panelling; and the load-bearing structure of the large reading rooms, all provided with a naturally lit ceiling, an element lending both liveliness and efficiency to this rather compact building (fig. 9). Van de Velde by that time was also aesthetic counsellor to the Office de Redressement économ­ ique (OREC, 1935), a governmental agency aiming at countering the economic crisis with, among other things, a large-scale building programme for public works. This notion of ‹aesthetic control› points at a significant nuance to be made in modern architects’ admiration for engineers’ work. While some years before, van de Velde had already underlined the inherent beauty of the work of engineers,37 he did consider it in need of aesthetic correction – by architects. At the start of his career, he stated: «I do think that they (the engineers) were hardly aware of the beauty in their own work; if not some of them would have been guilty by neglect of its defence».38 This notion of an ‹unconscious› beauty in the work of engineers remained present in architects’ writings in the interwar period. Moszkowski, for instance, stated in his text on Palace V that «Real technicians love and care for their work without discussing it, and without even knowing!»39 Objects of Future Study: Architect–Engineer Collaboration in Modern Programmes To further test the contributions of engineers to interwar building in Belgium, it is worthwhile to touch upon the design and building histories of some of the explicitly modern building programmes of that period: skyscrapers, large-scale

45

9  Building site of the Central Library of Ghent University, or ‹book tower›, 1936. Henry Van de Velde (arch.), Jean-Norbert Cloquet (eng. arch.), Gustave Magnel (eng.).

office and apartment blocks, and new industrial complexes. While a detailed study is beyond the scope of this chapter, the scale and technical novelties of these projects allow us to explore the involvement of architects, engineers and contractors in modern building. The Antwerp Boerentoren (1928–31) is a 25-storey art deco skyscraper for offices with a steel structure more than 80 m high, one of the very first skyscrapers in Belgium, if not indeed the first (fig. 10). It was built by the architects Jan Van Hoenacker (1875–1958) and Jos Smolderen (1889–1973),40 with contributions by the city architect, Emile Van Averbeke (1876–1946). The engineers were the, up until now, unknown Smits and

46

Rika Devos

10  Building site of the Boerentoren, Antwerp, 1930. Jan Van Hoenacker and Jos Smolderen (archs.), Smit and Terhout (engs.).

Torhout (or Terhout) – referred to only as «precious collaborators».41 One of the more extensive articles dealing with the completion of the tower points out that the contractor, the Société d’Entreprises anciennement Dumon et Vandervin, was responsible for the development of the detailing and technical issues, bound by an ‹American› contract, which appears to involve that the contractor was responsible for most of the detailing. Also in Antwerp, the office of Vincent Cols (1890– 1968) and Jules De Roeck (1887–1966) built the factory of Ford Motors on the new harbour grounds in 1926–31 (fig. 11). The site involved buildings of one to two storeys in a mixed concrete and steel structure. The Blaton archive documents in detail how the Compagnie anversoise de Travaux, one of Blaton’s branches, was able to comply with the high demands for efficiency in building prescribed by Ford, and to finish the 13,750 m² factory between March 1930 and April 1931. No name

11  Building site of the Ford Motor Company, Antwerp, 1931. Vincent Cols and Jules De Roeck (archs.).

Engineering Belgian Interwar Modernisms

47

12  Building site of the Résidence Palace, Brussels, 1924–26. Michel Polak (arch.), Alexandre Sarrasin (eng.).

of any engineer is known except, again, Van Dyck as a Blaton collaborator.42 Nonetheless, it should be taken into account that one of the ‹architects›, Cols, in fact trained as a civil engineer. In Brussels, the first large-scale apartment building marking a new scale in building was the luxury apartment complex Résidence Palace (fig. 12), built in an art deco style in 1924–26 by the Swiss architect Michel Polak (1885–1948) and the Swiss engineer Alexandre Sarrasin (1895–1976). It was the first apartment building aiming at a new type of housing for the upper class. It had a concrete structure, which created difficulties for the engineer with the foundations and the challenge of acoustical insulation between flats.43 Soon after, Victor Horta proposed a yet larger-scale complex on a site facing the Palace of Fine Arts, including offices, the stock exchange and other public functions. The project, developed by the British company Municipal Developments in 1927–29, was halted when the latter went bankrupt. The engineer involved in the project was Vladimir Mužák.

Separate Worlds, Shared Practices? These selected examples illustrate that architects in the interwar period commonly relied on the know-how of consulting engineers and contractors for issues of structural stability and complex applications of materials and building techniques. However, as some critical contemporary texts reveal, the appreciation of this triangular collaboration differed. While most architects seem to acknowledge and cultivate the differences between professions, various voices, like Pierre Bourgeois, also suggested that closer collaboration should be envisaged. A more radical approach could be heard at the Premier congrès international du béton et du béton armé, organised in Liège in 1930, where consulting engineer Emile Balis stated: «Architect and engineer should be united in one person only, animated by the ‹idea› and ‹guided› by tradition.»44 The definition of tasks, ideals of planning, and authorship were questioned repeatedly.

48

Rika Devos

In platforms of knowledge exchange, frequent communication between architects and engineers could be observed: engineers wrote in architects’ journals and vice versa; engineers taught at architecture schools and the other way around; they jointly participated in congresses, and so on. Most of these exchanges were inspired by a will to change practice in order to better face the increasing technological opportunities and demands in building. They also jointly addressed control and quality in the building sector, as can be seen clearly in the foundation of the controlling office SECO in 1934, a shared initiative between engineers, architects and contractors.45 Only few voices, however, made a plea to make architecture dependent on technology – as some modernist discourses suggested – and considered the engineer’s tools and rational work as a motor to change architecture directly. Irrespective of Pierre Bourgeois’s remark, architects and engineers did know and find each other in the interwar period, but the terms of collaboration were put into question. In the pleas for the recognition of the free profession of architect

in Belgium, the role of the architect was defined and defended: a clear line between the professions was drawn and the engineer could not take up the architect’s tasks. Moreover, despite the wellestablished profile of the consulting engineer and the intensity of some collaborations, in the interwar period the unique authorship of a project was commonly attributed to the architect only. In most projects, often inspired by regionalist, art deco or classicist idioms, it was understood also that the architect’s design chronologically and hierarchically came first in the design process: his authorship was to be protected. As such, the names of the engineers were rarely mentioned in the contemporary press. The notion of authorship was troubled further by builders with ambiguous profiles: engineers ‹hidden› in the study offices of contractors, engineers with a background in architecture, or architects trained as engineers. Although the role of these actors in the development of modern building in interwar Belgium should not be underestimated, they did not self-consciously develop a profile of ‹master builder›.

1 Bourgeois 1938, 15. All translations by the author. 2 Of particular interest to this discussion are the architecture journals Batir*, La Cité* (published by SBUAM, Société Belge des Urbanistes et Architectes Modernes), Architecture et Urbanisme (L’Emulation, published by SCAB, Société Centrale d’Architecture de Belgique), and the engineering journals La Technique des Travaux and Ossature Métallique*. Journals marked* have been digitalised recently. On these campaigns, see CVAA (Centre for Flemish Architecture Archives): http://www.cvaa.be/ nl/artikel/digitalisering-belgische-architectuurtijdschriften. 3 See for instance: Bourgeois 1933, 21; La Cité 1935, 96–100, or Flouquet 1935, 257. 4 The Chambre des Ingénieurs-Conseils et Experts de Belgique was founded in 1909, and transformed into the Union Professionnelle in 1913. See S.B.U.A.M. [1938]. 5 Clerbaux 1935, 141–144. 6 Bourgeois 1938, 15.

7 This archive is held by the Archives d’Architecture Moderne in Brussels. The catalogue was developed in 2014–16 and a monograph on the company has been recently published (Pesztat et al. 2019). 8 Collaborators on this project in the office of Van Neck were Prudent Laenen, Charles Malcause and Robert Puttemans. The project was also supported by the World’s Fair’s technical service, guided by engineer Henri Demol. 9 Baes 1934a, 550. 10 Coomans 1991, 8–9. Baes also changed the section of the arches. The basket-handle arch allows for a more easy removal of the formwork in comparison to the parabola. Baes 1934a, 550–551. 11 The removal of the formwork involved opening the top hinge of the concrete arches, made possible through the installation of a jack during construction. 12 Baes 1934b, 270. 13 Dumont 1935, 132. 14 Moszkowski 1935, 89.

Engineering Belgian Interwar Modernisms

15 Bekaert 2001, 22. 16 Strauven 2015, 175ff. 17 Bourgeois and Hoste, but also Louis-Herman De Koninck (1896–1984), Jean-Jules Eggericx (1884–1963) and Emile Henvaux (1903–91). 18 Tekhnè 1930a and Tekhnè 1930b. 19 On initiative by the Société Nationale des Habitations et Logements à Bon Marché and coordinated with the World’s Fair of 1930, organised in both Liège and Antwerp. 20 From a letter by Bourgeois to Siegfried Giedion, quoted in Strauven 2015, 245. 21 La Cité 1934, 98–99. 22 Van de Voorde 2011, 232ff., and Strauven 2015, 137ff. 23 Devos 2017, 387–398. 24 Dulière 1985, 251ff. 25 The top trusses of the large concert hall were executed in steel. Blaton did propose an alternative in concrete for this. Aubry et al. 2006, 296 and Blaton Archives. 26 The ‹image building› of the institute as a Belgian Bauhaus is critically analysed in Strauven 2015, 285–393. 27 Puissant 1935, 115. 28 Bertrams 2006, 151ff.; Halleux et al. 2001, 13ff. 29 Van de Voorde 2011, 125ff. 30 Campus 1932, 1933, 1934 and 1938. 31 The building contractor was De Waele. 32 Frerichs 1950, 4. 33 Bonduelle 1923, 135. See also Bonduelle 1924.

34 Magnel 1939 and Dubourg 1947. 35 Novgorodsky 1948. The central library was recently renovated, including the extension of the facility with underground storage. Architects: Robbrecht en Daem architecten, in collaboration with B. Van Der Wee Architects. Engineers: Bureau d’études Greisch and Daidalos-Peutz (building physics). 36 The contractor was R. Gillion. The archives of the Swiss engineer Alexandre Sarrasin also contain references to the project. It can be presumed that he was contacted by the contractor. Sarrasin had an office in Brussels from 1921. Brühwiler / Frey 2002. 37 See for instance: Van de Velde 1979 [1918], 63–64. 38 Van de Velde 2001 [1902], 50. 39 Moszkowski 1935, 87. 40 In the same period, the architects Van Hoenacker, with Vincent Cols and Jules De Roeck, were involved also with the construction of one of the first ‹highrise› concrete grids, the Antwerp Century hotel (1929/30). See Albert 1930 and Baes 1932, 823. 41 Peiran 1932 and Gilles 1933. 42 Van Dyck was also involved with the Palais des BeauxArts. See K. M. B. A. 1932. 43 La Technique des Travaux 1925 44 Eugène Dhuicque paraphrasing E. Balis. Dhuicque 1930, 4. 45 Including Eugène François and Gustave Magnel among the founding members.

Albert 1930 L. Albert: Le century hotel à Anvers, La Technique des Travaux 6, 1930, 764–776.

after. 25 Masters of Modern Architecture in Belgium (Ghent 2001) 7–46.

Aubry et al. 2006 F. Aubry / J. Vandenbreeden / F. Vanlaethem: Art nouveau, art déco & modernisme en Belgique (Brussels 2006). Baes 1932 L. Baes: Le béton armé. Quelques notes sur les débuts. Quelques notes actuelles, Bulletin de la Société Belge des Ingénieurs et des Industriels, 1932, nos. 7–9, 627–828. Baes 1934a L. Baes: La construction des Grands Palais de l’Exposition universelle et internationale de Bruxelles 1935, Bulletin de la Société Belge des Ingénieurs et des Industriels, 1934, no. 6, 535–570.

Bertrams 2006 K. Bertrams: Universités & entreprises. Milieux académiques et industriels en Belgique 1880–1970 (Brussels 2006). Bonduelle 1923 P. Bonduelle: Une visite au Solbosch, L’Emulation 43, 1923, 134–136. Bonduelle 1924 P. Bonduelle: A propos des nouveaux bâtiments de l’université de Bruxelles, La Cité 4, 1924, 210–211. Bourgeois 1933 P. Bourgeois: Les moyens indirects ne sont pas les moins bons. La culture contre la crise, Bruxelles [1], 1933, 4, p. 21.

Baes 1934b L. Baes: Les grands Palais de l’Exposition universelle et internationale de Bruxelles 1935. Aperçu général concernant les ouvrages métalliques, L’Ossature Métallique 3, 1934, 279–297.

Bourgeois 1938 P. Bourgeois: Vers un rassemblement technique … Une politique de collaboration variable des compétences, in: S.B.U.A.M. Historique. Activité. Membres (Brussels [1938]) 14–16.

Bekaert 2001 G. Bekaert: Operating instructions for architecture. A century of architecture in Belgium, in: M. De Kooning (ed.): Horta and

Brühwiler / Frey 2002 E. Brühwiler / P. Frey: Alexandre Sarrasin, structures en béton armé, audace et invention (Lausanne 2002).

49

50

Rika Devos

Campus 1932 F. Campus: Les nouveaux Instituts Universitaires de Val-Benoit, Liège. Communication de M. Campus, L’Ossature Métallique 1, 1932, no. 2, 27–28.

Halleux et al. 2001 R. Halleux / J. Vandersmissen / A. Despy-Meyer / G. Vanpaemel (eds.): Geschiedenis van de wetenschappen in België. 18152000 (Brussels/Tournai 2001).

Campus 1933 F. Campus: La charpente métallique de l’institut de Chimie et de Métallurgie de l’Université de Liège, Ossature Métallique 2, 1933, no. 3, 99–116.

K.M.B.A. 1932 B.: De nieuwe «Ford» fabrieken te Antwerpen. Architekten V. Cols & J. De Roeck, K.M.B.A. 3, 1932, 97–106.

Campus 1934 F. Campus: Les ressources de la méthode expérimentale appliquée aux constructions, La Cité 12, 1934, 85–96. Campus 1938 F. Campus: Les Instituts de la Faculté des Sciences Appliquées de l’Université de Liège (Val Benoît), La Technique des Travaux 14, 1938, 572–592. Clerbaux 1935 P. Clerbaux: Le XIIIe congrès international des architectes à Rome 1935. Rapport présenté à la fédération royale des sociétés d’architectes de Belgique, Architecture et Urbanisme (L’Emulation) 55, 1935, 161–164.

La Cité 1934 Anon.: 3 maisons minimums en béton, La Cité 12, 1934, 98–99. La Cité 1935 Anon.: Le chômages des architectes. XVe congrès national des architectes. Rapport présenté par la Société Royale des Architectes d’Anvers, La Cité 13, 1935, 96–100. La Technique des Travaux 1925 Anon.: La Résidence Palace, La Technique des Travaux 1, 1925, 12–19. Magnel 1939 G. Magnel: Les laboratoires de béton armé de l’Université de Gand, Le Béton Armé, 1939, no. 377 (July), 2023–2032.

Coomans 1991 T. Coomans, Thomas: Het groot paleis van de Heizel. Een compromis tussen monumentaliteit en vakmanschap, De woonstede door de eeuwen heen, 1991, no. 91 (3), 2–18.

Moszkowski 1935 R. Moszkowski: A propos du Grand palais de l’Exposition de Bruxelles 1935. Réflexions sur l’Architecture Monumentale Contemporaine, La Cité 13, 1935, 69–82, 85–95.

Devos 2017 R. Devos: Victor Horta’s Palais des Beaux-Arts (1922-8) as Blaton’s breakthrough for building in reinforced concrete in Belgium, in: J W. P. Campbell et al. (eds.): Building Histories. The Proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the Construction History Society. Queens’ College Cambridge, 7-9 April 2017 (Cambridge 2017) 387–398.

Novgorodsky 1948 L. Novgorodsky: La bibliothèque centrale et l’institut supérieur d’Histoire de l’Art et d’Archéologie de l’Université de Gand, La Technique des Travaux 24, 1948, 130–148.

Dhuicque 1930 E. Dhuicque: L’architecture du béton et du béton armé. Rapport Général, in: Premier congrès international du béton et du béton armé, vol. 2. (Liège/Paris 1930) 3–7.

Peiran 1932 P. Peiran: Un gratte-ciel à Anvers, La Technique des Travaux 8, 1932, 270–282. Pesztat et al. 2019 Y. Pesztat / M. Culot / R. Devos / B. Espion / A. Hellebois / M. Provost / J. Van de Maele: Blaton. Une dynastie de constructeurs / Blaton. Een dynastie van bouwers (Brussels 2019).

Dubourg 1947 L. Dubourg: Les nouveaux laboratoires techniques de l’Université de l’Etat, à Gand, La Technique des Travaux 23, 1947, 258–272. Dulière 1985 C. Dulière (ed.): Victor Horta. Mémoires (Brussels 1985). Dumont 1935 A. Dumont: La Société Centrale d’Architecture de Belgique & l’exposition, Architecture et Urbanisme (L’Emulation) 55, 1935, 117–132. Flouquet 1935 P.-L. Flouquet: Pour le mieux-être de la masse: travaux d’utilité publique, Bâtir, 1935, no. 36, 257.

Puissant 1935 A. Puissant: Tribune libre. La profession d’architecte, Architecture et Urbanisme (L’Emulation) 55, 1935, 96–98, 113–116. S.B.U.A.M. 1938 Anon.: L’architecture et les professions connexes. Ingénieursconseils, in: S.B.U.A.M. Historique. Activités. Membres (Brussels [1938?]) 23. Strauven 2015 I. Strauven: Victor Bourgeois (1897–1962). Radicaliteit en pragmatisme. Moderniteit en traditie. 2 volumes. PhD diss. Univ. Ghent / Univ. Libre de Bruxelles 2015. Tekhnè 1930a Anon.: Les Journées de l’Habitation Minimum, Tekhnè 4 [n.s.], 1930, 2–3.

Frerichs 1950 C. Frerichs: Allocution prononcée par M. le Président du Conseil au Banquet organisé en l’honneur du Professeur le 30 mars 1950, au Metropole. Typescript (copy), 4 pages. ULB Archives.

Tekhnè 1930b Anon.: Pour l’habitation minimum, Tekhnè 4 [n.s.], 1930, 41–43.

Gilles 1933 P. Gilles: Les gratte-ciel. Architecture d’orgueil et de logique, Bâtir, 1933, no. 10, 361–367.

Van de Velde 1979 [1918] H. Van de Velde: La triple offense à la beauté (1918), in: Henry van de Velde, Déblaiement d’art suivi de […] (Brussels 1979) 63–64.

Engineering Belgian Interwar Modernisms

Van de Velde 2001 [1902] H. Van de Velde: Principiële stellingnamen (1902), in: H. Heynen et al. (eds.): Dat is architectuur. Sleutelteksten uit de twintigste eeuw (Rotterdam 2001) 48–50. Van de Voorde 2011 S. Van de Voorde: Bouwen in beton in België (1890-1975). Samenspel van kennis experiment en innovatie. 2 volumes. PhD diss. Univ. Ghent 2011.

Image Sources

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

La Cité 13 (1935), no. 6, cover. L’Ossature Métallique 3 (1934), 287. L’Ossature Métallique 3 (1934), 289. La Cité 12 (1934), no. 6, cover. Baes 1932, s.p. La Technique des Travaux 14 (1938), 572. ULB archives. La Technique des Travaux 24 (1948), 130. Promotional booklet of the contractor Gillion (private archive). 10 Promotional booklet of the contractor Dumon et Vandervin (private archive). 11 Blaton archives, copyright CIVA collections, archival fund Blaton. 12 Promotional booklet of the contractor Gillion (private archive).

51

«Architect, do not imitate the forms of technology but learn the method of the structural engineer!»1 The Cooperation of Russian Avant-Garde Architects and Engineers Anke Zalivako

Almost all the buildings of importance erected between 1925 and 1932 in the Soviet Union were the result of cooperations between young architects and engineers. With their innovative approach to construction methods, they shaped and represented the Soviet avant-garde. However, few of these architects and engineers gained notoriety in their lifetime or after. Even amongst experts these figures are rarely familiar. Vladimir Grigorevich Shukhov (1853–1939) is probably the only well-known engineer of his era. The period, during which the engine-inspired buildings of the Soviet avant-garde brought about a new kind of ‹engineering aesthetic›, turned out to be too short to gain widespread historical recognition. The Margin Settings of Construction Work in 1920s Russia A particular context was of central importance to the construction activities in the Russia of the 1920s: the schools for engineers and architects as places of training and a theoretical work that catalysed the fruitful working relationships between architects and engineers: the so-called function­ al method.2 Training Sites In Russia in the 1920s, engineers were usually educated at the technical institutes for railway transport or in polytechnic schools, established during the pre-revolutionary period of Tsarist rule. For example, Vladimir Shukhov studied at the

Royal Moscow Technical School IMTU, which in 1918 became the Moscow Higher Technical College MVTU. In 1921, the pre-revolutionary Moscow Polytechnic Institute MPI and its counterpart in former St. Petersburg (PPI) became the institutes for civil engineers MIGI and PIGI (later named LIGI). MIGI and PIGI both housed faculties of architecture and civil engineering. Both schools, together with the Moscow Institute of Transport (MIIT), belonged to the newly founded Ministry of Transport and were thus able to exert direct influence on construction practice. In August 1924 MIGI merged with MVTU. Before the October Revolution of 1917, architects were educated at the country’s leading art academies, such as the Art Academy in Moscow and St. Petersburg’s Royal Art Academy PACh. In 1918, the latter was turned into the Petrograd State Free Studios for the Study of Arts PGSKhuM. All the country’s art schools were renamed in a similar fashion. After the revolution many artists and architects offered their services to the new government. The painters Kasimir Severinovich Malevich (1878–1935) and Lazar’ Markovich Lissitzky (1890–1941), more commonly known as El Lissitzky, could be counted among these volunteers. In Vitebsk in 1919, these artists founded the new architectural institute UNOVIS. After leaving Vitebsk for Moscow, the new capital, Malevich founded the most famous Soviet architectural school of the 1920s, the Higher Artistic and Technical Studios (VKhuTEMAS, from 1926 VKhuTEIN). These art studios were modelled after the former Free State Art Workshops

54

Anke Zalivako

or MVTU.3 The young architects of the later avantgarde all graduated from one of these schools. They worked under the guidance of experienced architects and engineers who had come out of the pre-revolutionary art academies.

1  Project of the Leningradskaia Pravda in the article New Methods of Architectural Thought by M. J. Ginzburg, published 1926 in the first issue of Sovremennaia Arkhitektura.

(SGChM), which united several Moscow art colleges after 1918. The most notable schools included in this merger were: the Stroganov College of Applied Arts (SKhPU) (Russia’s oldest architectural school, founded in 1749 by Prince D. Utomskij) and the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture MUZhVZ on Miasnitskaia street, founded in 1866. MVTU’s architectural institute was located in the same building complex on Rozhdestvenka street in Moscow as the VKhUTEMAS. To become an architect in Moscow in the 1920s, students had to attend either VKhUTEMAS

The Functional Method: A Theoretical Basis The theoretical work that inspired architects and engineers to work together was the article New Methods of Architectural Thought (fig. 1), written by the leader of the Constructivist movement, Moisei Jakovlevich Ginzburg.4 After having studied in the academies of Paris, Toulouse, and Milan, Ginzburg graduated as an architect in 1914. The formal training he received familiarised him with the classical proportions of the Renaissance, while his open-mindedness led to an affinity for modern inventions. Ginzburg was heavily influenced by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1923, he became a VKhUTEMAS professor. His colleague Alexander Alexandrovich Vesnin graduated from PPI in 1911. Together they became the leading theoreticians of the Constructivist movement and the editors of the journal Sovremennaia Arkhitektura (Modern Architecture), which served as a sort of organ for the modern architects’ association OSA from 1926 to 1930. In 1926 in the first issue of Sovremennaia Arkhitektura Moisei Ginzburg published the mentioned article New Methods of Architectural Thought.5 In this text he criticised the omnipresent «unprincipled eclecticism» of the past in current architecture.6 In his eyes the search for a new form of architectural simplicity would force the architect to use the most advanced technical solutions available. Ginzburg demanded a maximum of urban planning type solutions. These should be based only on the needs of the users and not, as in the past, on the fulfilment of individual desires of private clients. He argued that the enormous state-driven task of developing the country would force architects and engineers to abandon their separate offices and work in teams to construct housing, public buildings,

«Architect, do not imitate the forms of technology but learn the method of the structural engineer!»

and factories. The divide between architects and engineers was, in Ginzburg’s eyes, about to disappear in this new era: «Now civil engineering will be in charge of defining modern architecture».7 It was Ginzburg’s belief that architects had to begin to face the challenges of new tasks, margin settings, and location. Therefore, a forward-thinking architectural design would require a ‹functional› approach based on usage requirements. This change would lead to a rise in asymmetrical floor plans. The choice of construction methods and materials had to suit this new development as well. Consequently, architects and engineers would attempt to convey in their structures pure asceticism as a symbol of «youth and health in modern architecture».8 Ginzburg envisaged this change in architectural work to take hold in postrevolutionary Russia. Cooperations of Architects and Engineers While Ginzburg’s article New Methods of Architec­ tural Thought gave rise to a modern approach in architecture that was far removed from any previous decorative, historical styles, the cooperations between architects and engineers were manifold. The following examples can only begin to explain the various setups for collaborations. Vladimir Grigorevich Shukhov and Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov After graduating from the Royal Moscow Technical College, IMTU, in 1876, Vladimir Shukhov (fig. 2) travelled to the United States and visited the World’s Fair in Philadelphia. This trip inspired him throughout his life. Shukhov studied the US railway transport system intensively. In 1878, he began working for the Bari company, owned by the engineer Alexander Bari (1847–1913), whom he had met in America.9 In 1887, Shukhov became the head of construction at Bari. Starting with hyperbolic wooden structures, the innovative Russian

55

2 | 3  Vladimir Grigorevich Shukhov | Artur Ferdinandovich Loleit.

engineer developed many ingenious patented systems (the first in 1895), often for technical construction sites. Historians today see Shukhov both as a master builder of the traditional school and as a pioneer in the field of an architecture shaped by its engineering structure – an ideal that would appear very similarly in the thoughts and designs of Constructivist architects. By the time the October Revolution took place Shukhov had already been working under the principles set out in Ginzburg’s New Methods of Architectural Thought of 1926 for a long time. Young architects and engineers sought out Shukov’s tutelage, because he had knowledge of traditional as well as the latest methods.10 That is why later leaders of the Soviet avant-garde like Konstantin Melnikov (1890–1974), Ivan Nikolaev (1901–79), and Ivan Golosov (1883–1945) were often eager to work with him. Also the engineer Artur Ferdinandovich Loleit (1868–1933, fig. 3) collaborated with Vladimir Shukhov.11 In 1892, they designed the bridges in Moscow’s GUM department store, three years later they built a 32 m concrete railway bridge in Nizhny Novgorod. Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov was the second Russian personality of this period to gain

56

Anke Zalivako

4  Façade of the AMO automobile plant, Moscow, 1916–18. Konstantin Melnikov (arch.), Arthur Loleit, Alexander Kuznetsov (engs.).

5  Konstantin Melnikov and his wife in front of their house and studio on Krivoarbatsky Lane in Moscow, c. 1927.

6  Bakhmetevskii bus depot on Obraszova street in Moscow, 1927. Konstantin Melnikov (arch.), Vladimir Grigorevich Shukhov (eng.), photo from the 1950s.

«Architect, do not imitate the forms of technology but learn the method of the structural engineer!»

international attention for his work in building design. Today, he is recognised – in the western hemisphere – as the most famous architect of the Soviet avant-garde. However, he only managed to complete 22 projects, including his home in Moscow. Melnikov finished his studies in 1917, the year of the October Revolution. He was educated in the traditional academic style at MUZhVZ academy under Ivan Zholtovsky (1867–1959), a staunch traditionalist. Although he was classically educated, Melnikov always felt an attraction to the innovative engineers of his time like Vladimir Shukhov, Artur Loleit, and Alexander Kuznetsov (1874–1954). Under the guidance of the latter, Konstantin Melnikov undertook his first project and developed a façade system for the AMO automobile plant in Moscow (1916–18) with Artur Loleit (fig. 4). Kuznetsov and Loleit had a great influence on him.12 Melnikov began to make a name for himself in the Soviet Union with the execution of two designs: the All–Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Exhibition’s Makhorka Pavilion in Moscow in 1923 and the first Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square in 1924. Melnikov’s six workers’ clubs in Moscow, his own home and studio, and his garages made him a well-known and adored architect (all built 1927–29). The load-bearing structure of his home on Krivoarbatskii Lane in Moscow (fig. 5) and the hexagonal forms of its lintel-free windows – inspired by an arrangement, which Shukhov had applied as early as 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod – were pioneering designs at the time. The results of the cooperation between Shukhov and Melnikov are best seen in their early garages: the Bakhmetevskii bus depot (1927, fig. 6) and the MOSSOVIET truck garage on Novoriazanskaia Street in Moscow (1926–29). Melnikov’s idea to organise the floor layout to match the movement of the buses married well with Shukhov’s idea to create a columnless roof structure. The men perfectly complemented each other.

The Construction of Moscow’s ‹Electro City› by Alexander Kuznetsov, his team of architects, and the civil engineer Genrich Karlsen The work of Alexander Vasilevich Kuznetsov (fig. 7) is an exemplary manifestation of pioneering design in the field of Soviet reinforced concrete construction. He graduated from the PPI in Petersburg in 1896 and in 1898 from Berlin’s Polytechnic Institute. Beginning in 1907, Kuznetsov taught at the MPI (and later at the successor institutions MIGI resp. MVTU). His functional design approach matched the demands of the Constructivist movement in the Soviet Union at the time.13 Repeatedly he published his research on reinforced-concrete construction.14 In Russia Alexander Kuznetsov and Artur Loleit were lauded as the inventors of the beamless slab. This achievement was made possible by their close working relationship.15 From 1906 to 1908 both engineers worked on the Novotkatskaya Factory in Bogorodsk (since 1930 Niginsk), which was probably the first building in Russia to have a flat roof. Flat roof construction turned out to be Kuznetsov’s specialty. He made many advances in this area. In 1912, he designed the new workshops adjacent to the old Stroganov Institute. Today the home of the Moscow Architecture Institute, the building preserves some of the first beamless slabs built in Russia. In collaboration with Loleit, Kuznetsov implemented such a system to provide perfect lighting inside the workshop. This workshop and its continuous horizontal windows illustrate Alexander Kuznetsov’s modern engineering approach. Kuznetsov’s interest in new solutions led him to travel back to Germany once a year to learn about technical solutions.16 At the very beginning of the 1920s, Alexander Kuznetsov founded the Department of Factory and Industrial Building within MVTU. The department’s first intake of students formed the team that would construct Moscow’s so-called Electro City. Among them were the young architects Boris Vladimirovich Gladkov (1897–1992), Vladimir Jakovlevich Movchan (1899–1972),

57

58

Anke Zalivako

7  Alexander Vasilevich Kuznetsov.

8  All-Union Electrotechnical Institute VEI in Moscow, 1930. Alexander Kuznetsov and team (archs. & engs.).

Gennadi Jakovlevich Movchan (1901–98), Anatoli Stepanovich Fisenko (1902–82), and the previously mentioned Ivan Sergeevich Nikolaev. Their primary instructor was Leonid Alexandrovich Vesnin (1880–1933), an architect as progressive as Kuznetsov. They were all influenced by the modern ideas of Le Corbusier, which they encountered in the architectural periodicals of the time. After finishing their studies, this team of young architects worked together on projects for several experimental scientific institutes such as the Central State Institute for Aerodynamics TsAGI on Moscow’s Baumann Street (1924–27) and the Electro City on Krasnokazarmennaia Street, which comprised several buildings for the AllUnion Electrotechnical Institute VEI (1928/29) and the All-Union Electrotechnical Association VEO (1930, fig. 8). These young professionals along with Kuznetsov were given a great deal of leeway in experimenting with new construction materials and methods at these sites. The young architect Gennadi Movchan

characterised the work on the Electro City project as follows: The state institution responsible as client for the project organised all construction activities through its own construction department, whose engineers and site foremen worked in constant and close contact with the architects. This allowed for daily guidance and supervision of all construction work, which helped to ensure its quality. Moreover, the building permit was submitted by the so-called Gubinzh Building Control Office, which only checked compliance with the law and did not interfere in any architectural decisions.17

Besides Alexander Kuznetsov, the engineer Genrich Georgievich Karlsen (1894–1984) played a leading role in the Electro City project in 1929/30. Karlsen had graduated from the MVTU in 1922. Not much is known about his specific activities in the following years, as he always worked in the framework of project teams. His first known project was an exhibition pavilion for the previously mentioned All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Exhibition in Moscow in 1923, developed under the supervision of Alexander Kuznetsov. Again

«Architect, do not imitate the forms of technology but learn the method of the structural engineer!»

9  Hydro-channel at the Central State Institute for Aerodynamics TsAGI, c. 1926. Genrich Karlsen (eng.).

under Kuznetsov’s guidance, from 1924 Karlsen did a substantial amount of work on TsAGI buildings in Moscow. His main tasks involved the construction of a hydro-channel (fig. 9) and an aerodynamic tube. Genrich Karlsen applied many of the typical constructions of the Soviet Modern Movement such as thin shells (some of them even in timber) and flat wooden roofs.18 Due to his experience with timber structures, he was appointed director of the laboratory on wood construction at the staterun Construction Institute (GIS, later VIS). From 1928 to 1938, Karlsen had a major influence in developing the state standards for wood, hygiene, and fire protection. In present-day Russia, with its long-standing and remarkable tradition of timber structures, he is particularly remembered for his role as a pioneer of glued wood construction. But he also managed to make important innovations in many other areas of wood construction. Genrich Karlsen’s role in this field deserves much more thorough investigation.

Moisei Ginzburg, Ignati Milinis and Sergei Prokhorov: A Fruitful Connection In 1928, the leader of the Constructivist movement, Moisei Jakovlevich Ginzburg, and his young colleague, Ignati Frantsevich Milinis (1899–1974), designed the commune house for employees of the People’s Commissariat of Finance NARKOMFIN in Moscow (fig. 10). The concrete specialist Sergei Lvovich Prokhorov (1899–1974) oversaw the concrete work and the experimental on-site production of slag concrete blocks. As a supervisor for the TECHBETON building trust he was very interested in the efficiency of construction processes. In addition, Prokhorov showed a keen curiosity for theoretical issues of concrete, on which he conducted and published important studies.19 He experimented with hollow cinder blocks and used them to create insulated concrete cavity walls. In collaboration with Ginzburg and Milinis, Sergei Prokhorov employed a prototype for an external wall insulation system on the top floor of the NARKOMFIN commune house, which is

59

60

Anke Zalivako

10  The architects at the construction site of the NARKOMFIN commune house in Moscow: Moisei Ginzburg, Ignati Milinis and Sergei Prokhorov, c. 1929.

very similar to modern systems. The same wall insulation was found in Ekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk) in an URALOBLSOVET apartment block (1931–33) by Moisei Ginzburg, the architect Alexander Pasternak, and Prokhorov. This evidence suggests that the architect Ginzburg and the engineer Prokhorov are the inventors of this composite external wall insulation system in the Soviet Union. Work in the Soviet Materials Research Institutes Of particular importance for the establishment of fruitful cooperations between architects and engineers were the Soviet materials research institutes. Among these, the State Construction Institute GIS, founded in 1927, played a leading role with regard to particularly intensive collaboration. Its basic and most important tasks were the experimental study, improvement, and rationalisation of new construction methods and materials. German Borisovich Krasin (1871–1947) was appointed its first director. He was succeeded by Artur Loleit. Both researched in particular the properties and application potential of concrete as a building

material. From 1929, the GIS opened several representative offices throughout the country, for example in Sverdlovsk in the Urals, and most architects and engineers of note became members of this state institute. It now appeared to be the main incubator for the expansion of the practice of joint activities by architects and engineers in the context of the Soviet avant-garde. Yet, the fruitful collaboration between architects and engineers came to a halt again as early as 1932. In that year, the Soviet government issued a decree on the future organisation of artists’ work. What followed was the establishment of huge planning institutions, such as MOSPROEKT, which still exists today. As a consequence, however, the free discussion among artists was abruptly interrupted. That was the end of the Soviet avant-garde. Gennadi Iakovlevich Movchan, at that time working under Moisei Ginzburg’s direction in workshop no. 3, noted that these workshops were now mainly occupied with theoretical work and no longer produced any practical results.20 As a result, the protagonists of modern architecture increasingly turned to other fields of activity after 1932, such as industrial construction, somewhat following the example of the Vesnin brothers who, together with Nikolai J. Kolli (1894– 1966), Georgi M. Orlov (1901–85) and Sergei G. Andreevski (1898–1978), as early as 1927 had started to develop numerous technical buildings for the company DNEPROSTROY on the Dnieper in a collaboration with Albert Kahn Inc. Conclusion In summary, we can say that the October Revolution of 1917 not only brought a zeal for research into new construction materials and methods to Russian building construction, but also caused collaboration between architects and engineers to blossom to an unprecedented degree. The typical avant-garde aesthetics was born from partnerships that often took the form of

«Architect, do not imitate the forms of technology but learn the method of the structural engineer!»

collaborations between young architects, who graduated from newly founded faculties such as VKhUTEMAS and MVTU, and older, more experienced engineers from established institutes for civil engineering. The formation of such teams was possible because these engineers were very open to experimenting with new construction technologies that could reveal and glorify the beauty of ‹honest constructions›.

A good decade ago, the Russian scholar Igor Kazus published a good summary of all the organisations, engineers and architects operating in the 1920s with his book Soviet Architecture of the 1920s: Design Organisations. To this day, however, hardly anything is known about the actual modalities of their teamwork. Some interesting examples have been illustrated in this chapter, but much of the material is still waiting to be processed in the archives.

1 Slogan taken over from Ivan Leonidov: See Sovremennaia Arkhitektura 1 (1926), no. 3, 63. 2 See Ginzburg 1926, 1 (English version New methods of Architectural Thought published in: Cooke 1995, 129–130). 3 During the reorganization of 1933 both institutes merged into the Moscow Architectural Institute MAI, which was renamed MARChI in 1970. Cf. Kudryavtsev 2005, 9. 4 Ginzburg 1926. 5 Ginzburg 1926, 1. 6 Ibid. 7 Ginzburg 1926, 3. 8 Ginzburg 1926, 4. 9 Aleksandr Venjaminovich Bari (1847–1913) started the company in 1870 after graduating from the Zurich Poly­ technic Institute. The company specialised in making port equipment and tanks. After the revolution it

was nationalised and renamed PAROSTROJ (today the Moscow company Dinamo). In 1922 the company was integrated into the State Building Trust for metal construction MASHINOTREST. See Kazus 2009, 287. Graefe et al. 1990; see http://www.shukhov.ru. See Zalivako 2017. Cf. Shukhova 1995, 32. Cf. Chan-Magomedow 1983, 194: Die funktionelle Methode. See Kuznetsov 1934 and Kuznetsov 1940. See Lobov 2001, 557–558. Cf. Lobov 2001, 558. Cited after Bykov 1989, 104. Cf. Karlsen 1929. Cf. Prokhorov 1927. Cf. Bykov 1989, 104.

Bykov 1989 V. E. Bykov: Architektor, Pedagog, Uchenyj [Architect, Teacher, Research Fellow], in: Y. Yaralov (ed.): Zodchestvo: Sbornik Sojuza architektorov SSSR, Bd. 3 (22) (Moscow 1989) 104–120. Chan-Magomedow 1983 S. O. Chan-Magomedow: Pioniere der sowjetischen Architektur. Der Weg zur neuen sowjetischen Architektur in den zwanziger und zu Beginn der dreißiger Jahre (Dresden 1983). Cooke 1995 C. Cooke: Russian Avant-garde. Theories of Art, Architecture and the City (London 1995). Ginzburg 1926 M. J. Ginzburg: Novye metody arkhitekturnogo myshleniia [New methods of architectural thought], Sovremennaia Arkhitektura 1, 1926, 1, 1–4. Graefe et al. 1990 R. Graefe / M. Gappoev / O. Prtschi: Vladimir G. Šuchov, 1853– 1939. Die Kunst der sparsamen Konstruktion (Stuttgart 1990).

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Karlsen 1929 G. G. Karlsen: Ploskaia kryshe na dereviannoi osnove [Flat roof on a wooden basis], Stroitelnaia Promyshlennost 7, 1929, 874–876. Kazus 2009 I. А. Kazus: Sovietskaia Arkhitektura 1920-ch godov: organizacia proektirovania [Soviet Architecture of the 1920s: Design Organisations] (Moscow 2009). Kuznetsov 1934 A. Kuznetsov: Architektura i stroitelnaia tekhnika v XIX i natshale XX veka [Architecture and construction methods in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century], Akademiya arkhitektury 1, 1934, no. 1/2, 42–52. Kudryavtsev 2005 A. P. Kudryavtsev (ed.): Ot VKhUTEMASa k MarchI / From VKhUTEMAS to MARKhI, 1920–1936 (Моscow 2005). Kuznetsov 1940 A. Kuznetsov: Architekturnye konstrukcii [Architectural construction details] (Moscow 1940).

61

62

Anke Zalivako

Lobov 2001 O. I. Lobov (ed.): Stro’iteli Rossii XX vek. Moskva natchala veka [Russia’s builders of the 20th century. Moscow at the beginning of the century] (Моscow 2001). Lopatto 1969 A.E. Lopatto: Artur Ferdinandovich Loleit k istorii otechestvennogo zhelezobetona / Artur Ferdinandovich Loleit to the history of native armed concrete (Moscow 1969). Prokhorov 1927 S. L. Prokhorov: Deshevoe betonitovoe stroitelstvo [Cheap concrete construction] (Leningrad 1927).

Image Sources 1 Ginzburg 1926, 1. 2 Tatiana Vinogradova, Nizhni Novgorod. 3 Lopatto 1969, 72. 4–6, 8  Shchusev Museum of Architecture (GNIMA), Moscow. 7 Russian State Archive of Economics (RGAE), Moscow. 9 Stroim 1930, issue 5, p. 10. 10 Ginzburg family archive, Moscow.

Shukhova 1995 E. M. Shukhova: Rycar zhelezobetona [The knight of reinforced concrete], Arkhitektura i Stroitelstvo Moskvy, 1995, no. 2, 28–33. Zalivako 2017 A. Zalivako: Der russische Ingenieur Artur F. Loleit (1868–1933) und sein Beitrag zur Erfindung der Pilzdecke, in: W. Lorenz et al. (eds.): Alltag und Veränderung – Praktiken des Bauens und Konstruierens. Tagungsband der Zweiten Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Bautechnikgeschichte vom 23. bis 25. April 2015 in Innsbruck (Dresden 2017) 125–138.

List of Acronyms GIS

Gosudarstvennyj nauchno-eksperimental’nyj institut grazhdanskich, promyshlennych i inzhenernych sooruzhenii (State Scientific and Experimental Institute of Civil, Industrial and Engineering Structures) IMTU Imperatorskoe moskovskoe technicheskoe uchilishche (Royal Moscow Technical School) LIGI Leningradskii institut grazhdanskich inzhenerov (Leningrad Institute for Civil Engineers) MIGI Moskovskii institut grazhdanskich inzhenerov (Moscow Institute for Civil Engineers) MIIT Moskovskii institut inzhenerov transporta (Moscow Institute for Transport) MPI Moskovskii politekhnicheskii institut (Moscow Polytechnic Institute) MUZhVZ Moskovskoe uchilishche zhivopisi, vaianiia i zodchestva (Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture) MVTU Moskovskoe vysshee tekhnicheskoe uchilishche (Moscow Higher Technical College) NARKOMFIN Narodnyi komissariat finansov (People’s Commissariat of Finance) OSA Organizacija sovremennych architektorov (Organisation of Contemporary Architects) PACh Peterburgskaia (Petrogradskaia) akademia chudozhestv (St. Petersburg (Petrograd) Royal Art Academy) PGSKhuM Petrogradskie svobodnye chudozhestvennye masterskie (Petrograd State Free Studios for the Study of Arts)

PIGI

Peterburgskii (Petrogradskii) institut grazhdanskich inzhenerov (St. Petersburg [Petrograd] Institute for Civil Engineers) PPI Peterburgskii (Petrogradskii) politekhnicheskii institut (St. Petersburg [Petrograd] Polytechnic Institute) SGChM Svobodnye gosudarstvennye khudozhestvennye masterskie (Free State Art Workshops) SKhPU Stroganovskoe khudozhestvennopromyshlennoe uchilishche (Stroganov College of Applied Arts) Tsentral’nyi aerodinamicheskii gosudarstvennyi TsAGI institut (Central State Institute for Aerodynamics) UNOVIS Utverditeli novogo iskusstva (Affirmers of the New Art) VEI Vsesojuznyi elektrotekhnicheskii institut (AllUnion Electrotechnical Institute) VEO Vsesojuznoe elektrotekhnicheskoe obshchestvo (All-Union Electrotechnical Society) Vsesojzunyi nauchno-eksperimental’nyj institut VIS grazhdanskich promyshlennych i inzhenernych sooruzhenii (All-Union Scientific and Experimental Institute of Civil, Industrial and Engineering Structures) VKhuTEMAS Vysshie khudozhestvenno-tekhnicheskie masterskie (Higher Artistic and Technical Studios) Vysshii khudozhestvenno-tekhnicheskii institute VKhuTEIN (Higher Artistic and Technical Institute)

The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany

Roland May

I once heard Erich Mendelsohn say of a totally unbuildable project sketch, ‹The engineers simply must be able to construct it.›1 Julius Posener, 1992

Prologue In the context of the reform movements, in Ger­ many, as in many other countries, the interest of architects in engineering increased by leaps and bounds towards the turn from the 19th to the 20th century. There was hope that the art of modern engineering could provide the vital impetus needed to achieve a formal language that would – in the words of Hans Poelzig (1869–1936) – «develop naturally» out of construction.2 The Deutscher Werkbund (DWB) played a central role in this paradigm shift. This association, which was of fundamental importance for the development of modern architecture, had taken up the banner of «objectivity» (Sachlichkeit) with regard to shaping the modern living environment. One of its protagonists, Hermann Muthesius (1861–1927), named the revival of a «notion of form» as the fundamental goal; starting from this basis, the next step was to achieve a «spiritualisation and fulfilment of practicality and structural appropriateness».3 In this context, architects not only opened themselves up to the aesthetics of civil engineering, but also started to include «the works of the engineer in their sphere of tasks».4 Industrial buildings in particular served as a field of experimentation for the desired «spiritualisation» – a field which was largely freed from stylistic restrictions and in which functionality and structural

optimisation were well-established determinants. Curated by Wilhelm Franz (1864–1948), a widely forgotten pioneer of the collaboration between architects and engineers, a travelling exhibition entitled Vorbildliche Fabrikbauten (Exemplary Factory Buildings) was therefore presented by the DWB since 1909. In the summer of 1911, Walter Gropius (1883– 1969) took charge of this collection. His intensive examination of the subject led to two groundbreaking contributions to the Werkbund Year­ books. In his first article Gropius concentrated primarily on emphasising the aesthetics intrinsic to functional buildings,5 whereas in his second move he demanded that they be transferred to all areas of architecture.6 Nevertheless, collaborative work in the proper sense of the term remained an exception; a clear separation of tasks between architects and engineers was still the norm. This state of affairs also applied to the design of the AEG Turbine Factory in Berlin (1908/09), one of industrial architecture’s icons from those pioneering years. For Franz Mann­heimer (1884–1965), a writer and Werk­bund member, in this building the «science of the engineer» merged in an exemplary way with an «objectively handled art of the architect».7 Contradictorily, the edifice’s architect, Peter Behrens (1868–1940), claimed sole responsibility for the factory’s «spatial arrangement» and credited the cooperating civil engineer Karl Bernhard

64

Roland May

1  AEG Turbine Factory, Berlin, 1908/09. P. Behrens (arch.), K. Bernhard (eng.), photo before 1913.

2  AEG Assembly Hall for Large Machines, Berlin, 1911/12. P. Behrens (arch.), Redlich & Krämer, Dortmunder Union, Breest & Co.? (engs.), photo before 1914.

(1859–1937) only with the production of the «construction drawings and the accompanying calculations».8 Bernhard’s perspective differed distinctly: He claimed the hall as his own creation and described its lateral façade as an «indisputable artwork of iron construction». Behrens’s iconic gable front (fig. 1), on the other hand, was characterised by Bernhard as a sham façade, which ought to be dismissed «for reasons of artistic honesty».9 The AEG Assembly Hall for Large Machines (1911/12) – comparable in size and use to the Turbine Factory and also erected under Behrens’s artistic direction – gives the impression that the architect changed his attitude soon after this affair (fig. 2). Hans Schmuckler (1875–1940) exuberantly portrayed this building as a «serene and coherent entity» that had been «freely developed out of the building’s purpose and construction material».10 The chief engineer of the progressive Berlin steel construction company Breest & Co. attributed this in particular to the fact that «among the statically possible solutions,» here «probably the most beautiful» had been chosen. Schmuckler explicitly emphasised in this context the decision not to use a «combination of solid wall and lattice construction» (as in the case of the Turbine Factory). Yet, Schmuckler may not have been a neutral observer. He might have been involved in the design of the building along with Behrens’s employee Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Berlin engineering consultants Redlich & Krämer and the contractor Dortmunder Union, as Schmuckler listed his employer, Breest & Co., as a co-creator of the design.11 Considered by Gropius to be a «creative engineer»,12 Schmuckler designed the structures of a good number of major ‹pre-modernist› buildings, among them Taut & Hoffmann’s Monument des Eisens (Monument to Iron, 1913) and the Musterfabrik (Model Factory) by Gropius & Meyer for the 1914 Cologne Werkbund Exhibition. These buildings represent important cornerstones for the further development of architecture in the

The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany

65

interwar period – the epoch in which, according to Bruno Taut (1880–1938), architectural beauty started to «arise from the direct relationship between building and purpose, from the material’s natural characteristics, and from the elegance of construction».13 Form vs. Function: Points of Contention However, the points of contention between architect and civil engineer that emerged in the dispute between Behrens and Bernhard could never truly be resolved. A telling example for this phenomenon is a monograph on the leading industrial architects Fritz Schupp (1896–1974) and Martin Kremmer (1895–1945) from 1929 with the somewhat odd title Architect against or and Engineer. Special emphasis was placed in this publication on the cooperation between architect and engineer as the decisive basis for «the future of industrial construction».14 But, in reality, the book primarily advocated the architects’ involvement in industrial construction; the names of cooperating engineers were not even mentioned. Likewise unclear remained the engineers’ opinion on the dramatic character of several Schupp & Kremmer designs, which even paraphrased motifs from palace architecture, such as the cour d’honneur (fig. 3). Despite their façades being considerably more austere, Schupp & Kremmer remained rooted in the established tradition of the AEG Turbine Factory. But at the end of the 1920s this kind of industrial architecture provoked harsh criticism from modernist pioneers like Max Cetto (1903–80): The engineer rightly rejects – and may continue to do so – any consultancy or cooperation that elevates the logical expression of a functional and well-ordered structure to a symbol of functionality […].15

This supposed resistance on the part of civil engineers, however, seldom manifested itself publicly. Very few civil engineers in Weimar Germany advertised their opinions about issues of architectural design.

3  Boiler house of the Zollverein Coal Mine, Pit Shaft 12, Essen, 1928/29. F. Schupp & M. Kremmer (archs.), Dortmunder Union with chief eng. F. Zoepke (engs.), photo from 1934.

One of the few significant voices was Otto Zucker (1892–1944) from Berlin. For instance, the engineer expressed his opinion on the new printing premises of the Ullstein publishing house (1925– 27, fig. 4), which had been designed by architect Eugen Schmohl (1880–1926). Modernist architectural critics dismissed the building as a prime example for «façade architecture» (Fassaden­ architektur).16 In the book published on the occasion of the spectacular building complex’s opening, also Zucker expressed subtle criticism – even though he had been the structural engineer in charge. Following the footsteps of Adolf Behne (1885–1948), Zucker understood such a type of edifice «first and foremost as a functional building [Zweckbau]».17 Consequently, it not only should fulfil its tasks with the «best ground plan solution, with the most suitable building material, and with the most suitable construction»

66

Roland May

4  Ullsteinhaus, Berlin, 1925–27, tower during construction and in finished state. E. G. Schmohl (arch.), H. Becher, O. Zucker (engs.).

5  Dammweg school project, Berlin, 1928, variant for the school auditorium roof. B. Taut (arch.), O. Zucker (eng.).

but also show «its purpose clearly through its external design and arrangement».18 His statement that a civil engineer could «rarely view the finished building with untroubled satisfaction»19 was, therefore, undoubtedly in reference to the Ullsteinhaus. A few years later, however, Zucker explicitly stressed that neither «the external form of the modern building, nor any style» were the «inevitable consequences of modern construction». 20 The «artistic quality» of an architectural design would first and foremost be achieved «through intuition and sensibility». 21 In other words, Zucker now emphasised characteristics that are traditionally associated with architects rather than engineers.

The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany

Zivilisation vs. Kultur Of course, Zucker, who often cooperated with progressive architects, had quite clear ideas about how an engineer could contribute properly to an architectural design characterised by «intuition and sensibility». Excellent examples for such contributions are his 1928 proposals for the roof structure above the school auditorium of Bruno Taut’s Dammwegschule project in Berlin, which failed to be realised due to the world economic crisis (fig. 5). Zucker’s tendency to nevertheless deliver only moderate judgements on formal issues can be regarded as symptomatic for German civil engineers of his time. The main reason for this restraint may have been that the civil engineers’ understanding of the cultural value of formal innovations differed markedly from the architects’ views. Civil engineers scarcely took the floor in the contemporary debates about the alleged dichotomy between culture and civilisation – a topic which played an important role in the conflicts between avant-garde and traditionalist architects in Weimar Germany.22 Buzzwords from these debates, such as «innovation» or «modernisation», would, of course, frequently appear in statements made by contemporary engineers as well. But the tendency inherent in their profession towards embracing novelties did not cause German civil engineers to enthusiastically join the avant-garde’s efforts for formal innovation. Particular evidence for this statement provide the civil engineers’ own houses. Even the most progressive representatives of this profession would usually prefer a restrained if not traditional appearance. The Austrian architect Josef Frank (1885–1967) would comment on this apparent contradiction in a mocking manner: Anyone who wants to shape his life today according to abstract theories […] says to himself: The factory is arranged well for practical reasons, so I will treat my apartment and leisure time exactly the same, because the 20thcentury man is an engineer. But he has probably forgotten that the engineer also lives outside his working hours.23

The cultural concepts of German engineers practicing during the interwar period have been investigated in a variety of studies. Although these studies have rarely placed a special focus on civil engineers, it can be assumed that also their vast majority remained bound to a «reactionary modernism». 24 A vivid example of such an attitude may be found in the personality of Hermann Craemer (1894–1974). Working as a consultant for the Frankfurt Building Department in the late 1920s, Craemer cooperated with Gropius’ former office partner, Adolf Meyer (1881–1929), who attempted to overcome the boundaries between civil engineering and architecture like few other German architects of the time. Therefore, it seems quite plausible that in 1929 Craemer was thinking of Meyer when he admitted in the magazine Das Neue Frankfurt that some architects had adopted the «objective and unpretentious, maybe even sober working principles of a civil engineer». 25 In the same article, however, Craemer also put forward an idea that one would hardly expect in a leading avant-garde magazine: We engineers do not believe that the spirit that produced our elevated railways and large-scale silos could ever create a cathedral or a concert hall. There exists a duality between the works of the engineer and the architect just as there is between prose and poetry or between male and female. 26

Alongside cultural conservativism, the fact needs to be taken into consideration that for most engineers the appearance of their buildings was far less important than their structural type or the material they were built of. The latter can be traced in several comments by engineers on architectural questions, e.g. in Alfred Hummel’s (1891–1973) criticism of the architectural avantgarde’s preference for the cube and the obscuration of the structure by means of curtain-type, smooth façades. 27 In reality, Hummel was a lobbyist for reinforced concrete, who protested against the frequent use of steel skeletons in the Neues Bauen.

67

68

Roland May

Neues Bauen and the «Rationally Steered Sensibility of Engineers» Given this starting point, one can understand why German civil engineers did not take a leading role in the Neues Bauen, even though they lived in the middle of a period characterised by a «drunkenness of technology», which led minds to believe that «almost every design idea could be executed».28 Moreover, a number of indications suggest that most avant-garde architects did not want civil engineers to take on a significant role in this cultural movement anyway. Admittedly, at the beginning of the 1920s engineers were proclaimed by the modernist faction to be the actual «artists and master builders of our time»29 and were encouraged to no longer «bend down» before the «artist’s hat».30 That hat, however, was only perceived as sitting upon the heads of architects who still decorated their buildings according to the Beaux-Arts tradition. Opposite to these

6  Notes on the calculation of shear stresses in a haunched reinforced concrete beam by Bauhaus student Johannes Jacobus van der Linden from his classes under Alcar Rudelt, c. 1932.

traditionalists stood the «true form creator» of the Modern Movement. The latter’s special significance had already been postulated in 1914, when Gropius presented a remarkable transformation of Carl Bötticher’s (1806–89) well-known concept of Kernform (core form) and Kunstform (art form). Gropius argued that beauty could only be imparted to a technical work through the involvement of a competent designer who could harmonise the «technical form» with the indispensable «art form».31 Some years later Ludwig Hilberseimer (1885– 1967) made it unmistakably clear to whom this role of the designer should be assigned. Despite his «affirmation and estimation» of the engineer’s «technical creations» Hilberseimer had no doubt that «technology is always only a means of architecture» and should, therefore, «subordinate itself to the architect’s creative will».32 Upholding the belief that there was «still an essential difference»33 between architect and engineer, the avant-gardists adhered to the Renaissance ideal of the architect as the only artist among the actors involved in construction. The engineer’s role in building construction was thus limited to that of a stimulator, as the eminent propagandist of the Neues Bauen, Walter Curt Behrendt (1884–1945), explained in 1929: The spirit of modern architects […] intermingles […] with the rationally steered sensibility of engineers, and gains from it […] a new immediacy of creation.34

Civil Engineers at the Bauhaus Telling examples for this subordinate role are the civil engineers who represented the issues of their profession at the Bauhaus, which could be called the very heart of the Modern Movement. The teaching of statics was introduced in the final phase of the Weimar Bauhaus during the gradual development of an architecture course. Willi Wolter (active around 1918/40), a teacher at the Weimar State School of Building, gave

The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany

the first courses. After the Bauhaus’s relocation to Dessau, the task was taken over by the Berlin engineer Friedrich Köhn (1886–1962), who also taught mathematics and descriptive geometry. In the spring of 1927, an architectural department was set up under the direction of Hannes Meyer (1889–1954) and Köhn’s area of responsibility was extended to include courses in iron and reinforced concrete construction. Köhn’s lessons are said to have provided Hannes Meyer with some important ideas.35 And after Meyer became the Bauhaus’s director in the autumn of 1928, the number of courses with engineering content was significantly increased yet again. By that time Köhn, however, had been replaced by the civil engineer Alcar Rudelt (1900– 79). The latter’s teachings would become an important component within the framework of Meyer’s «scientification» of the Baulehre (architectural studies) at the Bauhaus (fig. 6). As a result, according to the visiting professor Karel Teige (1900–51), «some of the deficiencies in the architectural education of the earlier Bauhaus, in which the technical aspects were the weaker side of the curriculum, have been radically eliminated».36 The teaching concept remained unaffected by the controversial takeover of the Bauhaus’s directorship by Mies van der Rohe, as Rudelt would continue with his comprehensive curriculum also under the new leadership.37 There is no doubt that the Bauhaus architecture students acquired solid engineering and construction skills. Furthermore, Rudelt seems to have been – like his predecessor Köhn – a popular teacher, not least because his lessons were said to prefer «the practical» to «the theoretical».38 To date, however, there is no tangible evidence that these engineers were involved in any design courses (as it was the case at the conservative Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart during the same period)39. Apparently, Rudelt’s training itself did not really stimulate the students’ imagination with regard to integrating new structure types into their architectural designs. Bertrand Goldberg

(1913–97), student at the Bauhaus in 1932/33, even went so far as to say that his school had definitely not been a place of «structural innovation».40 This somewhat sobering appraisal also applies to the time of Hannes Meyer’s directorship, even though he explicitly paid homage to the ideals of collective work and engineer-like thought.41 Correspondingly, it comes as no surprise that – apart from a remarkable Baulehre study by KlausJürgen Winkler (1943–2011)42 – the Bauhaus civil engineering instructors remain overlooked by historians to this day. Expression of Structure Much the same applies to those consulting structural engineers who virtually specialised in projects related to the Neues Bauen. One reason for this may be that even these open-minded engineers took a reserved stance towards some of their architectural colleagues’ proposals. Otto Zucker even explicitly warned of a «pseudo-constructive fashion architecture» that pushed the structure «to the foreground where it is completely inappropriate due to the conditions».43 The use of engineering structures to enhance architectural expression thus largely remained a domain of the architects. El Lissitzky’s (1890–1941) postulate that the «compressive forces of load and support» now had been joined by «tensile forces as a new expression»,44 for instance, is mirrored in designs by the Swiss architects Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer (1894–1952) or projects by the brothers Heinz (1902–96) and Bodo Rasch (1903– 95) from Stuttgart. Their cable-stayed structures were reminiscent of Soviet constructivist fantasies, but they stood on solid engineering ground. The Rasch brothers, for example, cooperated on their spectacular design for hanging houses (1928, fig. 7) with the leading steel construction company M.A.N., and Wilhelm Kintzinger’s (1882–1950) well-established engineering office in Stuttgart verified the practical feasibility.

69

70

Roland May

7  Project for hanging houses, 1928. H. and B. Rasch (archs.), M.A.N., W. Kintzinger (engs.).

Analogous to the contemporaneous approach by Buck­minster Fuller (1895–1983) in the USA, Heinz and Bodo Rasch presented numerous projects in the late 1920s that would utilise the latest developments in structural engineering for architectural purposes. These developments included thin concrete shells, a building type in which, according to Adolf Meyer, «structure and form coincide to the purest degree».45 Like the Rasch brothers, Meyer undertook various attempts to integrate shell structures into the modernist design universe. Among these, the testing office no. 6 (Prüfamt 6) of the Frankfurt Electricity Works (1927–29) deserves particular attention. With an exceptionally flat

cupola over the assembly hall and the workshop building’s barrel shell roofs, the ensemble featured no less than two pioneering elements (fig. 8). The minds behind these high-performance structures were Franz Dischinger (1887–1953) and Ulrich Finsterwalder (1897–1988) – two of Germany’s most important 20th-century civil engineers. Not least for this reason, the Frankfurt testing office counts among the small number of Neues Bauen projects that have a strong association with the names of their engineers. Dischinger as well as Finsterwalder worked for the construction firm Dyckerhoff & Widmann, which developed numerous types of shells during the interwar years. According to Andrew Saint, this «series of semi-standard industrial forms and techniques could freely enter architectural language, if designers chose to adopt them».46 However, despite their thoroughly modernist features, such as seriality or concordance of form and structure, shells would not be «adopted» by the Neues Bauen. Jürgen Joedicke (1925–2015) believed this was largely due to the incongruence of the shell structures’ curved surfaces with an aesthetic ideal in which «the square bounded by plane surfaces, the room built as a rectangular box» had been preferred.47 Thin concrete shells are just one example of numerous structural innovations not adopted by modernist architects. But even if forward-looking

8  Testing office no. 6 (Prüfamt 6) of the municipal electricity works, Frankfurt, 1927–29, rendering of the preliminary draft. A. Meyer (arch.), Dyckerhoff & Widmann (F. Dischinger, U. Finsterwalder) (engs.).

The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany

engineering structures lacked concrete links to avant-garde architecture, there were manifold influences in both directions. This applies, for example, to the catchword Sachlichkeit (objectivity). Admittedly, the leading engineer Karl Bernhard stated that this term had never been used «before the eyes and with the means of the engineer in a more fraudulent way […] than today in the era of ‹new objectivity› in architecture».48 Nevertheless, the term penetrated deeply into the engineering discourse of the Weimar period and had a clear impact on the evaluation of engineering work.49 Yet the concept of Sachlichkeit was by no means exclusively limited to Neues Bauen. This ideal, which dates back to the time of the reform movements, was also worshipped by the Weimar period’s Heimatschutz circles. Consequently, even Rudolf Pfister (1886–1970), editor of the conservative architects’ journal Baumeister, postulated with regard to the industrial aesthetics of Leipzig’s Trade Fair Hall no. 7 that «the style of our time […] occurs at its purest […] when the architect’s imagination is tightly limited by the engineer’s objective and unsentimental spirit.»50

9  Gustav Adolf Church, Berlin, 1931–33, view of the interior in 2016 and schematic section of the frame structure. O. Bartning (arch.), Kuhn & Schaim (engs.).

Structural Realism In general, proposals featuring «structural expressionism» remained a niche phenomenon in German modernism. More common were buildings that could be assigned to a category of moderate «structural realism».51 The latter became manifest, for instance, in the widespread use of corporeal rigid frame structures for covering wider spaces. An early example is the previously mentioned AEG Assembly Hall for Large Machines (see fig. 2). The Gustav Adolf Church in Berlin (1931–33) represents a particularly innovative use of frame structures (fig. 9). Its architect, Otto Bartning (1883–1959), was one of only a few modernists to explicitly emphasise the engineer’s «unbelievably fruitful contribution» to the spatial composition.52 The engineer who had been lauded in

this way, Iţic Haber-Schaim (1882–1976), aimed, in his own words, to achieve that engineering work and architecture «merge, mutually connect and complement each other».53 The Berlin-based civil engineer of Romanian origin was a practicing Jew, but nevertheless cooperated on further famous church projects by Bartning, such as the Stahlkirche (Steel Church) at the Pressa Exhibition in Cologne (1928) and the Church of the Resurrection in Essen (1929/30). Furthermore, Haber-Schaim’s engineering bureau, jointly operated with Viktor Kuhn (1859–1943), cooperated with other progressive architects like Hans Poelzig. Further possibilities for the use of rigid frame structures had already been demonstrated some years before by the period’s most prominent

71

72

Roland May

10  Headquarters of the German Book Printers Association, Berlin, 1924–26, perspective showing the rear façade of the printshop building. Taut & Hofmann (archs.), K. Bernhard (eng.).

German consulting engineer, Karl Bernhard. At the request of the architects Taut & Hoffmann, Bernhard designed in 1922 the load-bearing structure of the General German Trade Union Federation’s headquarters in Berlin. The architects used this reinforced concrete framework to structure façades that revealed the underlying grid. Contrary to the AEG Turbine Factory, Bernhard explicitly praised the outcome of this collaboration.54 Deriving the design from the supporting structure was a method that

in the words of Otto Zucker moved architecture towards «the character of ‹engineering construction› ».55 This method, which would become Max Taut’s (1884–1967) trademark, was demonstrated particularly convincingly in the design for the printing shop of the German Book Printers Association’s headquarters (1924–26) in Berlin. In order to carry the printing machines’ huge loads, Karl Bernhard developed massive multi-storey frames (fig. 10). Taut rhythmised the cubature by expressively extracting the frames’ columns and uppermost beam. In contrast, the regular framework used in Taut’s Trade Union Building in Frankfurt (1930/31) creates the ultimate sense of austerity (fig. 11). Designer of the Trade Union Building’s reinforced concrete structure seems to have been the Danish civil engineer Martin Salomonsen (1881– 1942) who also consulted on a department store extension by Taut & Hoffmann in Berlin-Kreuzberg (1929–32). Salomonsen’s structural design fully supported the architectural concept, which demanded that all external columns be «uniform and as slender as possible».56 Paralleling the case of the contemporary Shell-Haus (1930–32), a coproduction by architect Emil Fahrenkamp (1885– 1966) and the renowned Berlin engineer Gerhard Mensch (1880–1975), the building was provided

11  Office building of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB), Frankfurt, 1930/31, model of the planned and only partially completed complex. Taut & Hofmann (archs.), M. Salomonsen ? (eng.).

The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany

73

12  Columbushaus, Berlin, 1930–32, perspective and section. E. Mendelsohn (arch.), F. Domány, M. Salomonsen (engs.).

with a complex system of bracing steel frames to manage the wind loads. Salomonsen’s attention to Taut’s wish for a gracile appearance was even reflected in the building’s smaller details, such as the roof garden’s emergency staircase, where he used the entirety of his engineering know-how to make Taut’s vision come true. Erich Mendelsohn also regularly acted as one of Salomonsen’s partners since the end of the 1910s. They collaborated on the Einstein Tower in Potsdam-Babelsberg (1918–22), the Red Banner factory in Leningrad (1925–27), and the highly regarded Columbushaus on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin (1930–32, fig. 12). Ferenc Domány (1899–1939), a very successful Hungarian consulting engineer in Berlin, provided additional support on the latter project. The steel construction of this office building went far beyond the usual «standard for such buildings», as Alfred Bock (1894–1983), chief engineer of the responsible

steel construction company Breest & Co., stated in 1931.57 For instance, the outer columns of the cantilevered upper floors were extremely slender, as Mendelsohn wanted to create the appearance of continuous window bands. Once again, the engineers’ skills in statics and structural design were applied to implement an uncompromisingly modernist architectural idea. A completely different approach characterised the extension to the aforementioned headquarters of the General German Trade Union Federation (fig. 13). The engineer Karl Bernhard, hired once again, also worked with a thinned-out steel skeleton for this project. Differing from the contemporaneously erected Columbushaus, however, the fragility of the load-bearing structure in this case remained completely hidden behind the disparate façades designed by architect Walter Würzbach (1885–1971). The finished building thus completely contradicted a contemporary claim by

74

Roland May

13  Extension to the headquarters of the General German Trade Union Federation, Berlin, 1930–32, views across the Spree showing the construction site in 1931 and the façade to Märkisches Ufer in 2014. W. Würzbach (arch.), K. Bernhard (eng.).

Alfred Gregor (1884–1967), a leading steel construction expert of the time. Indeed, Gregor not only demanded that, particularly in steel skeleton construction, «an architectural style should be applied that can best be described as ‹engineering architecture› ». He also specified this claim by stating that «the arrangement of the slender supports and large window areas should correspond to the truth of the invisible but load-bearing material».58 Hans Schmuckler even went one step further. He saw modern architecture as an almost congenial partner for steel construction because of the former’s tendency «to provide generous supports and to break up the façade into horizontal and vertical systems».59 Apparently other engineers thought similarly, since the leading trade journal Der Stahlbau not only featured quite a number of Neues Bauen projects, but even served as a platform for some prominent representatives of the architectural avant-garde. Technical Gymnastics Thus, in the professional discourses of engineers, modern architecture was able to gain at least some significance. In comparison, the architectural avant-garde was much less interested in the

current developments in civil engineering. Julius Posener (1904–96) would later explain this imbalance by saying that the «problem of construction», which initially had been pivotal for the architectural avant-garde, would lose considerably in importance for quite a period.60 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s development can be seen as exemplary for this process. In the years after the First World War, a time without commissions, he regarded «structural thought» to be «the necessary basis for artistic design».61 However, once the building sector had recovered in the mid-1920s, the production of «ideal creations of architecture» became, according to Fritz Neumeyer (*1946), the focus of Mies’s efforts.62 Building upon Reyner Banham’s (1922–88) landmark publication Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960), Richard Pommer (1930– 92) went a step further by concluding «that the architecture of the modernists was at best the image or symbol of engineering, without its substance».63 Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani (*1951) even went so far as to allege that the Modern Movement’s «central goal of designing buildings in accordance with the latest technical achievements» had simply «not been fulfilled».64 But, multitudinous flaws in an ensuing description of the Barcelona Pavilion’s construction suggest that the

The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany

pioneer of a revision of architectural modernism probably based his harsh judgment, like the modernist historians he criticised, on ideological rather than empirical insights. Lampugnani, however, is by no means an isolated case. On the contrary, the real structural substance of Neues Bauen has not even come close to being explored to this day. The formal sobriety of many modernist buildings can lead to the conclusion that their technical profile should not be very sophisticated either. However, the civil engineer Ove Arup (1895– 1988), who had been closely associated with the British avant-garde,65 warned against such a simplistic analogy. He explicitly pointed out that a plain appearance is «often deceptive; it can conceal a pretty contorted structure resulting in high stresses and an unhealthy concentration of steel reinforcements at critical points».66 Telling examples of such hidden complexity are Mies’s Krefeld villas Lange and Esters (1928–30). According to Kent Kleinman and Leslie van Duizer, the subtle appearance of these buildings had been achieved by means of veritable «technical gymnastics».67 This challenging exercise was carried out by Ernst Walther (1873–1939). The Berlin-based consulting engineer and his namesake son (1899–at least 1981) designed the load-bearing structures for most of Mies’s early modernist masterpieces. Devotedly supporting the goal of showcasing

75

«the artistic possibilities of a principally new aesthetic»68, these works can be considered to be exemplary specimens of «hidden structures»69 as defined by Sergio Poretti. The camouflage worked so well in some cases that misclassifications occured even before the inaugurations. For example, many contemporaries thought the «flying» roof of Mies’s iconic Barcelona Pavilion (1929) to be constructed as a monolithic reinforced concrete structure, even though it was a steel framework composed of double-T beams.70 In essence, Mies’s ‹picturesque› buildings primarily differed in terms of their appearance from other contemporary edifices. And even this distinction is not always easy to draw. Several commercial and industrial complexes, for example, come very close in their effect to the architecture developed by proponents of the Neues Bauen, even though they were planned by «New Traditionalists» – a term coined by the famous architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903–87), under which he subsumed such diverse personalities as Hans Poelzig, Emil Fahrenkamp (1885–1966) and Paul Bonatz (1877–1956).71 Nevertheless, a difference remains. In the vast majority of cases, the creations of these new traditionalists do not show any particular emphasis on or aesthetic simulation of modern building technologies. On the contrary, such tendencies provoked a great deal of criticism,

14  Illustrations from Wilhelm Stortz’s doctoral thesis showing Mies van der Rohe’s proposal for an office building in reinforced concrete from 1923 and the Stuttgart engineer’s counterproject from 1929.

76

Roland May

not least from the architecture department of the Technical University of Stuttgart, renowned internationally at the time as the Stuttgart School of Architecture. A significant example of this position can be found in the dissertation of the civil engineer Wilhelm Stortz (1883–1944), who served at the time as a lecturer and later as a professor at the Stuttgart School. Supervised by the traditionalist mastermind Paul Schmitthenner (1884– 1972) and the reinforced concrete pioneer Emil Mörsch (1872–1950), the work contains a substantial critique of Mies van der Rohe’s proposal for an office building in reinforced concrete (1923). The iconic project, today a centrepiece of modern architectural history, is a prime example for what Bill Risebero (*1938) called the «distinctive modernist trick of keeping all structural columns away from the corners, as if to emphasise the non-loadbearing function of the external glass walls.»72 In a rather unsophisticated counterproject, allegedly developed on strictly economic principles, Stortz moved the columns to the façades (fig. 14).73

15  Sketches of a cantilevered building edge inspired in the Fagus Factory by Gropius and Meyer from 1911/12 and a «static-organic» counterproject by Werner Lindner, 1927.

A ‹trick› similar to that of Mies had already been used a decade earlier by Gropius & Meyer. Their Fagus Factory in Alfeld (1911/12) was rather banal from a structural engineering point of view but had iconic glass façades that featured columnfree corners as the most eye-catching element. Some 15 years later, these façades were harshly criticised by Werner Lindner (1883–1964). Unlike Stortz, Lindner based his argumentation solely on architectonical arguments, contrasting the «unsatisfactory solution in terms of expression» from Alfeld with a «static-organic» alternative of his own creation (fig. 15).74 Cooperation in Engineering Structures: a Domain of «Conservative» Architects According to Barbara Banck, Lindner’s numerous contributions to the question of the design of industrial and engineering buildings represent a «pioneering achievement in the effort to combine technology and culture into a contemporary ‹industrial culture› ».75 It is noteworthy in this context that Lindner was secretary of the Deutscher Bund Heimatschutz (literally German Federation for Homeland Protection), a conservative association not generally regarded as being concerned with the work of engineers. This perception, however, does not correspond to the realities of the time, which is shown by a look at proper civil engineering works, i. e. such edifices, for which structural issues are of far greater importance than artistic considerations. During the Weimar period, Germany was among the world’s leading countries in terms of «modern» design in civil engineering, and architects were broadly involved in all kinds of engineering works. Astonishingly, evidence from this period points to the conclusion that the architects involved in this field were at least as closely associated with the Heimatschutz as they were with the Neues Bauen. Particularly striking is the state of bridge building during this period; one can observe

The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany

an almost complete absence of avant-garde architects from this area at this time. In order to understand the reasons for this, it is once again worth taking a look at the origins of the Neues Bauen. At the beginning of the 20th century, almost all architects were still strangers to proper engineering structures. Gropius expressed this sentiment in a lecture from 1911: A purely structural iron bridge, the sheer result of rational engineering calculations, is in many cases a fleshless, disembodied entity of lines without light or shadow. […] If one would cover the structure of such a bridge with wood or sheet metal, no substantial changes would occur in the static-mathematical calculation, but certainly in the optical picture, for now the eye would be offered the illusion of a massive corporeality, which it previously lacked.76

While Gropius, according to Ernst Neufert (1900– 86), would continue to utilise this description of the architect’s influence on steel bridge construction almost unchanged until the 1950s,77 other architects could establish already in the 1920s a design philosophy that was derived from the very nature of engineering structures. This philosophy was aptly described in 1937 by the architect Friedrich Tamms (1904–80):

The […] structure is in itself everything that is required and thus the only means of achieving an architectural expression. […] There is nothing without reason, nothing is arbitrary, and yet there remains so much freedom that creative power is needed to awaken the slumbering expression.78

An aesthetic enhancement of engineering structures in the way described by Tamms was not a central concern for the architectural avant-garde. Apparently, they saw their primary task as breathing the spirit of objectified functionality into architecture – in other words, the same spirit that supposedly had always prevailed in engineering structures. But in fact, even ‹pure› engineering structures such as bridges by no means solely followed logical trains of thought with regard to function, structure, and statics. Only a few engineers, such as the almost forgotten Georg Müller (1880–1951), attempted to develop novel kinds

77

16  Top: Design of an optimised trussed girder bridge, 1924. G. Müller (eng.). Bottom: Competition entry «Von Ufer zu Ufer» for the Friedrich Ebert Bridge at Mannheim, 1925, K. Bernhard (eng.), M. Taut (arch.).

of proposals based solely on such purely practical constraints. It was even rarer for such formal experiments to be the result of collaborations with vanguard architects (fig. 16). Instead, cooperation in bridge design was driven by architects who were particularly concerned about preserving the harmony of townand landscapes. Consequently, the corresponding discourses well into the post-war period were shaped by conservative ideals such as ‹tradition› and ‹beauty›, as exemplified in the key statement of a popular book on bridges by the architect Paul Bonatz and the engineer Fritz Leonhardt (1909– 99), of which several 10,000 copies would have been sold by the mid-1960s: Indeed, it is possible to impart beauty to technical buildings – it is a different beauty than that admired in the old bridges, an inherent beauty of technology – however, it is based on the same ancient laws.79

Outlook In parallel, however, the phenomenon of a surprisingly «modern» appearance of engineering structures designed on such an orthodox basis would continue as well. This also applies – at least to some extent – to the years between 1933 and 1945, during which the construction of countless motorway bridges furthermore resulted in a

78

Roland May

17  Motorway bridge over the Danube, Leipheim, 1934/35. P. Bonatz (arch.), K. Schaechterle, Wayss & Freytag (engs.), photo before 1938.

veritable blossom of architect/engineer cooperation (fig. 17).80 For the architectural avant-garde, in contrast, the National Socialists’ seizure of power represented a decisive turning point. Neues Bauen was quickly dismissed as «cultural Bolshevism» and its protagonists were ousted or even persecuted. Exile remained as the only viable path for those architects who did not want to submit to the aesthetic conditions set by the new regime. Civil engineers, by contrast, were only affected to a limited extent by this drastic change. Their areas of responsibility either lay hidden behind the façades or were not affected at all by any controversies over style. Even former Bauhaus teachers, such as Alcar Rudelt or Ernst Walther (Jr.), seem to have continued their careers without major difficulties. Among the engineers who had been close to the architectural avant-garde, though, no small number had Jewish origins, which obviously caused them problems due to the anti-Semitic nature of the new regime. Forced emigration was ironically to turn some of these engineers

into genuine ambassadors of the Neues Bauen. For example, Ferenc Domány and Otto Zucker now acted as architect-engineers and developed several buildings in the formal language of Neues Bauen in Budapest and Prague (fig. 18). And Felix Samuely (1902–59), after a brief interlude in the Soviet Union, exerted from 1933 onwards as consulting engineer a decisive influence on the development of British avant-garde architecture.81 The Austrian-born Samuely is one of the few engineers who has secured a position in the Modern Movement’s historiography. However, his contributions to progressive architecture in the Berlin of the Weimar period have been nearly forgotten, as have been those of his engineer colleagues associated with the Neues Bauen. Although many vanguard milestones would hardly have been realised as compellingly without their support, contemporary engineers have been almost completely ignored in modernist history-writing. Apart from the special case of Robert Maillart (1872–1940), even creative engineers were only

The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany

79

18  Left: Residential complex for the Manfred Weiss company, Budapest, 1937/38. B. Hofstätter, F. Domány (archs. & engs.), photo from 1938. Right: Apartment house, Prague, 1938–41. O. Zucker (arch. & eng.), photo from 2012.

acknowledged as trailblazers since Sigfried Giedion (1888–1968) had published his epoch-making book Space, Time and Architecture in 1941. Half a century later, the architectural historian Heinrich Klotz (1935–99) commented sarcastically, Giedion must have believed that the much-lamented dichotomy between architecture and civil engineering had been simply overcome through leading modernist figures such as Gropius, Mies van der Rohe or Le Corbusier.82 Such kind of ignorance on the part of the Modern Movement, however, only paints part of the picture of the incomplete historical record. Conversely, publications on the history of German civil engineering have hitherto heavily concentrated on the pure engineering work, while the broader context has been neglected. Based on the current state of knowledge, it can be concluded that the intensity of the collaboration between architect and engineer in the Neues Bauen did not differ significantly from that in other architectural schools of thought. Nor did the Neues Bauen show a general tendency toward

more deeply penetrating the field of contemporary engineering science. Gropius, for example, postulated in 1923 the development of a «new statics of the horizontal, which tries to eliminate the heavy loads by counterbalancing them».83 It is more than likely that Otto Stiehl (1860–1940), a contemporary conservative architect, was absolutely right in suspecting that this declaration would «cause a brisk shaking of the head in all professional stress analysts».84 Furthermore, such whimsical statements may have also fuelled the doubts of influential architecture critics such as Werner Hegemann (1881–1936). By 1930, he was already wondering about the real benefits of the fact «that today the architect is as good as completely free in the design of large buildings, since today the art of engineering can actually construct anything and even do so cheaply».85 Undoubtedly, numerous modernist architects saw the civil engineer primarily as an «assistant to the architect»86 and agreed with Gropius’s observation of a fundamental «difference of

80

Roland May

19  Exhibition pavilion «Die Stadt von morgen» (The city of tomorrow), Berlin, 1957. K. Otto (arch.), G. Günschel, F. Otto (archs. & engs.), H. Dienst (eng.).

essence between the product of technology and economy, the sober work of the calculating mind, and the ‹work of art›, the product of passion».87 Nevertheless, one cannot totally agree

Parts of this article are based on findings gained by the author together with Ralf Dorn (1968–2021) in the context of a postdoctoral tandem research project funded by the DFG Research Training Group 1913. 1 Posener 1992, 108. 2 Poelzig 1906, 19. 3 H. Muthesius, in Gurlitt et al. 1912, 36. 4 Posener 1981, 127. 5 Gropius 1913. 6 Gropius 1914. 7 Mannheimer 1913, 35. 8 Behrens 1910, 29. 9 Bernhard 1912, 1230. 10 Schmuckler 1927, 94 11 Schmuckler 1927, 94 and 96. 12 W. Gropius, as cited in Anderson 2010, 24. 13 Taut 1929, 6. 14 Völter [1929], 73. 15 Cetto 1929. 16 Bier 1929. 17 Zucker 1927, 59. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Zucker 1930, 478. 21 Zucker 1930, 479.

with Mirko Baum’s generalising statement that the avant-garde’s «love for technology […] solely led to the adoption of its formal vocabulary, the ‹outer form› », while it did not even strive for the «essence of technology, its ‹inner form› ».88 Admittedly, the relationship of the Neues Bauen to structural engineering seems to have been primarily marked by questions of appearance. Its advocacy for the art of the engineer nevertheless made it an important component in the long «effort of architects and building theorists to mediate between the art of the engineer and that of the architect».89 Hence, it undoubtedly played a significant part in helping the «architect-engineer», who during the Weimar period was still «desired for our future»,90 to take shape in postwar Germany through personalities such as Max Mengeringhausen (1903–88), Frei Otto (1925– 2015), and Günther Günschel (1928–2008) (fig. 19).

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Cf. Ascher Barnstone 2009. Frank 1930, 404. Cf. Herf 1984. Craemer 1929, 3. Craemer 1929, 5. Hummel 1931. Langen 1927, 726–727. Johannes Molzahn, Lebenslauf 1923, unpublished manu­ script, as cited in Reisse / Sader 1999, 71. ABC 1924. Gropius 1914, 30–31. Vischer / Hilberseimer 1928, 18. Häring 1932, 223. Behrendt 1929, 266. Ehrlich 1977, 14. Teige 1930, reprinted in Teige 2000, 322. Rudelt’s successor in the spring of 1933, Ernst Walther (Jr.), was likely unable to lead any classes due to the ensuing closure of the Bauhaus. Letter from Bauhaus student Hans Keßler to his mother, 20 Nov 1931, as cited in Hahn 1985, 161. Cf. May 2011, 176–180. Bertrand Goldberg, in Harrington 1988, 56. Cf. Möller et al. 2015. Winkler 2003.

The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Zucker 1930, 478. Lissitzky 1924, 3. Meyer 1925, 17. Saint 1991, no. 22, 13. Joedicke 1963, 10. Bernhard 1929, 583. Cf. e.g. Hertwig 1928. Pfister 1928, 146. On the terminology cf. Poretti 2008, 257. Letter from Otto Bartning to Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, 13 Jan 1954, as cited in Nierste 2010, 139. Haber-Schaim 1931, 39. Bernhard 1924. Zucker 1930, 479. Salomonsen 1932, 26. Bock 1931, 253. Gregor 1931, 187. Schmuckler 1930, s.p. Posener 1981, 184. Mies van der Rohe 1922, 124. Neumeyer 1986, 172–173. Pommer 1983. Lampugnani 1982, 35. Cf. the paper by D. Yeomans in this volume (115–127). Arup 1979, 320. Kleinman / Van Duzer 2005, 17. Sigel 2000, 123.

69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

Cf. Poretti 2008, 11–16. Cf. Solà-Morales et al. 1993, 15–16. Cf. Hitchcock 1929. Risebero 1982, 164. Stortz 1930, 25–26. On the contemporary discussion about the meaningfulness of cantilevered supporting structures cf. Weiss 1931, 7–8. Lindner 1927, 13. Cf. to this question also Millais 2009, 36. Banck 2007, 144–145. W. Gropius: Monumentale Kunst und Industriebau, lecture typoscript, 29 Jan 1911, Bauhaus-Archiv, 20/3, reproduced in Wilhelm 1983, 116–120, here 118. E. Neufert: [autobiography], [c. 1957], Bauhaus-Archiv, 11424/4, as cited in Jaeggi 1994, 468, footnote 92. Tamms 1937, 7. Bonatz / Leonhardt 1951, 8. Cf. May 2011, 347–354 et passim. Cf. the article by D. Yeomans in this volume (115–127). Klotz 1986, 10. Gropius 1923, 15. Stiehl 1924, 178. Hegemann 1930. Zucker 1927, 60. Gropius 1926, 120. Baum 1994, 8. Posener 1981, 214. Kießling 1932, 60.

ABC 1924 Ingenieure bücket euch nicht vor dem Künstlerhut!, ABC 1.1924, 3/4, s.p.

Behrendt 1929 W. C. Behrendt: Vom Neuen Bauen, Deutsche Bauzeitung 63.1929, 30, 265–267.

Anderson 2010 S. Anderson: Considering Peter Behrens. Interviews with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Chicago, 1961) and Walter Gropius (Cambridge, MA, 1964), La Rivista di Engramma 2010, 81, 9–35.

Behrens 1910 Die Turbinenhalle der Allgemeinen Elektricitätsgesellschaft zu Berlin, entworfen und erläutert von Prof. Peter Behrens in Neubabelsberg, Mitteilungen des Rheinischen Vereins für Denk­mal­pflege und Heimatschutz 4.1910, 1, 26–29.

Arup 1979 O. Arup: The engineer looks back, Architectural Review 166.1979, 993, 315–321. Ascher Barnstone 2009 D. Ascher Barnstone: The Kultur-Zivilisation Dichotomy in the Work of Adolf Rading, New German Critique 36.2009, 108, 39–71. Banck 2007 B. Banck: Werner Lindner. Heimatschutz und Industrie­ moderne (PhD diss. University of Dortmund 2007). Baum 1994 M. Baum: Ein Rundflug vom Flugplatz Dessau u. Kritische Betrachtung der Beziehung von Kunst und Technik, Umění 42.1994, 1, 3–20.

Bernhard 1912 K. Bernhard: Der moderne Industriebau in technischer und ästhetischer Beziehung, Zeitschrift des Verbandes Deutscher Ingenieure 56.1912, 29, 1141–1147, 30, 1185–1190, 31, 1227–1233. Bernhard 1924 K. Bernhard: Vom Bürohaus des Allgemeinen Deutschen Ge­werk­schafts­bundes in Berlin, Deutsche Bauzeitung 58.1924, suppl. Konstruktion und Ausführung, 9/10, 17–18, 27, 49–54. Bernhard 1925 K. Bernhard: Der Wettbewerb um den Entwurf der FriedrichEbert-Brücke über den Neckar in Mannheim, Der Bauingenieur 6.1925, 28/29, 833–838, 30, 875–878, 31, 895–900, 32, 915–920, 33, 936–945, 37, 1025.

81

82

Roland May

Bernhard 1929 K. Bernhard: Vollwand- oder Fachwerkfüllung eiserner Trag­ werke vom künstlerischen, konstruktiven und wirtschaftlichen Stand­punkte aus, in: Bericht über die II. Internationale Tagung für Brückenbau und Hochbau. Wien, 24.–28. IX. 1928 (Wien 1929) 581–584. Bernhard 1932 K. Bernhard: Erweiterungsbau des A.D.G.B. in Berlin – Die Hoch­bau­konstruktionen, Deutsche Bauzeitung 66.1932, 19, 374–380. Bernhard (R.) 1926 R. Bernhard: Haus des Verbandes der deutschen Buchdrucker zu Berlin, Deutsche Bauzeitung 60.1926, suppl. Konstruktion und Bauausführung, 10, 73–77. Bier 1929 J. Bier: Ein Industriebau [review], Die Form 4.1929, 11, 298– 299. Bock 1931 A. Bock: Das Stahlskelett des Columbus-Hauses am Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Der Stahlbau 4.1931, 22, 253–258, 25, 300. Bonatz / Leonhardt 1951 P. Bonatz / F. Leonhardt: Brücken (Königstein 1951). Cetto 1929 Co. [=M. Cetto?]: Ernst Völter: Architekt gegen oder und Ingenieur [review], Das Neue Frankfurt 3.1929, 12, 249–250. Craemer 1929 H. Craemer: Was können wir Ingenieure zur Gesundung der Baukunst beitragen?, in: Das Neue Frankfurt 3.1929, 1, 1–5. Das Neue Frankfurt 1931 N.N.: Das neue Bürohaus des Allgemeinen Deutschen Ge­werk­ schaftsbundes in Frankfurt am Main, Das Neue Frankfurt 5.1931, 8, 158–170. Der Industriebau 1914 N.N.: Großmaschinenhalle der AEG in der Hussitenstraße in Berlin, Der Industriebau 6.1914, 411–412. Ehrlich 1977 F. Ehrlich: Rückblicke – ernster … und heiter zu betrachten, in: J. Teller / H.-P. Schulz (eds.): Bauhaus, Bd. 2 (Leipzig 1977) 14–15. Frank 1930 J. Frank: Was ist modern?, Die Form 5.1930, 15, 399–406. Gregor 1931 A. Gregor: Stahlskeletthochhaus und Trägerbau (Berlin 1931). Gropius 1913 W. Gropius: Die Entwicklung moderner Industriebaukunst, in: Werkbund Jahrbuch 1913. Die Kunst in Industrie und Handel (Jena 1913) 17–22.

Gropius 1926 W. Gropius: Wo berühren sich die Schaffensgebiete des Tech­ ni­kers und Künstlers, Die Form 1.1925/26, 6, 117–122. Gurlitt et al. 1912 C. Gurlitt et al.: Wechselrede über ästhetische Fragen der Gegenwart, in: Werkbund Jahrbuch 1912. Die Durchgeistigung der Deutschen Arbeit (Jena 1912) 27–36. Haber-Schaim 1931 J. Haber-Schaim: Bauform und Konstruktion, Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung 51.1931, 3, 38–40. Häring 1932 H. Häring: Versuch einer Orientierung, Die Form 7.1932, 7, 218–223. Hahn 1985 P. Hahn (Hg.): Bauhaus Berlin. Auflösung Dessau 1932, Schlie­ßung Berlin 1933, Bauhäusler und Drittes Reich (Wein­gar­ten 1985). Harrington 1988 K. Harrington: Bauhaus Symposium, Design Issues 5.1988, 1, 45–58. Hegemann 1930 W. Hegemann: Konstruktion und Architektur und Kaufhaus Schocken-Chemnitz, Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst und Städtebau 14.1930, 10, 460. Herf 1984 J. Herf: The Engineer as Ideologue: Reactionary Modernists in Weimar and Nazi Germany, Journal of Contemporary History 19.1984, 4, 631–648. Hertwig 1928 [A. Hertwig]: Zum Geleit!, Der Stahlbau 1.1928, 1, 1. Hitchcock 1929 H.-R. Hitchcock: Modern Architecture – Romanticism and Reintegration (New York 1929). Hummel 1931 A. Hummel: Von der deutschen Bauausstellung Berlin 1931, Der Bauingenieur 12.1931, 26, 473–476. Interbau 1957 Internationale Bauausstellung Berlin (ed.): Interbau Berlin 1957. Amtlicher Katalog der Internationalen Bauausstellung Berlin 1957 (Berlin 1957). Jaeggi 1994 A. Jaeggi: Adolf Meyer. Der zweite Mann. Ein Architekt im Schatten von Walter Gropius (Berlin 1994). Joedicke 1963 J. Joedicke: Shell Architecture (New York 1963). Kießling 1932 M. Kießling: Der Wettbewerb «Das wachsende Haus», Deutsche Bauzeitung 66.1932, 3, 55–60.

Gropius 1914 W. Gropius: Der stilbildende Wert industrieller Bauformen, in: Werkbund Jahrbuch 1914. Der Verkehr (Jena 1914) 29–32.

Kleinman / Van Duzer 2005 K. Kleinman / L. Van Duzer: Mies van der Rohe – The Krefeld Villas (New York 2005).

Gropius 1923 W. Gropius: Idee und Aufbau des Staatlichen Bauhauses in Weimar, in: Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar 1919–1923 (Weimar, Munich 1923) 7–18.

Klett / Hummel 1938 (E.) Klett / (T.) Hummel: Die Donaubrücke bei Leipheim im Zuge der Reichsautobahn Stuttgart–München, Die Bautechnik 16.1938, 40/41, 521–535.

The Relationship between the Modern Movement and Civil Engineering in Weimar Germany

Klotz 1986 H. Klotz (ed.): Vision der Moderne – Das Prinzip Konstruktion (Munich 1986). Lampugnani 1982 V. M. Lampugnani: Die abwesende Sprache der Technik. Eine Kritik des Mythos der positivistischen Architektur, Freibeuter 4.1982, 11, 31–46. Langen 1927 G. Langen: «Neues Bauen». Gedanken auf der Werk­bund­ ausstellung «Die Wohnung», Stuttgart, zur Zeit der Tagung für wirtschaftliches Bauen, Deutsche Bauzeitung 61.1927, 88, 721–727. Lindner 1927 W. Lindner: Bauten der Technik. Ihre Form und Wirkung. Bd. 1: Werkanlagen (Berlin 1927). Lissitzky 1924 E. Lissitzky: Element und Erfindung, ABC 1.1924, 1, 3 f. Mannheimer 1913 F. Mannheimer: A.E.G.-Bauten, in: Jahrbuch des Deutschen Werkbundes. Die Kunst in Industrie und Handel (Jena 1913) 33–42 and figs. 1–9. May 2011 R. May: Pontifex maximus. Der Architekt Paul Bonatz und die Brücken (Münster i.W. 2011). Meyer 1925 A. Meyer: Das Zeiss-Planetarium in Jena. Der Bau, Die Form 1.1925/26, 1, 17. Meyer 1929 A. Meyer: Neue Industriebauten in Frankfurt am Main, Das Neue Frankfurt 3.1929, 1, 6–12. Mies van der Rohe 1922 L. Mies van der Rohe: Hochhausprojekt Bahnhof Fried­rich­ straße, Frühlicht 1.1921/22, 4, 122–124. Millais 2009 M. Millais: Exploding the Myths of Modern Architecture (London 2009). Möller et al. 2015 W. Möller et al. (eds.): The co-op principle – Hannes Meyer and the concept of collective design (Leipzig 2015). Müller 1926 G. Müller: Neue Formen gestufter Träger, Deutsche Bauzeitung 60.1926, suppl. Konstruktion und Ausführung, 18, 133–138, 25, 189–192. Neumeyer 1986 F. Neumeyer: Mies van der Rohe – das kunstlose Wort. Ge­dan­ ken zur Baukunst (Berlin 1986).

Poelzig 1906 H. Poelzig: Architektur, in: Das Deutsche Kunstgewerbe 1906. III. Deutsche Kunstgewerbeausstellung Dresden 1906 (Munich 1906) 17–20. Pommer 1983 R. Pommer: Revising Modernist History: The Architecture of the 1920s and 1930s, The Art Journal 43.1983, 2, 107. Poretti 2008 S. Poretti: Modernismi italiani. Architettura e costruzione nel Novecento (Rome 2008). Posener 1981 J. Posener: Aufsätze und Vorträge 1931–1980 (Braunschweig, Wiesbaden 1981). Posener 1992 J. Posener: Hans Poelzig. Reflections on His Life and Work (New York, Cambridge 1992). Rasch / Rasch 1928 H. Rasch / B. Rasch: Wie bauen? Materialien und Konstruktionen für industrielle Produktion (Stuttgart 1928). Reisse / Sader 1999 H. P. Reisse / J. Sader: Johannes Molzahn in Soest – ein Porträt der Wirklichkeiten, in: Avantgarden in Westfalen? Die Moderne in der Provinz 1902–1933 (Münster 1999) 69–78. Risebero 1982 B. Risebero: Modern Architecture and Design. An Alternative History (London 1982). Saint 1991 A. Saint: Some thoughts about the architectural use of concrete, AA files 1991, 21, 3–12, 22, 3–16. Salomonsen 1932 M. Salomonsen: Erweiterungsbau des Warenhauses I der Kon­ sum­genossenschaft für Berlin und Umgebung, Der Stahlbau 5.1932, 4, 25–28. Schmuckler 1927 H. Schmuckler: Fortschritte des Eisenbaues im 20. Jahrhundert, Deutsche Bauzeitung 61.1927, suppl. Konstruktion und Ausführung, 14, 93–100. Schmuckler 1930 H. Schmuckler: Der Stahlskelettbau, Deutsches Bauwesen, Suppl. Mitteilungen [Architekten- und Ingenieur-Verein zu Berlin] 6.1930, 12, s.p. Sigel 2000 P. Sigel: Exponiert. Deutsche Pavillons auf Weltausstellungen (Berlin 2000). Solà-Morales et al. 1993 I. de Solà-Morales et al.: Mies van der Rohe – Barcelona Pavilion (Barcelona 1993).

Nierste 2010 U. Nierste: Expressionismus und Neue Sachlichkeit. Die Gustav-Adolf-Kirche von Otto Bartning und der Kirchenbau in der Weimarer Republik (PhD diss. FU Berlin 2010).

Stiehl 1924 O. Stiehl: Neues Weimar, neue Wege?, Zentralblatt der Bau­ ver­wal­tung 44.1924, 22, 177–180.

Pfister 1928 R. P[fister]: Die neue Halle 7 der Technischen Messe in Leipzig, Baukunst 4.1928, 5, 146–147.

Stortz 1930 W. Stortz: Konstruktion und Gestaltung großer Geschoßbauten in Eisenbeton (Stuttgart 1930).

83

84

Roland May

Tamms 1937 F. Tamms: Paul Bonatz. Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1907–1937 (Stuttgart 1937). Taut 1929 B. Taut: Die neue Baukunst in Europa und Amerika (Stuttgart 1929). Teige 1930 K. Teige: Deset let Bauhausu, Stavba 8.1929/30, 10, 146–152. Teige 2000 K. Teige: Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia and Other Writings (Los Angeles 2000). Tér és Forma 1938 N.N.: A Weiss Manfréd Vállalatok Elismert Nyugdíjpénztárának bérháza a Margit-körúton (Apartment building of the Manfréd Weiss Enterprises’ certified pension fund on Margaret Boulevard), Tér és Forma 11.1938, 6, 180–194. Vischer / Hilberseimer 1928 J. Vischer / L. Hilberseimer: Beton als Gestalter. Bauten in Eisen­beton und ihre architektonische Gestaltung. Ausgeführte Eisen­betonbauten (Stuttgart 1928). Völter [1929] E. Völter (ed.): Architekt gegen oder und Ingenieur (Fritz Schupp und Martin Kremmer) (Berlin [1929]). Weiss 1931 A. Weiss: Gestaltung von Eisenbetonbauten auf der Grundlage des statischen Ausdrucks, Zeitschrift für Bauwesen 81.1931, 1, 1–28. Wilhelm 1983 K. Wilhelm: Walter Gropius, Industriearchitekt (Braunschweig, Wiesbaden 1983). Winkler 2003 K.-J Winkler: Baulehre und Entwerfen am Bauhaus 1919–1933 (Weimar 2003). Zollverein 2016 Stiftung Zollverein (Hg.): Der Blick der Sachlichkeit. Zeche Zollverein im Spiegel der Fotografie (Essen 2016).

Zucker 1927 O. Zucker: Die Konstruktion und ihre Ausführung, in: I. Braun et al.: Ein Industriebau. Von der Fundierung bis zur Vollendung (Berlin 1927) 57–119. Zucker 1930 O. Zucker: Konstruktion und Architektur, Wasmuths Monats­ hefte für Baukunst und Städtebau 14.1930, 10, 474–479.

Image Sources

1 Mannheimer 1913, fig. 1. 2 Der Industriebau 1914, 412. 3 Zollverein 2016, 39 (photograph by Anton Meinholz, 1934). 4 Zucker 1927, figs. 26 (left), 140 (right). 5 Zucker 1930, 479 (modified by the author). 6 Winkler 2003, 157. 7 Rasch / Rasch 1928, 157. 8 Meyer 1929, 11. 9 top: photograph by Algensan, 2016 (Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0); bottom: Haber-Schaim 1931, 39. 10 Bernhard (R.) 1926, 76. 11 Das Neue Frankfurt 1931, 167. 12 Bock 1931, 254 (modified by the author). 13 left: Bernhard 1932, 375; right: photograph by the author, 2014. 14 Stortz 1930, 25 (right) and fig. 8 (left) (modified by the author). 15 Lindner 1927, 13 (modified by the author). 16 top: Müller 1926, 190; bottom: Bernhard 1925, 915. 17 Klett / Hummel 1938, 535. 18 left: Tér és Forma 1938, 180; right: photograph by Krokodyl, 2012 (Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 3.0; modified by the author). 19 Interbau 1957, 319.

Architect and Engineer around the World, 1919–39 An Exploration in Photographs

Roland May

This book explores aspects of the relations between architects and engineers, paying attention to the specific contexts in which these professionals worked. Despite offering various new viewpoints, much remains unaddressed. This section provisionally fills some particularly glaring gaps by presenting and commenting on some important photographic records of the work of engineers and architects in the interwar period. Even during the interwar period, sophisticated load-bearing structures often only played a subordinate role in many architects’ design concepts. According to older ideas expressed by Gottfried Semper (1803–79), «architecture» is, in these instances, an autonomous skin that covers the technical core. In the case of Montevideo’s Palacio Salvo (Fig. 1), one does not get any clues about the most basic characteristics of the supporting structure. The cultivated belle epoque façades attract all the attention and, in this way, hide one of the world’s tallest reinforced concrete constructions. Bridges of this period also often reflect elaborate eclectic concepts. The overpasses of the Merritt Parkway north of New York can be considered as a suburban outgrowth of the American City Beautiful ideal (Fig. 2). Despite possessing largely standardised structures, each has been given a unique «architectural appearance». The engineer often remains the architect’s sidekick, even in buildings in which engineering forms are exaggerated, such as the Shirokiya department store in Tokyo (Fig. 3). The first Japanese example of this building type in a «western» modern

architectural idiom features a reinforced concrete structure that is articulated in a grid and cantilevers with an almost constructivist attitude. It culminates in a theatrical ensemble of flagpole and water tanks (which, by the way, failed to prevent a major fire in 1932). Engineer-style «follies» of a different kind can be found in the Johnson Wax Administration Building by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959). Assisted by his long-time engineer companions Mendel Glickman (1895–1967) and William Wesley Peters (1912–91), the grand master of modern architecture reinterprets the engineering construct «mushroom column» in various new manners (Fig. 4). Buildings with a strong emphasis on the edifice’s engineering aspects can be found in large numbers in the interwar period. In his famous Amsterdam open-air school (Fig. 5), Jan Duiker (1890–1935), who was trained as a bouw­kundig ingenieur (building engineer), employs a loadbearing structure with mushroom-like components, which possess floor elements in the manner of T-beams. These cantilevering beams have a dynamising effect on the otherwise rather rigid cubic volume, a role taken over by parabolic arches in the Palace of Industry and Trade (Fig. 6) at Brno’s trade fair grounds. The arches are the result of proposals by the engineer Jaroslav Valenta (1887–1934) to improve architect Josef Kalous’s (1889–1958) winning competition design. The latter’s skeleton-like appearance already expressed a desire to stage modernity, but its round arches were far from being statically effective.

86

Roland May

A more sophisticated way of interpreting the engineering design is presented by the Tour d’Orientation (Fig. 7), built 1924/25 in Grenoble to mark an exhibition on hydroelectric power. The Perret Frères family enterprise, which carried out both planning and execution, artfully interweaves in-situ concrete components with ornamented prefabricated concrete elements. Guided by the mastermind Auguste Perret (1874–1954), architecture and structural engineering are treated as inseparable entities. A convincing interaction of these two ingredients is also demonstrated in the Bronx–Whitestone Bridge (Fig. 8), completed in 1939 for the World’s Fair in New York. With anchoring blocks following the course of the cables, extremely slender stiffening girders and elegant steel towers, it is both a highlight of bridge engineering and an icon of streamline design. Elegance is also a defining feature of the Salginatobel Bridge (Fig. 9), located in a remote Swiss Alpine valley. However, it was economic considerations that led to its construction. The extraordinary concordance between exciting shape and highly efficient structure is entirely the result of the work of the engineer Robert Maillart (1872–1940). Comparably talented was Eugène Freyssinet (1879–1962), but his high-tech thin-shell structure for the market hall in Reims was convincingly brought into a shape through an amicable collaboration with the architect Émile Maigrot (1880–1961) and the Limousin construction company (Fig. 10). The Maison du Peuple, built in 1937–39 in the Paris suburb of Clichy, was also conceived to serve as a market hall. However, this vanguard edifice is of a completely different nature and can additionally be used as a cinema or event location (Fig. 11). Not least thanks to unusual solutions by the engineer Vladimir Bodiansky (1894–1966) and the metal worker Jean Prouvé (1901–84), the functionalist ideal of mechanised transformability

is realised here in a remarkable total work of art based on a stringent modular construction system. A somewhat different way of interlocking structure and design language characterises the former Ministry of Education and Public Health in Rio de Janeiro, which was begun at the same time. Emílio Henrique Baumgart (1889–1943), probably Brazil’s most renowned civil engineer at the time, collaborated with a highly motivated team of young architects on the building, which is clearly influenced by the consulting visionary Le Corbusier (1887– 1965). Despite countless redesigns, the skyscraper became the first highlight of Brazilian architectural modernism (Fig. 12). How strongly the modern architectural movement in turn influenced interwar civil engineering can be seen in the continuous process of refining the engineering form. This process resulted in numerous engineering works with a remarkably clear design language. No architect is known to have been involved in the creation of Hangar B at Copenhagen Airport in Kastrup (Fig. 13) – and yet the edifice can stand comparison with the celebrated terminal building designed by Vilhelm Lauritzen (1894–1984), which was built next door at the same time. The screw factory building in Gerlafingen, Switzerland, where Robert Maillart cooperated with architect Hans Kruck from his Zurich office, displays a similarly well-tempered engineering attitude. The façades, largely dissolved in glass, show unmistakable influences of modernist architecture, but a soberly calculating engineering spirit avoids staging the utilised mushroom construction by means of cantilevered ceilings. Many more facets could undoubtedly be added to this exploration of the interaction between architect and engineer in the interwar period. But one constant always remains: around the globe, the interplay between architecture and engineering, more than most other factors, defined the building activity of those years.

Architect and Engineer around the World, 1919–39

Image Sources 1 Centro de Fotografía de Montevideo (photographer unknown). 2 Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D. C. (photo by Jet Lowe). 3 Historic postcard (photographer unknown). 4 Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D. C. (photo by Jack Boucher). 5 Het Nieuwe Institut; Rotterdam (photographer unknown). 6 Archive of BVV, Brno (photographer unknown). 7 Historic postcard (photographer unknown). 8 SLUB / Deutsche Fotothek, Dresden (photo by Tet Arnold von Borsig). 9 ETH Library Zurich, Image Archive (photographer unknown). 10 Die Baugilde 12, 1930, no. 4. 11 Das Werk 34, 1947, no. 2. 12 Agência Senado, Brasília (photo by Arno Kikoler). 13 Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen (photo by Jonals Co.). 14 ETH Library Zurich, Image Archive (photographer unknown).

87

88

Roland May

Negating the technical core Sticking to the idea of a cultivated appearance

1  Palacio Salvo, Montevideo, 1923–28. View across the Plaza Independencia looking east, 1929. M. Palanti (arch.), L. A. Gori Salvo (consult. eng.), A. Hartschuh (eng.), Dyckerhoff & Widmann S. A. (contractor).

Architect and Engineer around the World, 1919–39

Suburban outgrowth of the City Beautiful ideal

2  Round Hill Road Bridge over Merritt Parkway near Greenwich (Conn.), 1935. View to the west, c. 1940. G. L. Dunkelberger (arch.), Connecticut Highway Department/L. G. Sumner (eng.), Peter Mitchell Construction Co. (contractor).

89

90

Roland May

Exaggerating the engineers’ forms Constructivist folly

3  Shirokiya Department Store, Tokio-Nihonbashi, 1928/29. Picture taken after the building’s extension in 1931. K. Ishimoto (arch.), B. Yamaguchi (arch./eng.?), Shimizu Corp. (contractor).

Architect and Engineer around the World, 1919–39

Decontextualising the engineering construct

4  Johnson Wax Corporation Building, Racine (Wisc.), 1936–39. Interior, view to the south-east, 1969. F. L. Wright (arch.), M. Glickman, W. W. Peters (engs.), B. Wiltscheck (contractor).

91

92

Roland May

Emphasising the building’s engineering aspects The architect as engineer

5  Open-Air School for the Healthy Child, Amsterdam, 1929/30. Northern rear side of the building, c. 1930. J. Duiker (arch./eng.), B. Bijvoet, J. G. Wiebenga (preliminary studies).

Architect and Engineer around the World, 1919–39

Staging of modernity

6  Palace of Industry and Trade, Brno, 1927/28. Interior view, 1928. J. Kalous (arch.), J. Valenta (eng.), Ferrobeton (contractor).

93

94

Roland May

Interpreting the engineering design in a sophisticated way Thinking architecture and structural engineering together

7  Tour Perret, Grenoble, 1924/25. Photography taken after 1925. Société Perret Frères (arch./eng./contractor).

Architect and Engineer around the World, 1919–39

Streamline design

8  Bronx–Whitestone Bridge, New York City, 1937–39. View from Queens to the north, c. 1940. O. H. Ammann, A. Dana (engs.), L. S. Moisseiff (consult. eng.), A. Embury II (arch.), American Bridge Co., Frederick Snare Corp. (contractors).

95

96

Roland May

Shaping in concordance with the engineering design The designing engineer

9  Salginatobel Bridge, near Schiers, 1929/30. The construction site seen from the south-west, 1930. R. Maillart (eng.), R. Coray (centring), Prader & Cie. (contractor).

Architect and Engineer around the World, 1919–39

High technology brought into shape

10  Market hall, Reims, 1927–29. Interior view, 1929. É. Maigrot (arch.), E. Freyssinet (eng.), Entreprises Limousin (contractor).

97

98

Roland May

On the path towards a functionalist design The engineer as an integral element of the avant-garde

11  People’s House with covered market, Clichy, 1937–39. Upper floor during its use as an event hall, c. 1940. E. Beaudouin, M. Lods (archs.), V. Bodiansky (eng.), J. Prouvé (sheet metal work), Schwartz-Hautmont S. A. (contractor).

Architect and Engineer around the World, 1919–39

Interlocking structure and design language

12  Edifício Gustavo Capanema, Rio de Janeiro, 1937–43. Façade with brise-soleil to Rua Araújo Porto Alegre, 1945. L. Costa, J. Machado Moreira, C. Leão, A. Eduardo Reidy, E. Vasconcelos, O. Niemeyer (archs.), Le Corbusier (consult. arch.), E. H. Baumgart (eng.), Santiago e Kiritchenko (contractor).

99

100

Roland May

The slightly refined engineer’s form Dialogue between architecture and civil engineering

13  Aircraft hangar, Tårnby-Kastrup, 1936/37. View from south-west, c. 1938. C. V. Jensen, M. P. Eskildsen (engs.), C. Ostenfeld (consult. eng.), Manniche & Hartmann A/S, C. G. Thorborg Akts. (contractors).

Architect and Engineer around the World, 1919–39

Architecture with a well-tempered engineering attitude

14  Factory for screws, Gerlafingen, 1931/32. Interior view, c. 1932. R. Maillart (eng.), H. Kruck (arch.).

101

Italian Modernisms Structure and Architecture in the Interwar Period

Tullia Iori, Sergio Poretti †

Towards the end of the 19th century the development of reinforced concrete helped to replace the tectonics of masonry with the tectonics of the frame. Italy was no exception to this trend, and this new technique spread very rapidly all over the country. With a difference, however: instead of simply replacing masonry, reinforced concrete was gradually introduced into the construction and used together with masonry, creating a sort of ‹mixed construction›. This was due to the continuity that characterised modernisation in Italy in general and the construction industry in particular, given that most worksites were small and artisanal: reinforced concrete, made on site, could be inserted without causing too much havoc. This also explains the rather unusual fact that the advent of reinforced concrete coincided with the sudden and almost total disappearance of steel frames. In the interwar years, when Italian architecture turned from an eclectic to a modern language, the reinforced concrete structure of buildings was mostly ‹hidden›. The renewal of architectural language was only indirectly influenced by the new structure, and the modern language maintained a masonry nature. In parallel, however, the figurative strategies used to hide the structure gave rise to a modernist trend where the structure became the key feature of the representation. A repertoire of visionary structures, rarely built, enriched the debate about the relationship between architecture and engineering. In this panorama of hidden structures and structural visions, the works of Pier Luigi Nervi were outstanding, while remaining fully permeated by the same Italian spirit.1

Hidden Structures While their façades remained often in a rather traditional style, the works built during this period masked both regular frameworks and courageous structural solutions. Moreover, all branches of Italian engineering had developed enormously during the 19th century, and in the early 20th century they focused collectively on increasing knowledge about the behaviour of large reinforced concrete structures. Given the difficulty of applying classical elastic theory due to the anisotropy of reinforced concrete and the problems caused by the different nature of its components (first and foremost cracking of the cement in the tension zone), studies immediately began on its plastic behaviour, while research focused on the phenomena of ultimate strength and the effects of the states of co-action. From the very start research moved in two directions: on the one hand supported by contributions by Gustavo Colonnetti (1886– 1968), and on the other by Arturo Danusso (1880– 1968); although the paths of these two researchers diverged, their work led slowly but surely to the construction of much of Italy’s superb post-war building works.2 Given this context, it is not surprising that very sophisticated structures were hidden inside architectures still influenced by eclectic styles: for example, the roof of the Banchini Theatre in Prato (1923–25) and the internal structure of the Cinema Augusteo in Naples (1926–29, fig. 1), which were both designed by Pier Luigi Nervi (1891–1979)3 as a young engineer (and in general the large structures

104

Tullia Iori, Sergio Poretti †

1  Augusteo Theater, Naples, 1924–29, under construction. A. Foschini (arch.), P. L. Nervi (eng.).

2  The Academy of Physical Education, Roma, 1928–32, the gym under construction. E. Del Debbio (arch.), with A. Giannelli (eng.).

for the roofs and galleries of cinema halls built during that period). Another example is the roof of the gymnasium of Enrico Del Debbio’s (1891–1973) Roman Academy of Physical Education (1928–32, fig. 2). The structural design invented for the roof by the engineer Aristide Giannelli (1888–1970) was a series of eight Vierendeel beams joined together by an edge beam to create a plate that was so rigid it could simply rest on slender columns; this made it possible to create large openings in the walls, emphasised by a completely independent system of white Carrara marble architraves, frames and tympana. The structure remained well hidden by a ‹fake› ceiling with a criss-cross pattern.4

Italian Modernisms

In the eclectic modernisms of the 1910s and 20s, ‹hidden structures› were the result of the fact that architects and engineers worked separately; the architect was responsible for the formal design, which still depended completely on masonry, while the engineer was called on (often by the construction company) after the design had been formalised and asked to solve structural problems. In the first half of the 1930s, structure played a very different role in modernist experiments. In fact, reinforced concrete structures were considered one of the tools that could be used to overcome historicism in an attempt to achieve a truly modern architecture. This was the key topic of the Gruppo 7, a group of Italian architects formed in 1926 by Giuseppe Terragni (1904–43), Giuseppe Pagano (1896–1945) and others. During the first exhibition by the Movimento Italiano per l’Architettura Razionale (MIAR), to symbolise modernity, the group’s manifesto (fig. 3) used a concrete pillar with a visible reinforcement.5 At the same time, however, continuity with traditional construction had to be maintained, for several reasons: on the one hand, although the construction policy of the fascist regime supported the hegemony of reinforced concrete (and subsequent exclusion of steel frame constructions), it also reiterated the need to maintain the artisanal nature of the worksite with low mechanisation and a large unskilled workforce; on the other, it was the modern architects themselves who insisted that continuity with the past be the distinctive trait of Italian modernism. The figurative nature of architecture was another important element. The disputes between traditionalists and modernists remained within the boundaries of neo-idealism; it was the younger architects who were more forceful in reiterating the fact that architecture was an art and in refusing to ‹downgrade› it to a social science – which instead happened in the modern movement. This complex web of innovative goals and the desire to maintain masonry as well as the figurative nature of architecture were behind the most important experiments undertaken in the public

105

3  Manifesto of the first exhibition by the MIAR (Italian Movement for Rational Architecture), 1928.

works entrusted to young architects between 1931 and 1935. It was the designers themselves who explored complex and novel static solutions. However, the structural potential of the elastic frame, especially the chance to create big overhangs, did not lead to the ‹disintegration of the masonry envelope› (and as a result to a novel concept of form and space) which characterised both European rationalism and American organic architecture, albeit very differently; instead, in Italy, the frame led to extremely limited and indirect examples of modernity, part of an architectural configuration which overall maintained its masonry nature.

106

Tullia Iori, Sergio Poretti †

4  The Post Office in piazza Bologna, Rome, 1932–35. M. Ridolfi (arch.), with A. Giannelli (eng.), drawing by G. Capurso.

In the Post Office in Bologna Square in Rome (1932–35, fig. 4) by Mario Ridolfi (1904–84) and Giannelli, for example, the overall image is defined by the external concave/convex wall around the building. The bold structure of the building’s middle part is not directly visible. The eight frames in

the public hall span almost 10 m, and they continue over the postmen’s hall with 10 m-long cantilever beams, tapered at the intrados based on a parabolic curve. In addition, on the two upper floors, the columns along the rear façade are not aligned to the ground floor columns. The architectural repercussions of such a sophisticated structural solution can be found only in some ‹minor› traits: the continuous sloping ribbon window in the postmen’s hall, lighting from above on the back of the public hall, and the curtain wall in the centre of the rear façade.6 Another no less important example in Rome is the House of Arms (1933–36) by Luigi Moretti (1907–73). From outside this fencing hall looks like a compact masonry block completely covered with Carrara marble slabs; a massive wall is above the horizontal windows. The interior, which is meant to look like a cave dug out of the block, is lighted from above. This enhances the continuity between the walls and the ceiling. In fact, the abstract forms hide an extremely bold reinforced concrete structure (fig. 5), dimensioned by Giorgio Baroni (1907– 68). It is made up of two huge staggered cantilevers with completely separate foundations: a very

5  The House of Arms, Rome, 1933–36: the roof under construction. L. Moretti (arch.), with G. Baroni (eng.).

Italian Modernisms

6  Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, Rome, 1937–43. G. Guerrini, E. Lapadula, M. Romano (archs.), photo from 2017.

sophisticated solution that Moretti had to justify as necessary because a sewer passed right through the centre of the building.7 During the ‹autarky period› the role of structure in architecture changed yet again. In 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia and the League of Nations imposed heavy sanctions: no state was allowed to sell strategic materials to Italy, particularly metals. The fascist regime promptly declared autarky, or economic self-sufficiency, a national goal. The building strategy included in autarky was to increase continuity with tradition and forbid the use of reinforced concrete, which was seen as not being ‹Italian› enough. Even though this directive was often ignored, masonry in architecture was now forced into a more emphatic appearance.

In the ‹Littorio style› of this period (a 20th-century variation of the ubiquitous eclectic historicism in urban centres), this approach meant a return to a more traditionalist version of mixed construction – relatively modest spans, more solids than voids, and the absence of thin marble cladding. Peculiar was the situation in the case of monumental works, which were demanded by the fascist regime to have a particularly pronounced rhetoric of autarky, such as the district in Rome built for the planned 1942 World's Fair (E42). Here, paradoxically, the anti-autarkic structure of reinforced concrete served as the hidden scaffolding of a stage set, which intended to make the masonry construction appear more grandiose and to highlight the link with ancient Rome.

107

108

Tullia Iori, Sergio Poretti †

One example is the grand loggia in the Civiltà Italiana Palace (1938–43 and 1951–53, fig. 6). Its vaulted system, made with travertine blocks, is authentic and the arches are not fake. But the loggia looks like a colossal masonry structure thanks to a hidden reinforced-concrete frame: This frame not only supports the large floors (spanning 10 m), but also invisibly divides the vaulted system into horizontal sections, supporting it floor by floor.8

7  Tensile Structure skyscraper, 1928. G. Fiorini (eng.).

Visionary Structures Simultaneously, however, the same figurative traits behind the strategies used to conceal the structure gave rise to a modernist trend which we could call ‹visionary›, in which the supporting structure became the key feature of the representation. This recalls the age-old penchant of Italian architecture for a scenographic monumentalism, which became decidedly structural in the drawings of Antonio Sant’Elia (1888–1916) or Virgilio Marchi (1895–1960) and in the more verisimilar but no less fantastic structures imagined by Ottorino Aloisio (1902–86) for a fascist spa (Terme Littorie, 1926) or the University of Sport (1928). From the point of view of pure representation, a modern reinforced concrete structure can prefigure a technological future and yet, at the same time, conjure up a timeless atmosphere of archaic classicism. To understand just how much this characteristic fascinated young architects, just leaf through Adalberto Libera’s (1903–63) drawings of structural figures: the reinforced concrete Pantheon (1926), the FIL Isolators Pavilion (1928), the SCAC Pavilion (1928–30, planned for the Milan Fair) and the perspective for the competition for the new Auditorium in Rome (1935), with its closeknit network of tapered frames as a backdrop for the huge statue.9 These drawings were quite common in the repertoire of contemporary architects; they reveal the duality between the figurative traits of Italian modernism (reflecting its enduring position among the arts, together with painting and sculpture) and the designers' feelings about the scientific dimension of construction, enhanced by the echo of experiments in the field of engineering. There was no end to the debate about the relationship between art and science (which idealistically sublimates the relationship between architecture and engineering); structural visions were a genuine part of that debate, representing the coexistence of form and technique, yet fully respecting the hierarchical order by which the latter is subservient to the former.

Italian Modernisms

8  Competition design for the Palazzo del Littorio, I degree, 1934: façade along via dell’Impero. G. Terragni et al. (archs.).

The ‹tensile structure› (fig. 7) designed by the futurist engineer Guido Fiorini (1897–1966) was part of this scenario. Fiorini was famous chiefly for having caught the imagination of Le Corbusier. In 1928 the ideation of the «radiator» skyscraper (later, part of the Plan of Algiers), with its floors stayed by cables to a compressed central nucleus, was behind the many ‹architectural visions› initially displayed at the second MIAR Exhibition in 1931 and later published in Casabella and Quadrante.10 The importance of the relationship between art and science, however, was present not only as a key feature in drawings by architects, but also in much more elaborate design experiments. By trying to satisfy the regime’s request for a grandiose style, these design experiments significantly enriched the repertoire of visionary modernism. This was the case of the great ‹hanging wall›, submitted in 1934 by the Gruppo Milanese (headed by Terragni and Luigi Vietti) for the first degree competition for the Palazzo del Littorio in Rome (fig. 8).11 Rivalry with the Basilica of Maxentius, a prerequisite of the tender, was entrusted to a huge concave wall of porphyry, 80 m long and 25 m high. Rather than resting on the ground, the wall

‹hung› from the ends of two trusses. The wall, cut in the middle to accommodate the platform from where Mussolini was to speak, was equipped with bundles of tie-rods (in very pure iron) fanning out from the two points of suspension along the tension isostatic lines; porphyry blocks, arranged along the compression isostatic lines, created upside-down arches. The solution combined the intrinsic monumental value of large blocks with the futuristic tensile structure. The duality between art and science is immediately visible in the representation of the façade. The chance to ‹see› how the internal tension developed was provided by a modern research tool, photoelasticity, which just one year earlier had been tested in the Experimental Laboratory of Models and Construction by Danusso.12 The design of the façade was generated by scientific study, and only by chance did the isostatic lines – which increased in number towards the platform – accentuate the dramatic effect of the monumental backdrop. The most spectacular image of visionary modernism is undoubtedly the monumental ‹Arch of the Empire› which was to be built for the E42. It reformulated the problem of the relationship between

109

110

Tullia Iori, Sergio Poretti †

architecture and engineering as part of the broader issue of autarky.13 The first proposal (fig. 9) submitted in 1937 by a team of engineers headed by Gino Còvre (1892–1981) was rejected due to the anti-autarkic character of their proposal. In fact, if such a spectacular, 600 m-span arch (with a panoramic railway, belvedere, restaurant and dance hall) was to be built, the structure needed to be made entirely of steel. By contrast, the second proposal submitted in 1938 by Libera (and the engineer Vincenzo Di Berardino [† 1967]) was ‹autarkic›: It included a smaller arch, with a 200 m span, to be built in concrete without steel. Unfortunately, the

9  Project for the Monumental Arch in Rome’s E42 district, 600 m span, 1937. G. Còvre (eng.).

tests carried out by Danusso and Nervi (the latter arranged for a 1:10 scale model to be made to study the construction systems and ultimately deposited a patent for a special type of scaffolding) proved it was necessary to introduce a lightweight steel reinforcement. However, this dilution of the design’s autarkic nature led to another decisive proposal: an aluminium arch, proposed by Còvre, with a 330 m span. The autarkic purity of this last version was thwarted in the final drawings. In fact, according to new tests led by Giannelli, the rhomboidal section in Avional alloy had to be made more rigid using inner steel frames; the latter were so close-knit and robust they turned the arch into an aluminium-clad steel structure. Despite the fact that Mussolini liked this solution – which was still an option on April 1940, when he inspected a model in the garden of the School of Engineering in Rome – it was abandoned along with the construction of the E42 itself. The Arch of the Empire passed into history as proof of the collective and contagious character of visionary modernism in the late 1930s. The Role of Pier Luigi Nervi In the interwar period, although some daring concealed structures were built and even bolder visionary buildings were imagined, only a few engineers became somewhat relevant to the development of architecture. Most obvious was their influence in the numerous beautiful arch bridges and industrial buildings, in which structure and architecture overlapped. Then, out of this choir, emerged the architectural works by Pier Luigi Nervi. Nervi’s ingenious intuition of the static behaviour of structural forms would emerge clearly with the design of the Berta Stadium in Florence (1930– 32, fig. 10), which would soon be recognised as a masterpiece of the new Italian architecture. Its exposed structure – coming out of the blue – actually came about for a very practical reason: The client had run out of money for finishing the building

Italian Modernisms

10  G. Berta Stadium, Florence, 1930–32. P. L. Nervi (arch./eng.), n. d.

according to the original plan. The 22 m cantilever roof (shaped matching the bending moment diagram), the helicoidal staircases (the criss-cross design of the beams solved a complex torsional problem), and the futuristic marathon tower were

regarded as original examples of modern architecture. In leading Italian and international journals, the stadium was judged (by Sigfried Giedion, for example) as a sign of an ‹Italian revival› on the way to modernism.

111

112

Tullia Iori, Sergio Poretti †

In the wake of success, Nervi found himself involved in the debate over modernity and innovation that was raging in Italy under autarky. He joined in by writing articles (dealing not only with structural design issues) in magazines like Quadrante and Casabella. At this point, he designed a series of futuristic-inspired items, real ‹visionary structures›, none of which were to be accomplished: the Floating Hotel (1932), based on an ingenious method to reduce the intensity of wave action and achieve stabilisation; the Flag Monument (1932), a slender tower, 250 m high, which was stabilised by suspending a heavy pendulum on its top; the Revolving House, tracking the sun’s position (fig. 11); and the Water and Light Palace (1939), which was among the visionary proposals put forward for the construction of the E42 district. Nervi’s participation as a prominent figure in architectural debates was brought to a close with

11  The Revolving House, 1934. P. L. Nervi (arch./eng.).

the outbreak of war, which concluded his first life (Nervi had two more lives: the second dedicated to the ferrocemento and the third as a ‹star architect› all over the world). While the debate over autarky was raging, Nervi went back to explore the unknown potentialities of reinforced concrete by designing some airplane hangars for the Italian Air Force (the first were built in Orvieto in 1936). The structure consisted of two series of arches that were rotated with respect to the imposts of the vault and intersected one another. This design solution allowed him to fully exploit the potentialities of reinforced concrete, and above all its monolithic nature. He overcame inherent difficulties related to the complex mathematical calculations needed for these statically indeterminate structures, carrying out accurate tests on celluloid scale models. This was an absolutely new approach in Italy. It was the first Italian 3D scale elastic model. The trials were carried out in Danusso’s laboratory. A second series of six airplane hangars was built in 1939–42 (two hangars located in Orbetello (fig. 12), two in Orvieto and two in Torre del Lago). Both series featured arches crossing one another, but while in the first hangars they were cast on site with the help of a huge costly timber formwork, in the second they were prefabricated in little parts on the ground, then assembled into place on a light metallic tubular scaffolding, thereby restoring the monolithic conformation and structural continuity of the whole. This is the real start of the ‹Nervi System›, a completely new way of designing and constructing reinforced concrete structures: structural prefabrication, as Nervi himself called this patented solution, combined with ferrocemento, a new material invented in 1943, a more autarkic combination of steel and concrete, producing very stiff and highly elastic slabs that were easy to shape into almost any form and exceptionally economical. After the Second World War, the Nervi System allowed the masterpieces of Nervi’s maturity.14

Italian Modernisms

113

12  Airplane hangars, 2nd series, Orbetello, 1940–42, the structure before being covered. P. L. Nervi (arch./eng.).

Conclusion The interwar period was a bad time for Italy: For almost all the time the country found itself in the grip of the fascist regime, which ultimately dragged it into the catastrophe of war. But, unpredictably, the autarkic period also paved the way for a new birth, after the war. The continuity between the

autarkic experimentation and the techniques used in reconstruction, up until the years of the Italian ‹economic miracle›, is crystal clear and this continuity led to the connection between the largescale works designed by engineers and the architectures of the 1950s and 1960s, which now appear to be one of the mainstays of the unique Italian style.

114

Tullia Iori, Sergio Poretti †

1 For more information about the topic, see Poretti 2013. 2 Iori 2007. 3 For information about Nervi’s work before the Second World War, see Greco 2008 and Iori 2009. 4 Capomolla 2004/05. 5 Iori 2001. 6 For more information about the building, see Poretti 1990. 7 Capomolla 2004/05. 8 Casciato / Poretti 2002. 9 Muntoni 1989.

10 Zorgno 1988. 11 Poretti / Iori 2004. 12 The engineer Italo Bertolini, head of the laboratory (and not engineer Ernesto Saliva, the official member of the design group), applied the photoelastic procedure to a model in phenolite of the wall of the façade and obtained the pattern of the isostatic lines, which was then used to design the wall. 13 Iori / Poretti 2015. 14 Iori / Poretti 2010.

Capomolla 2004/05 R. Capomolla: Roma. Il foro Mussolini: Strutture nascoste, Casabella 69, 2004/05, no. 728/729, 12–19.

d’Arte Contemporanea del Museo Provinciale d’Arte di Trento (ed.): Adalberto Libera. Opera completa (Milan 1989) 34–51.

Casciato / Poretti 2002 M. Casciato / S. Poretti (eds): Il Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana. Architettura e costruzione del Colosseo quadrato (Milan 2002). Greco 2008 C. Greco: Pier Luigi Nervi. Von den ersten Patenten bis zur Ausstellunghalle in Turin 1917–1948 (Lucerne 2008). Iori 2001 T. Iori: Il cemento armato in Italia dalle origini alla seconda guerra mondiale (Rome 2001). Iori 2007 T. Iori: L’ingegneria del »miracolo italiano«, Rassegna di architettura e urbanistica 42, 2007, no. 121/122, 33–59. Iori 2009 T. Iori: Pier Luigi Nervi (Milan 2009). Iori / Poretti 2010 T. Iori / S. Poretti (eds.): Pier Luigi Nervi. Architettura come Sfida. Roma. Ingegno e costruzione (Milan 2010). Iori / Poretti 2015 T. Iori / S. Poretti (eds.): SIXXI 2. Storia dell'ingegneria strutturale in Italia (Rome 2015). Muntoni 1989 A. Muntoni: 1926-28 – dalla Scuola di architettura di Roma alla Prima esposizione di architettura razionale, in: Sezione

Poretti 1990 S. Poretti: Progetti e costruzione dei Palazzi delle Poste a Roma 1933–1935 (Rome 1990). Poretti 2013 S. Poretti: Italian Modernisms. Architecture and construction in the twentieth century (Rome 2013). Poretti / Iori 2004 S. Poretti / T. Iori: I progetti romani e l’autarchia, in: C. Baglione / E. Susani (eds.): Pietro Lingeri 1894–1968 (Milan 2004) 76–97. Zorgno 1988 A. M. Zorgno: Fiorini – Le Corbusier 1931–35 (Turin 1988).

Image Sources 1, 10 Maxxi Architettura, fondo P. L. Nervi, Rome. Maxxi Architettura, fondo E. Del Debbio, Rome. 2 3 Private archive. 4 Drawing by Gianluca Capurso. 5, 7, 9 Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome. 6 Sergio Poretti (†), Rome, 2017. 8 Archive Pietro Lingeri, Milan. 11 Archive Touring Club Italia, Milan. 12 Centro Studi Archivio della Comunicazione, Parma.

Not Just the Dirty Work Architects and Engineers in Britain between the Wars

David Yeomans

The title for this paper is taken from the American sociologist Everett Hughes (1897–1983), who coined the phrase «the dirty work».1 He pointed out that in all areas of work there are those who enjoy the prestige, and possibly greater financial rewards, but who rely on the work of others who do the ‹dirty work›. It might not be physically dirty work, perhaps simply mundane or routine tasks, essential work but attracting no prestige. An obvious example is the relationship between hospital doctors and nurses – the latter not expected to make any clinical decisions over the care of patients even if, because of their constant observation of the patients, they might be in a position to know as well as the doctor what care was required. We will come back to that. When steel and reinforced concrete frames came into use in building, it was the engineers who were asked to carry out the detailed design of the frames because that was beyond the competence of the architects. That it was seen as ‹dirty work› was made clear by William Brown (1877–1937) writing in 1914 that it «was the architect, and the architect alone, who should determine the position of all main girders, stanchions and supports».2 Clearly, at that time no true collaboration between the two professions was expected in the development of the design; engineers were to work out the sizes and the detailing of structural members but not to question their disposition. By the 1950s that had changed, at least for some engineers and some architects. Robert Furneaux Jordan (1905–78), writing about the collaboration between Ove Arup and Architects Co

partnership for the design of the Brynmawr Rubber Factory (1946–51), said: Much of the merit of the Brynmawr factory in design and execution is due to the extraordinary close co-ordination between engineering and architecture […] the engineers understood throughout the aesthetic aims of the architects and themselves made an aesthetic as well as structural contribution. 3

The factory was based on a series of thin concrete shells, novel in Britain at the time. Similarly in 1951 Felix Samuely, discussing the design of the Skylon, a major feature of the Festival of Britain, observed that it was unusual for him to be presented with a completed design, a comment that clearly indicated that he was used to working in collaboration with architects at the early design stage.4 The questions to be raised therefore are how did that change take place, and to what extent was this new pattern of collaboration between architects and engineers, as seen in the examples with Arup and Samuely, the new common pattern of work. The first of these questions requires that we look to see where there was an obvious collaboration in the use of novel structural forms made possible by either steel or reinforced concrete. Of course that does not tell us whether this was the architect making demands that the engineer then had to find means to provide for, or whether the engineer was suggesting things that the architect might then want to adopt. The latter might occur where the engineer saw possibilities that were not apparent to the architect. It would not have helped their prestige that in the beginning the engineers were largely

116

David Yeomans

employed by contractors. There was no fee structure for employing consulting engineers. Work was put out to tender, and the contractors would carry out the design of the structure as a necessary preliminary to estimating their costs. This meant that those who did establish themselves as consulting engineers had learned their trade by working for contractors. A good example is Sven Bylander (1877–1943), a Swedish-American who initially worked in Britain for the Waring White Building Company. He was principally a steel designer producing structures for The Ritz Hotel and Selfridges department store in London. However, he also designed the Bryant and May factory in Liverpool, which was an early example of flat slab construction in Britain. Oscar Faber Oscar Faber (1886–1956), who had carried out research into the behaviour of reinforced concrete, began work with Trollop and Coles but with an agreement that he could take on his own consulting work, a useful way of setting up his own practice. Although Faber designed a number of industrial buildings he was also concerned with their appearance, eventually giving lectures on the subject to the Institution of Civil Engineers.5 Thus, he might well have felt that he could have made more of a contribution to architecture than he did. When writing on engineering for students of the Architectural Association, he advised them that they should engage an engineer as early as possible in the design process.6 An important client at the time was Herbert Baker with whom he not only provided structural advice but also the designs for the services at the extensions to the Bank of England. Subsequently the design of building services, as well as structural design, became an important part of his business, which in 1937 provided the service design for the Earls Court Exhibition Centre, designed by the American architect C. Howard Crane (1885–1952).7

His partner in this was J. R. Kell (1902–83) with whom he produced a textbook on heating and air conditioning, which has remained a standard work to this day.8 His only notable work in architecture was the structural design he provided for the Royal Horticultural Hall in London (1925–28) with architects Easton and Robertson. The inspiration for this design may well have been the market halls in Breslau (1906–08), and as Faber subsequently used a similar design for a market hall in Nairobi (1932) one wonders how much influence he might have had on the London building’s form. Owen Williams Owen Williams (1890–1969) had been one of the chief designers for the Trussed Concrete Steel Company, which introduced an American patent system to Britain. However, he set up in private practice following the First World War, and it was his work with Maxwell Ayrton (1874–1960) for the British Empire Exhibition of 1924/25 that surely raised the possibility of a close collaboration between architects and engineers. It seems likely that Williams was appointed as the engineer rather than Oscar Faber because of the latter’s connection with a contractor. Concrete had been chosen for the buildings because it was deemed an appropriate material for temporary buildings, but it had to be given some architectural treatment. Until then reinforced concrete was regarded in Britain as an engineer’s material rather than an architect’s, used for warehouses and industrial buildings. British architects had not followed the French enthusiasm for baroque forms in concrete. Opinions on the resulting architecture of the exhibition buildings was divided, with one critic complaining that the classical tradition died hard so that the concrete was used to little effect.9 Even the domes of the stadium sat on a building that drew on an image of masonry construction.10

Not Just the Dirty Work

In contrast, Harry Barnes (1870–1935) in the Architectural Review wrote of Williams’s work with Ayrton that: Theirs was the marriage of true minds to which there has been no impediment […] they have shown the possibility of collaboration and co-operation between architect and engineer, each enhancing the work of the other.11

Events were to prove Barnes wrong, but he did recognise the possibility of, and perhaps the need for, collaboration between the two professions. Williams was certainly interested in such collaboration. Much of Williams’s work was as a bridge engineer and his next opportunity to work with Ayrton was on bridge designs, particularly those for the A9 road in Scotland where they produced some interesting designs between them. Naturally Williams took the lead for these bridges in determining their overall form and they vary from small arch bridges to rather more dramatic structures (fig. 1). In all of these we may assume that Ayrton was responsible for the careful detailing of the concrete shapes. However, when it then came to building work with Ayrton as the lead consultant things did not go well. They did three buildings together but none made any expression of their

concrete structures. Although H. A. N. Brockman (1901–80) described the warehouse for Pilkingtons (1928–30) as «impressive» and a carefully considered work, the elevations proclaimed it to be a brick building in spite of its reinforced concrete frame.12 This could not have pleased Williams, and when Ayrton chose to speak at the RIBA on the aesthetics of bridge design there was a rather public break between the two.13 He must have been unhappy about being simply relegated to doing the ‹dirty work› for Ayrton’s buildings. Williams was in much the same position for the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street (1927/28). It was an office building with no presses to house and so there were no structural difficulties. However, that was not so for the Daily Express building (1929–31) built a little further down the road a few years later – a complete contrast in both architecture and engineering. There Williams is said to have obtained the commission because he was able to show how to support an existing building above the basement housing the presses, increasing the space available by building a concrete structure to carry the steel frame above. However, it is clear from his surviving drawings and reports at the time that he did more than that. The building had to cantilever

1  Findhorn Bridge, Inverness, 1924–26. Owen Williams (eng.), Maxwell Ayrton (arch.), photo from c. 1926.

117

118

David Yeomans

2  Daily Express building, Fleet Street, London, 1929–31. Ellis and Clarke, (archs.), O. Williams (eng.), photo before 1933.

3  Daily Express building, Fleet Street, London, 1929–31, elevation.

over Shoe Lane to provide a bay for unloading the paper deliveries (fig. 2), and the change from the structure of the basement press-room to accommodate the planning of the floors above involved a 2 ft reduction in span. Chermayeff’s review of the building was fulsome in praise of Owen Williams’s contribution to the design.14 What was more striking about the Daily Express building was the contrast between an early Ellis and Clarke sketch and the final treatment of the building. Their early sketch was in ‹Fleet Street bombastic› style, rather like the nearby Daily Telegraph building.15 In the event the building had a modern curtain wall, which is said to have been the idea of Bertram Gallannaugh (1900–57).16 The structure provided by Owen Williams must have had a considerable influence on the overall form of the building and, although we have no idea how much he might have contributed to its external appearance, he certainly took an interest in the treatment of the curtain wall because there are sketches for it in the Owen Williams archive that show that he was engaged with the idea (fig. 3). Comparing the curtain-wall treatment actually used by Ellis and Clarke with an Owen Williams sketch gives the impression that he would have liked the cladding to be more expressive of the structure behind. He did not get his way on that, but his consolation prize was to be given the commission as both architect and engineer for the paper’s Glasgow (1936/37) and Manchester (1936–39) buildings. He seems to have directly copied Ellis and Clarke’s details for the cladding for those buildings but at Manchester, where he used flat-slab construction, there was no temptation to have the framing expressed in the cladding. In fact the view from the street to the press hall below required uninterrupted glazing. Williams’s best-known building was the Wets Building for the Boots pharmaceutical company (1931/32), one of several where he acted as both architect and engineer. In these he was able to explore his ideas for an architecture of concrete, but his great disappointment was over his project

Not Just the Dirty Work

4  Owen Williams’s design for the Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, London, probably drawn in 1929.

for the Dorchester Hotel (1929–31). He obtained the commission for this prestige building on a prominent site in Park Lane through Sir Robert McAlpine (1847–1934), who had been the contractor for the Empire Exhibition buildings and was a director of the Dorchester House Syndicate Ltd. The architects originally appointed had failed to come up with a satisfactory scheme and McAlpine was aware of Williams’s architectural ambitions. It would have been a fine scheme for him and we know what he proposed from a drawing and model (fig. 4). Sadly the client became nervous about the possible appearance of the building and asked Williams if he would work with Curtis Green (1875–1960) as consulting architect. No, he would not, and he promptly sent the drawings for the building to Curtis Green in a taxi.17 By that time construction of the building had reached the ground floor level and Curtis Green had no option but to continue with Williams’s plan. So what we have is a building planned by Owen Williams in clothes by Curtis

Green, not much collaboration there. In fact Curtis Green changed the original horizontal emphasis of the Williams design to a largely vertical emphasis. Ove Arup If Williams could not work with architects, Ove Arup (1895–1988) could, although he began his collaboration with architects as the engineer for a firm of contractors. He worked originally for Christiani & Nielsen, who built bridges and industrial structures, but moved to J. L. Kier & Co for the opportunity to work on buildings. In that capacity he worked with Berthold Lubetkin (1901–90) and Tecton, first on buildings for the London (1933/34) and Dudley (1936/37) zoos and then, most significantly, on Highpoint I, a block of flats in Highgate, London (1934/35). The significance of the Highpoint project was first that Arup showed how to construct the building. Based on

119

120

David Yeomans

his experience of building silos with Christiani & Nielsen, he devised climbing formwork for casting the concrete walls. He also showed how the structure, which had originally been intended as a simple frame, could instead be based upon walls (fig. 5).18 We can see from the comparative plans how this eliminated awkward columns and beams within the rooms. At the same time he wrote a useful article in which he showed how to build flats in reinforced concrete without such inconvenient beams and columns.19 What was used was a central ‹spine beam›, planned to be on the division between rooms on either side. The Arup-Lubetkin team then entered and won a competition for the design of working-class flats in reinforced concrete, which used the same spine-beam principle

as at Highpoint.20 Subsequent local authority flats by Arup and Lubetkin were not built until after the war although they also collaborated on the Finsbury Health Centre (1935–38).21 Arup’s article Planning in Reinforced Concrete explained clearly how frames could be avoided in reinforced concrete. The article illustrated a number of other projects, which used the principles he was advocating, but it is not clear how many of these came to fruition nor how close his working relationship with their architects might have been. For those who were prepared to recognise it, his collaboration with Lubetkin and Tecton at Highpoint was a well-publicised demonstration of the advantages of working with an engineer.

5  Alternative ‹frames› for Highpoint flats, Highgate, London, 1934/35, reproduced in the Architects’ Journal. Berthold Lubetkin (arch.), Ove Arup (eng.).

Not Just the Dirty Work

121

6  De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, under construction, 1934. Deep plate girders in the roof from which a floor was suspended are visible on the upper right. Serge Chermayeff, Erich Mendelsohn (archs.); Felix Samuely, Cyril Helsby, Conrad Wilson Hamann (engs.).

Felix Samuely For a brief period Arup was fortunate in having Felix Samuely (1902–59) working with him, and we must wonder how much the two gained from each other. Samuely came to England in 1933 having first had a practice in Berlin but then working in Russia for a period. He first worked with Arup at Kiers, but very quickly the opportunity came for him to design a steel frame structure for the De La Warr Pavilion (1934/35). This building was the result of a competition won by Serge Chermayeff (1900–96) and Samuely’s fellow émigré Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953). The architects had assumed it would be a reinforced concrete building, but it must have been immediately clear to an engineer that this was impossible and Samuely joined with two other engineers,

Cyril Helsby and Conrad Wilson Hamann (1906– 86), to design a welded-steel structure. Welded steel was fairly novel in England at the time, but Helsby had already designed a welded-steel building and published an article on it in 1932, of which Samuely must have been aware.22 What was needed was a flat soffit for the ceilings of the lounge on the first floor and the restaurant below. That was achieved by a welded frame in which the primary beams were no deeper than the secondary joists. Such a structure was made possible by welding supplementary plates onto the webs of the channels of the primary frame. Welding was essential in this part of the building and welded plate girders in the roof that support the first floor are just visible in construction photographs. And welding was also essential for the cantilevers that support the balcony (fig. 6).

122

David Yeomans

There was no question in this building of the engineers working with the architects over the preliminary design; it was an example of where the engineers simply had to accept what the architects had designed and make it work structurally. It was not much more than doing the ‹dirty work›, although the structure required considerable engineering

7  Lawn Road Flats, Hampstead, London, 1934. Plan and section of a single flat. Wells Coates (arch.).

8  Diagram from Architectural Review to explain the spine beam layout of a floor, 1935.

ingenuity to achieve what the architects wanted.23 However, things were probably different for other buildings that Samuely did, and we can see the advantages of working closely with a consulting engineer from his work with Wells Coates (1895– 1958). Coates, who had begun work in Britain as a product and interior designer, made his mark architecturally with the Lawn Road Flats (1933/34), which can reasonably claim to be the first Modern Movement building in Britain. It comprised a series of single-room apartments with a small kitchen and bathroom and with balcony access. Coates used the Helical Bar Company to provide the structure.24 This company had provided a simple frame, which resulted in columns in the corners of the apartments, but it is surely clear from the plan (fig. 7) that walls could have been used.25 Had Coates gone to Arup he might have been given that instead. Coates then designed a major apartment block, Embassy Court (1934/35), on the Brighton and Hove seafront with Samuely as structural engineer. For this project Samuely intended to use a Hungarian system called Diagrid to avoid downstand beams within the flats, but the local authority would not approve it. In the event he used a spine beam layout, which kept the beam over cupboards built at the back of the living room with columns placed next to door openings. Samuely used this spine beam arrangement for other buildings. He used it for Highfield Court flats (1933–35) with A. V. Pilichowski (1907–82), for which an article in Architectural Review sought to explain the structure. It might seem an obvious arrangement to us today, but it seems that many architects were still thinking in terms of columns and beams. Hence the analogy with the spine and ribs of a fish used in the article (fig. 8). Samuely also used a spine beam layout for Whittingehame College (1935/36), working for the same architect, and for the Gilbey Gin Company offices (1935– 37), where the spine beam formed a wall of the air-handling duct. However, the clearest example of his collaboration with an architect is the

Not Just the Dirty Work

123

Palace Gate Flats (1937–39) for Wells Coates. This used a 3/2 planning arrangement, possibly influenced by Hans Scharoun’s apartments at the Werkbundsiedlung, Breslau (1929). Wells Coates’s more intricate arrangement combined three storeys at the back for every two at the front; three floors of bedroom, service spaces and corridor occupied the height of two living room floors. For this Samuely used wall structures as beams to achieve Wells Coates’s ideas, a structure illustrated at the time in Architectural Review (fig. 9), although one wonders how many readers understood the drawing.26 What is ‹Dirty Work›? So far this division of labour into the prestige work and the ‹dirty work› has been rather simplistic. I have assumed that there were those engineers who did the routine work of detailing beams and columns of frame buildings and those who collaborated actively in the development of the design, producing buildings with structures that facilitated better planning. In fact it was more complex than that because, while the engineering of some buildings can be little more than routine work, more complex structures may require more complex engineering, which it might be difficult for the ordinary engineering office to provide. Not every engineering office in the 1950s would have been able to design the shells for the Brynmawr Factory with which I began this discussion, and we know that Ove Arup’s partner Ronald S. Jenkins (1907–75) was the shell design specialist within the firm. We also know that it was Samuely who designed the reinforcing details for the ramps at the London Zoo Penguin Pool, when he was working for Arup at Kier’s in 1933, calculations apparently produced over a weekend. An engineering office will include a range of skills and a range of interests. Some engineers will be interested in collaborating at a faceto-face level with architects in the development

9  Palace Gate Flats, London, 1939. Explanatory drawing of Samuely’s structure from the Architectural Review. Wells Coates (arch.), Felix Samuely (eng.).

of the basic design. Others will be interested in structural design simply as a complex engineering problem. However, there will be a few engineers who combine those skills and interests. We know that Samuely had engineering skills that not all possessed, and wrote papers that dealt with such engineering matters, but he was also interested in the relation of structure to architectural form. Arup demonstrated a similar range of interests but was clearly able to attract engineers who could specialise in doing the ‹hard sums›.27 We may reasonably presume that this division of labour, apparent in the design of the Brynmawr Factory, existed within all offices of any reasonable size. While Samuely collaborated directly with Powell and Moya on the Skylon (1950/51), modifying their original design to eliminate stays to the support pylons, the actual calculations were carried out by

124

David Yeomans

Jonathan Pritchard, a junior engineer within the office. At much the same time Frank Newby (1926– 2001), who was eventually to become head of the firm, was the junior who did calculations for a star beam to support the gallery in the assembly hall at Woodberry Down School (1949–54).28 There would be engineering firms who were able to attract engineers of a calibre to carry out such work, but the alternative was to hire in consultants who had developed specialist engineering skills, and it was not always the architectural form that required such skills. Foundations, for example, might pose special problems for otherwise perfectly simple frame buildings, especially where there were adjacent buildings. These might not have been within the capability of the contractor’s design office, which might seek outside assistance. Owen Williams obtained the commission for the Daily Express building because he was able to show how to support an existing building over the basement press-room. B. L. Hurst (1875–1943), founder of the firm that became Hurst Peirce and Malcolm, was known to be a specialist designer of foundations and did such work for contractors’ design offices.29 The term ‹dirty work› is clearly a more complex idea than proposed by Everett Hughes. What might appear to be ‹dirty work› to the architects might well acquire prestige within the consulting firm or within the engineering community at large. There will also be some engineers who will remain as specialist consultants, perhaps otherwise teaching and researching as university professors, but who are also able to market their special skills. There will be others who are attracted to the kind of firm, such as Arup’s, which have a reputation for providing such specialist design skills, and who develop careers within those firms. Whether the services provided by engineers are regarded by the architects who use them as simply the ‹dirty work› depends also upon the attitude of those architects and the extent to which they are willing to listen to their engineers and accept their ideas. Such collaboration also depends

upon the interest that the engineers might take in architecture. Some, such as Arup and Samuely, were interested in the relation of structure to architectural form and were interested in such collaboration.30 Others would simply be content to do the ‹dirty work›, perhaps taking a pride in doing that well. Doubtless in the post-war years larger firms became able to attract university-educated engineers interested in solving complex technical problems, and there would be a wide range of skills within such offices and different offices providing different kinds of service. Without more detailed records being available from engineers’ offices of the inter-war years, it is impossible for us to know today how much of the work might have been delegated to assistants, and we may reasonably assume that those who carried out the complex designs and calculations were often the principals of firms. Samuely’s work for Arup is an exception because the former had previously been the principal of a firm. The organisation of firms today is an issue for sociological research in which a distinction is drawn between routine work and knowledge work, although we can see that there must be different levels of the latter. Without more detailed records we can conjecture that those who were able to establish themselves as consulting engineers did so on the basis of attracting knowledge work of an advanced kind. Another area of involvement by consultants is the development of design codes. Regulations in Britain were prescriptive and their development tended to lag behind developments in construction methods. Thus the London Building Act failed to recognise the possibility of external masonry walls supported by steel or concrete frames until the Act was revised in 1909. Regulations for reinforced concrete were not put in place until 1915, and even then failed to deal adequately with flat-slab construction. Such problems were to be tackled by committees set up by the Building Research Station, and the relationship between the reports of those committees and the development of regulations is a story in itself.31 What

Not Just the Dirty Work

we are concerned with here is the effect of this on architects and their engineers. I have already made the point that Lawn Road Flats might have used load-bearing concrete walls, although they would have needed to be 7 in (17.5 cm) thick. F. S. Snow (1899–1976) reported some commercial flats built in 1934 that used what today we would call cross-wall construction with concrete walls of just that thickness.32 In contrast, Highpoint I was built with walls only 5 in (12.5 cm) thick, which was only possible because it was outside the LCC area. Doubtless Arup would have been aware of the deliberations of the Reinforced Concrete Structures Committee, which was to recommend a design code that would allow such a thickness. Arup was later to comment on this and say that he often had to fight battles with local authority building inspectors because of designs that he knew were adequate but which did not comply with the regulations. As I’ve already noted Samuely had the same kind of problem at Embassy Court, but he had earlier had difficulties with the London authorities over his design for the steelwork of Simpson’s Store, Piccadilly (1935/36). To avoid ground-floor columns that would have interrupted the shop window, the column loads were to be taken sideways. He proposed to do that with a welded structure two floors deep above the ground floor shop windows. This was not allowed by the authorities and he was obliged to have deep plate girders at every floor. While those administering the London Building Act might have insisted on the letter of the Act, authorities outside London, while nominally relying upon the same regulations, often proved more flexible, and consulting engineers, rather than those employed by contractors, were more likely to push at the boundaries of the regulations. The significance of Arup and Samuely is that they worked with Modern Movement architects, a group whose work was being promoted by the architectural press in Britain at the time, so that their work was brought to the attention of other architects. They were not promoted by these

journals directly because it was not common for the journals to report the names of consulting engineers.33 Some journal articles even suggested that the architect had devised the structure when it was sufficiently unusual, so that it seemed highly unlikely. What is clear from Highpoint I and the De La Warr Pavilion is that the structural design of both relied upon knowledge of design and construction methods that only the engineers could provide. Moreover, it was the knowledge of specialist engineers rather than that of those working for contractors content to produce the most basic and simplest frame structures. These were engineers who took an interest in the architecture that they were working on. The Conditions for Collaboration Of course, it takes two to tango, so that the architect must be prepared to work with the engineer and consider his ideas. That clearly did not happen for Owen Williams, although he was perhaps ahead of his time in wanting reinforced concrete to be visually expressed. By the time that Arup and Samuely were offering their services, the mood had changed and architects were looking to see what engineers could offer them. There were two requirements for that to work: architects had to be willing to take advice from their engineers and engineers had to be interested in architecture. Certainly Faber, Williams, Arup, and Samuely satisfied the second requirement. Williams did so to the extent that he was not interested in working with architects who did not share his architectural ideas. Immediately after the war there were two noticeable changes. It became common for engineers to be engaged at the recommendation of the architect, with the contractual situation being that they were appointed and paid for by the client. It also became the norm that the consulting engineer was named in journal reports on buildings so that we know who they were. Clearly, in

125

126

David Yeomans

the years before the war Arup and Samuely had demonstrated the advantages to be gained in employing a consulting engineer and, for those who were prepared to acknowledge the fact, how engineering advice might contribute to the development of the architectural form. However, it was not developments in architecture that were creating the demand for engineers; it was the shortages in the immediate post-war period that required the

most to be extracted from the least. An engineer is someone who can do for a shilling what any fool can do for two and that was the kind of skill that was needed.34 Nevertheless, there must have been plenty of engineers with little interest in architecture who were happy to be engaged just to do the ‹dirty work›, and there were many architects who wanted them to do no more than that. This situation is still all too familiar today.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Hughes 1958, 49–52. Brown 1914, 482. Furneaux Jordan 1952, 148. Samuely / Ward 1952, 448. Faber 1945. Atkinson et al. 1924, 6–10. Faber / Kell 1938. First published in 1936, Faber and Kell’s Heating and Air Conditioning of Buildings is now in its 11th edition. Harvey 1924, 414.  The same might be said of Bournemouth Pavilion, which Williams did with architects Home and Knight on completion of the Empire Exhibition buildings. Barnes 1924. Brockman 1974, 150–151. This was in a response to Ayrton 1931. Chermayeff 1932. A better description of the structure can be found in The Architect and Building News 1932. Towndrow called the Daily Telegraph building the Götterdämmerung style of architecture (Towndrow 1933, illustration facing p. 112). Barston / Saint 1988, 49. The story is told by J. M. Richards in Richards 1980. Richards was working with Williams as an architectural assistant. The thickness of these walls was less than that allowed by the LCC regulations but the building was outside the LCC area. Arup 1935. The Architect and Building News 1935.

21 Their collaboration on the flats is discussed in Yeomans / Cottam 1989. 22 Helsby 1932. Bylander also published an article on that topic (Bylander 1932). 23 The structure of the building is described in considerable detail in Helsby et al. 1935. This has been summarised in Yeomans 2015. 24 Application for approval of the design – Minutes of the Town Planning and Building Regulations Committee, Volume for 1931–2, 341. 25 To comply with LCC regulations they would have needed to be 7 in (17.5 cm) thick. 26 Architectural Review 1939. 27 This was a term used by an engineer working at Ove Arup and Partners when I was working there, who enjoyed doing just that kind of thing. 28 The office still has the calculations, which have their initials. 29 Hurst 1999. 30 We also know of Komendant in America although his account is of post-war work (Komendant 1975). 31 They were the Steel Structures Research Committee and the Reinforced Concrete Structures Committee. 32 Snow 1935. 33 Sometimes the report of a building might give readers the names of suppliers of windows or radiators but not that of the consulting engineer. It was not until after WWII that it became common to credit the engineers. 34 As discussed in Yeomans 2000.

Architects’ Journal 1935 N.N.: Analysis of a building, Architects’ Journal 81, 1935, 113– 119.

Architectural Review 1939 N. N.: Flats at Palace Gate, Kensington; Architect: Wells Coates, Architectural Review 85, 1939, 173–184.

Architectural Review 1935 N.N.: Flats at Golders Green, Architectural Review 78, 1935, 47–52.

Arup 1935 O. Arup: Planning in Reinforced Concrete, Architectural Design and Construction 5, 1935, 297–307, 340–343.

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Not Just the Dirty Work

Atkinson et al. 1924 R. Atkinson / H. Robertson / O. Faber / V. O. Rees / W. M. Keesey / L. H. Bucknell: A Book of Design by Senior Students of the Architectural Association School (London 1924). Ayrton 1931 O. M. Ayrton: Modern Bridges, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects 38, 1931, 479–495. Barnes 1924 H. Barnes: The British Empire Exhibition, Wembley, Architectural Review 55, 1924, 204–217. Barston / Saint 1988 S. Barston / A. Saint: A Farewell to Fleet Street (London 1988). Brockman 1974 H. A. N. Brockman: The British Architect in Industry 1841–1940 (London 1974). Brown 1914 W. E. A. Brown: The architect and structural engineering, Concrete and Constructional Engineering 9, 1914, 482–484. Bylander 1932 S. Bylander: Welded Steelwork in Buildings, Journal and Record of Transactions of The Junior Institution of Engineers 42, 1932, 395–403. Chermayeff 1932 S. Chermayeff: The New Building for the Daily Express, Ar­chi­ tec­tural Review 72, 1932, 3–12. Faber 1945 O. Faber: The Aesthetic Aspect of Civil Engineering Design: A Record of Six Lectures (London 1945). Faber / Kell 1938 O. Faber / J. R. Kell: Mechanical equipment in the Earls Court exhibition building, Journal of The Institution of Heating & Ventilating Engineers 6, 1938, (March), 29–53. Furneaux Jordan 1952 R. Furneaux Jordan: Brynmawr, Architectural Review 111, 1952, 143–164. Harvey 1924 W. Harvey: The British Empire Exhibition and Its Concrete Buildings, Concrete and Constructional Engineering 19, 1924, 410–420. Helsby 1932 C. Helsby: The Design of Welded Structures, The Structural Engineer 10, 1932, 463–471. Helsby et al. 1935 C. Helsby / C. W. Hamann / F. J. Samuely: Welded Structural Steelwork for Entertainment Hall, Bexhill, Sussex, The Welder 10, 1935, 529–533, 559–565, The Welder 11, 1935, 716–722, 751–759, 783–789. Hughes 1958 E. C. Hughes: Men and Their Work (Glencoe 1958).

Hurst 1999 L. Hurst: An Iron Lineage, The Structural Engineer 77, 1999, no. 10, 17–25. Komendant 1975 A. Komendant: 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn (Englewood, N. J. 1975). Richards 1980 J. M. Richards: Memoirs of an Unjust Fella (London 1980). Samuely / Ward 1952 F. J. Samuely / P. J. A. Ward: The Skylon, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 1, 1952, 444–466. Snow 1935 F. S. Snow: Modern Methods of Flat Construction, The Structural Engineer 13, 1935, 230–238. The Architect and Building News 1932 N. N.: The Daily Express Building, Fleet Street, The Architect and Building News 131, 1932, 3–21. The Architect and Building News 1935 N. N.: Working Class Flats, Competition Report, The Architect and Building News 141, 1935, 367–377. Towndrow 1933 F. E. Towndrow: Architecture in the Balance. An Approach to the Art of Scientific Humanism (London 1933). Yeomans 2000 D. Yeomans: Collaborating with consulting engineers, in: L. Campbell (ed.): Twentieth-Century Architecture and its Histories ([London] 2000), 125–151. Yeomans 2015 D. Yeomans: The Welded Structure of the De La Warr Pavilion, in: J. W. P. Campbell et al. (eds.): Studies in the History of Con­ struc­tion: The Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Con­struc­tion History Society. Queens’ College Cambridge, 20–21 March 2015 (Cambridge 2015) 235–240. Yeomans / Cottam 1989 D. Yeomans / D. Cottam: An architect/engineer collaboration: the Tecton/Arup Flats, The Structural Engineer 67, 1989, 183–188.

Image Sources

1, 3, 4  Owen Williams archive. 2 Chermayeff 1932. 5 Architects’ Journal 1935. 6 Postcard (author’s collection). 7, 9 Architectural Review 1939. 8 Architectural Review 1935.

127

Eduardo Torroja and Architects, 1926–36

Ana Rodríguez García, Rafael Hernando de la Cuerda

In the early days of modern steel and concrete being available as new building materials, architects found themselves (unlike the engineers who promptly accepted their application in civil works and industrial constructions) torn between their respect for history, their admiration for building techniques using the new materials, and their concern over the destruction of the art of architecture. Nonetheless, the great figures at the end of the 19th century, the ones Pevsner called the «Pioneers of modern architecture», also understood that the road towards a new architecture began with a knowledge of steel and concrete. In his introductory report for a session on the «Influence of modern construction procedures on artistic form» at the Sixth International Congress of Architects in Madrid in April 1904, Hendrik Petrus Berlage (1856–1934) spoke of a lack of architectural development of the new materials.1 His statement sums up the complex search by modern architects for an architecture that could express itself through the new materials in line with the needs of 20th-century mankind.

The Beginnings of Reinforced Concrete in Spain Spanish civil and structural engineering has historically been linked to the Escuela de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos (School of Civil and Structural Engineering, literally: School of Engineers for Roads, Canals and Ports, today part of the Universidad Politécnica) in Madrid, founded by Agustín de Betancourt (1758–1824) in 1802. While Madrid and Barcelona both had schools of architecture from around this time, thus generating two poles of influence already in the 19th century, the only official centre providing courses in civil and structural engineering was the Madrid School, and it was not until the second half of the 20th century that other centres opened. This circumstance most probably influenced Madrid’s position as the epicentre for the development of reinforced concrete in Spain (fig. 1). Between 1884 and 1913, as many as 152 specific patents were registered for parts and procedures related to construction in cement and

1  Important protagonists of Spain’s interwar architecture, from left to right: Secundino Zuazo, Martin Domínguez, Carlos Arniches, Modesto López Otero, Manuel Sanchez Arcas, and Eduardo Torroja.

130

Ana Rodríguez García, Rafael Hernando de la Cuerda

concrete. Although the new material reinforced concrete was also significantly used early on in port construction works in the Basque Country, the most emblematic architectural works were to be created in Madrid under the Second Republic from 1931 onwards. 2 The first courses on reinforced concrete at the Madrid School took place through the influential efforts of Professors Zafra and Ribera. From the academic year 1910/11 Juan Manuel de Zafra y Esteban (1869–1923) taught classes on Construcciones de Hormigón Armado y Puertos y Señales Marítimas (structures in reinforced concrete and ports and maritime signals). He was responsible for major theoretical activity with the publication in 1911 of what is considered the first scientific treatise on concrete drafted in Spain, Construcciones en Hormigón Armado (structures in reinforced concrete) complemented by the publication in 1915 of his book on Cálculo de Estructuras (structural calculations). José Eugenio Ribera (1864–1936) was one of Spain’s first researchers on reinforced concrete. A key figure in the widespread application of the material, he patented a unique construction system for its use in 1901. He combined his major professional activities as an engineer with those of a businessman and, from 1918, as a lecturer on the subject of Puentes de fábrica y hormigón armado (masonry and reinforced concrete bridges), a position from which he influenced and trained several generations of civil and structural engineers in Spain in the use of concrete, including his most distinguished student, Eduardo Torroja. The introduction of specific courses on reinforced concrete into the syllabus of Madrid’s Escuela de Arquitectura began a few years later, at the urging of Anasagasti and López Otero. Modesto López Otero (1885–1962), in a tribute text published on the death of Torroja in 1961, explained how he found out about reinforced concrete and how he incorporated it into

the works for the Ciudad Universitaria (university city) area in Madrid, of which he was the lead architect, at the same time as he was also the principal of the School of Architecture. On Torroja’s time at the School, 3 he wrote: […] already devoted to the special study of structures and the problems posed by modern techniques, I realized how much it would mean for the students of architecture to receive special lessons on reinforced concrete […]. With the generous acquiescence of the holder of the Chair of Material Resistance, the great maestro Luis Vegas, Torroja gave two or three courses at the School of Architecture subsequently continued and extended by Vegas himself, thus giving birth to the staff of specialists honouring our profession.4

Teodoro de Anasagasti (1880–1938) – gold medal winner at the 1911 International Exposition in Rome (ex aequo with Otto Wagner) – conducted his professional activities in Madrid, where he was also Professor of Project Design at the Escuela de Arquitectura, exerting a decisive influence on the generation of architects entering the profession in the 1920s by stressing the need to master the technical aspects of new construction methods. 5 The first modern and functional cinemas in Madrid to be built with reinforced concrete structures were also the work of Anasagasti. The Real Cinema and the Pavón were inaugurated in 1920 and 1925 respectively. The Monumental cinema,6 opened in 1923, was described by Anasagasti in the following terms: Except for the main vestibule, not a single kilo of plaster has been used anywhere in the building. There are no capitals, cornices, brackets, fleurons or entablatures, as these are all elements alien to modern structures and therefore have no suitable place in them.7

The cinema’s location only a few metres from the house where Torroja was born, and its inauguration in the same year in which he completed his engineering studies, lead us to imagine a young engineer sitting in the cinema observing the curvature and inclination of the svelte slab of reinforced concrete seen from the large amphitheatre on the upper floor.

Eduardo Torroja and Architects, 1926–36

131

2  Faculty of Philosophy, Ciudad Universitaria campus, Madrid, 1931–36. With a large number of female students, it was the first of the faculties to start operations on 15 Jan. 1933. A. Aguirre, M. López Otero (arch.), E. Torroja (eng.), Huarte y Cia. (contractor), photo from June 1934.

Torroja and Architects: First Steps Not only in Torroja’s building works but also in many pure engineering projects, his name appears as the author of the design alongside to that of a prestigious architect. And this represents the fact that, before achieving the definitive result, it has been necessary to go through a process of mutual influence and correction in order to achieve, through the adaptation of both techniques, the optimal solution. And this mutual understanding, or rather this melding of sometimes apparently irreconcilable concepts, explains how it has been possible to obtain the finished work: harmonious, perfect.8 (Eugenio Ribera, 1936)

Eduardo Torroja Miret (1899–1961) was born in Madrid into a well-off family with a long scientific tradition. His father, Eduardo Torroja Caballé (1847–1918), was a mathematician, an eminent surveyor and an architect who published in 1904 his Teoría geométrica de las líneas alabeadas y

las superficies desarrollables (geometric theory of skew lines and developable surfaces). Torroja inherited his father’s interest in curved surfaces and architecture.9 After completing his degree in 1923 and spending a short time at Hidrocivil, the firm set up by his teacher, Eugenio Ribera, he worked as an independent from 1927 until the start of the Civil War in 1936. The most decisive event in his career, however, was without doubt his inclusion in 1929 as an engineer on the team of the Junta de Construcciones de la Ciudad Universitaria de Madrid, under the oversight, from 1928, of Modesto López Otero as the lead architect, with a design team led by the young architects Miguel de los Santos (1896– 1991), Agustín Aguirre López (1896–1985), Luis Lacasa (1899–1966), Manuel Sánchez Arcas (1897– 1970) and Pascual Bravo (1893–1984).

132

Ana Rodríguez García, Rafael Hernando de la Cuerda

3  Faculty of Medicine, Ciudad Universitaria campus, Madrid, 1929–35. M. de los Santos, M. López Otero (arch.), E. Torroja (eng.), Fivasa, Gamboa and Domingo (contractors), photo taken during construction.

López Otero and Torroja first met when the latter was still a student, in what was possibly his first approach to architecture. Of this first meeting, López Otero wrote: I was introduced to Eduardo Torroja by his brother José María, while Eduardo was a student at the School of Civil and Structural Engineering. He was working at the time on a major degree project that involved an architectural problem, one that he approached with enthusiasm and every expectation of success. The conversations that ensued from his consultations and my advice to him revealed his great talent and an evident liking for the things of architects, perhaps handed down from his father, an eminent architect and lecturer. Starting from that encounter, our growing friendship has not suffered any alteration other than, in my case, to have increased my admiration for his work. I felt that his participation at the Ciudad Universitaria, still in its early days at the time, would be of great importance; there, in contact with our group of architects, he collaborated in the calculation of the structures for the various Schools and the civil engineering works.10

Torroja worked alongside all the architects on the team designing the university city (figs. 2 and 3), but his collaboration with Sánchez Arcas represented a decisive watershed, marking a turning point in his career. Cooperation with Manuel Sánchez Arcas Manuel Sánchez Arcas (1897–1970) arrived at the Oficina Técnica for the university city project with a lot of professional baggage and a well-defined architectural proposal. His ideas were already explained in the answers he gave to the questionnaire posed by Fernando García Mercadal (1896–1985) to several architects and published in La Gaceta Literaria on 15 April 1928.11 Sánchez Arcas strove to find a modern architecture that was free from style and provided an adequate form for the new, varied programmes of modern

Eduardo Torroja and Architects, 1926–36

4  Hospital Clínico de San Carlos, Madrid, 1931–36. Plan showing the location of the «especiales» (unique structures): Operating theatres, and terrace-solariums on corners to take advantage of southern sunlight. At the bottom on the left side a plan showing the deflections of the solarium cantilever slabs in reinforced concrete supported by three pillars, on the right a skylight in the roof of an operating theatre.

133

134

Ana Rodríguez García, Rafael Hernando de la Cuerda

5  Solariums of the Hospital Clínico de San Carlos during construction. They are all located on corners to take advantage of southern sunlight.

society, taking industry into account and generating a city. It is not that he rejected decoration but rather he felt that decoration in modern architecture, instead of being an add-on as in the styles of the past, had to consist in the expression of the building’s constructive essence, in the sublimation of its unique features. As a son and brother of physicians, Sánchez Arcas had a profound understanding of the highly specialised architecture required for a hospital. He combined an understanding of architecture as scientific construction with enormous ability and an awareness of European and US architecture. Eduardo Torroja’s expertise, on the other hand, was limited to civil engineering projects, with practically no experience in building structures. The first building Sánchez Arcas and Torroja worked on together was the pavilion for the university city construction board, built as an experiment in the spring of 1931 to serve as a prototype for the testing of the structure, the external and internal joinery, the finishes, and all the materials to be used in the rest of the buildings. It also marked the beginning of a method

6  Reinforced concrete structure of the polygonal skylight in the roof of an operating theatre of the Hospital Clínico de San Carlos.

Eduardo Torroja and Architects, 1926–36

7  Full-scale models built in situ for load testing. Left: cantilever slab for the Hospital Clínico de San Carlos; right: a module of the grandstand roof for the Madrid Hippodrome, 1933.

for systematising structures in concrete since, due to the nature of the works and the scarcity of resources, the working method was to take on capital importance. However, it was only with the Hospital Clínico de San Carlos (1931–35, figs. 4–6) that Sánchez Arcas’s proposals were to crystallise, corroborated by the efforts of Torroja. This university hospital was closely linked to the School of Medicine through its triple function as a teaching, research, and care centre, and its building programme was similar to that of the Medical Center in New York (1925–28), which Sánchez Arcas admired on an earlier working trip to the United States and Canada. Putting into practice his ideas about new architecture, he brilliantly resolved the building’s organisational needs through a solution that turned the Hospital Clínico de San Carlos into one of the world’s best hospitals of its day.12 During the construction of the hospital, Sánchez Arcas and Torroja completed the development of the structural systematisation method, which differentiated two types of structure. On the one hand, the careful layout of the pillar structure on the ground plan functionally enabled a studied and flexible relationship between the circulation of personnel and the different specialities in the hospital. In construction terms, they correspond to what Torroja called «corrientes»13

– common structures. Formed by repeating elements – beams, slabs and supports – the organisation of the work takes on more importance than technical issues. On the other hand, the sublimation of the unique features of Sánchez Arcas’s architectural proposals is embodied here in the constructive expression of the solution given to the overflying reinforced concrete of the solariums, and on the roofs with skylights in the operating theatres (fig. 6). These were ideas that he had already begun to implement, in a preliminary form, at the Hospital in Toledo (1926–30), and more clearly in the project for the 1929 competition for the design of a hospital in Logroño, where he tried out a differentiated formalisation of the terraces – solariums of the patients’ rooms, similar to those of the Hospital Clínico. These «especiales»14 – special, unique structures – are the ones that really represent a technical challenge, calling for a specific theoretical study, and possibly even requiring the production of a model at either reduced scale or life-size, depending on each case. The solariums, all located on corners to take advantage of southern sunlight, are differentiated by pushing out the planes of south-eastern and south-western façades using reinforced concrete cantilever slabs supported by three pillars. Their operation was tested with an in situ load test, using a life-size slab (fig. 7), similar

135

136

Ana Rodríguez García, Rafael Hernando de la Cuerda

8  Scale models by the company ICON. Left: polygonal skylight for the operating theatres of the Hospital Clínico de San Carlos; upper right: Algeciras Market Hall, 1934 (1/10 scale); bottom right: Frontón Recoletos pelota court, 1935 (1/10). 9  Promotional photo for the «Sistema de notación Torroja» (Torroja notation system), showing a portfolio of plans in small format for the structure of the Hospital Clínico de San Carlos.

to what would be done with laminar structure at the Hipódromo de la Zarzuela (1935–41). Each operating theatre is a circular room with a span of 21.4 m and a large polygonal skylight almost 10 m in diameter, for which a smaller-scale model was built at the company Investigaciones de la Construcción (ICON). Set up by Torroja to develop empirical procedures for verification of one-off structures, ICON represented a major innovation in both the construction of scale models and the measurement techniques used (fig. 8). It was also used for the models of the laminar roofing for the Algeciras Market Hall (1934/35) and the Frontón Recoletos building (1935).15 For on-site installations, Torroja developed a method for the graphical representation of drawings, the «Sistema de notación Torroja»16 (Torroja notation system, figs. 9 and 10), designed for a smaller paper format. The system’s unification of

Eduardo Torroja and Architects, 1926–36

137

10  Detail plan of the structure for the reinforced concrete cantilever slab of the solariums from the «Sistema de notación Torroja».

138

Ana Rodríguez García, Rafael Hernando de la Cuerda

the design elements’ dimensions and the establishment of a defined number of standard reinforcements was thought not only to create savings through a more specific calculation but also minimise errors both at the office and on site. The Technical Institute for Building and Construction, 1934–36 The experience gained at the building works for the Ciudad Universitaria established the basis for the Instituto Técnico de la Construcción y la Edificación, founded in Madrid on 14 November 193417 thanks to the enthusiasm of a group of architects and engineers who agreed to set up a private association to encourage progress, improvement and dissemination of Spanish construction techniques, as reflected in the Society’s published aims.18 It is significant that a majority of the members of the executive committee – comprising Modesto López Otero and Alfonso Peña Boeuf (1888–1966) as president and vice-president, Manuel Sánchez Arcas, José María Aguirre (1897–1988), Gaspar Blein (1902–88), and José Petrirena (1891–1936) as board members, and Eduardo Torroja as secretary – was involved in the works at the university city. As for the spirit of the group, it is worth recalling here the words of two of its founders, an architect and an engineer – López Otero and Aguirre – in commemorating the group’s 25th anniversary.19 Modesto López Otero wrote: At our Institute, we considered construction techniques from a single concept: we do not draw any distinctions between architectural construction and engineering construction; we do not opt for the false dichotomy of differentiating the useful from the beautiful […]. Among other things, because we consider that the creative process in an engineer’s work is, to a certain extent, analogous to that of an architect, differentiated only by the degree of rationality, of emotional value, of logic, of sensitivity, all ingredients that can be seen to be present in both processes, although with a different degree of mastery, intensity and consequence. 20

José María Aguirre explained how they felt it was necessary, at that time, to create a body that could carry out the research the construction industry deserved but could not, for reasons of economy, be undertaken in every construction company as was the case abroad. In other words, the Institute attempted to be, above all, a centre for experimentation, taking advantage of the extraordinary human resources available to combat the scarcity of economic resources: In Spain, there was a very young generation of architects and engineers with major concerns and enormous desire to improve […] These young elements, very well trained and very studious (that is something young people today have to learn, they were very studious), were restless enough to raise the level of construction in Spain to even higher levels than before […] The Institute was born out of conversations among enthusiasts and that was its only birthright, purely with enthusiasm, with no resources. 21

Hormigón y Acero, 1934–36 One of the first manifestations of the Institute’s spirit was the magazine Hormigón y Acero (Concrete and Steel), which began to be published in May 1934, a few months before the formal constitution of the Institute itself. Edited by Eduardo Torroja and Enrique García Reyes (1901–73), both civil engineers, the magazine defined itself as the organ of expression for the Institute. Its scientific character makes it stand out among the other Spanish construction journals of its day. The publication of the magazine was abruptly suspended due to the start of the Civil War in July 1936, but its 26 issues represent possibly one of the most brilliant and unique collaborations between architects and engineers, both inside Spain and abroad. The founding principles and raison d’être of Hormigón y Acero were explained in the editorial accompanying the first issue to define the journal’s main concerns and its rationale, beginning with a clarification of how the new publication intended to occupy its own editorial space quite distinct from other technical journals of the time:

Eduardo Torroja and Architects, 1926–36

We do not come to occupy the space of anyone else. Our primary goals are to establish the most direct contact possible among Spanish technical experts and the world’s most renowned figures in these areas; to facilitate an exchange of ideas between the fields of our engineers and our architects in an attempt to achieve the necessary intermingling of both types of knowledge; provide a summary update of everything interesting that is happening or being written about anywhere in the world regarding construction studies and methods, thus providing a kind of archive, documented and in order, that is easy to consult. 22

An analysis of the magazine’s published issues enables us to establish some of its most significant features. The published articles came from three distinct sources: unpublished research, selected articles previously published in foreign journals and translated into Spanish, and lectures given during the courses and seminars held by the Instituto Técnico de la Construcción y de la Edificación. The editors welcomed equally manuscripts from engineers and architects, whether Spanish or from other countries, with the intention of reflecting the topics and issues of the greatest interest published around the globe. With an editorial committee formed by Fernand Campus, Franz Dischinger, Eugène Freyssinet, Otto Graf, Henry Lossier, Mirko Roš, Rudolf Saliger, Luigi Santarella and Karl von Terzaghi, the journal was born with a strong international vocation and published Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Sigfried Giedion or Alberto Sartoris in its pages. Hormigón y Acero boasted a deliberately sober, restrained design and content, well represented by its cover, which was always divided into three rectangular areas differentiated by three different sandy tones: one for the title on the left, a second one on the right for the contents of each issue, and the third near the bottom in landscape format, reserved for a graphic element, always a black-ink sketch, normally advertising for a construction company (fig. 11). The magazine’s structure was based on two or three major articles, sometimes published in sections over several consecutive issues when their

139

length so required, followed by shorter texts and reviews, plus Noticias with the latest events in the sector, before closing with a Sección Documental, together with a novel and highly specialised Sección de Instalaciones that began in issue no. 9 from January 1935. Aware of the growing importance and, at the same time the scant treatment given to certain topics in the technical literature on construction, the Sección de Instalaciones attempted to respond to «issues of great importance that, in general, are not considered or are not dealt with specifically

11  Cover of the remarkably unique issue no. 7 of the magazine Hormigón y Acero from November 1934. The issue was a monograph on the tender for projects for the construction of the Hippodrome of Madrid. As a model example for transparency, it presented project explanations of all participating teams (all but one of which were formed by cooperating architects and engineers).

140

Ana Rodríguez García, Rafael Hernando de la Cuerda

PRIMER GRUPO Generalidades, conocimiento y resistencia de materiales

A) Generalidades B) Resistencia de materiales C) Materiales de construcción D) Hormigones

SEGUNDO GRUPO Cimientos, puentes y estructuras de ingeniería

E) Cimentaciones y muros

TERCER GRUPO Ferrocarriles, caminos y pavimentos

G) Ferrocarriles

CUARTO GRUPO Obras hidráulicas y puertos

K) Obras hidraulicas

QUINTO GRUPO Edificación, instalaciones y construcciones urbanas

M) Edificación

SEXTO GRUPO Herramental y medios auxiliares SÉPTIMO GRUPO Accidentes, cuestiones jurídicas y económicas

F) Puentes y estructuras de ingenieria H) Caminos y movimientos de tierras J) Pavimentos L) Puertos y obras marítimas N) Instalaciones y servicios P) Construcciones urbanas Q) Herramental y medios auxiliares R) Accidentes y cuestiones jurídicas S) Sección económica

Table 1  Overview of the reference classification system used in the magazine Hormigón y Acero. The set of subject matters is divided into 17 chapters, each designated by a letter from A to S and organised into seven groups corresponding to the divisions under the monthly repertoire of references.

with the interest they represent for architects and builders»23 by covering such topics as a building’s installations and the complementary or auxiliary resources used in the organisation of an engineering or architectural project. It discussed questions dealing with heating, cooling, and air conditioning, thermal and acoustic insulation, electrical installations in general, lighting or other domestic uses of electricity, such as, for instance, the first article published in this section, entitled Las apli­ caciones de la electricidad en la vivienda moder­ na, or the three relevant texts published in 1935 by the aforementioned architect Manuel Sánchez Arcas on natural light – as a consequence of the lectures taught in a course on this subject at the same time in the Institute. As a complement, the section devoted one or two pages in each issue to

information from commercial companies on ancillary resources such as modern machinery, measuring instruments, materials, or patents. The Sección Documental invariably occupied the final pages of every issue. Devoted to bibliographical references to books and journals, it aimed to provide an «index to everything published in the world’s technical press»24 and went far beyond what was habitual in a bibliography section. Its ambitious plan presented all the information in a classified and easily achievable format. Right from the first issue, a Clasificación de Referencias was established, consisting of a set of subject headings structured into 17 chapters (table 1), each one designated by a letter – from A to S – and each chapter in turn subdivided into different sub-headings with decimal numbering to provide greater detail on the subjects to be classified (table 2). These 17 chapters were organised into seven groups corresponding to the divisions provided in the monthly repertoire of references. Thus, every book or article contains in its heading a letter-number designation corresponding to its classification – for example E10 or D5-M15-M16 if this work dealt with more than one chapter – followed by the bibliographical details and a comment on its contents, more or less extensive in each case. The books also included an indication of the price and even sometimes the bookseller supplying them. Using these methods, each issue provided an average of between 100 and 110 articles, plus four or five books, with the result that, over the 26 months of the journal’s life, it published approximately 3,000 bibliographical references, an impressive figure covering 135 Spanish and foreign periodicals.25 In addition to this extensive and detailed information collated in the form of records that the journal encouraged readers to compile into a very complete and up-to-date archive on construction topics, Hormigón y Acero offered its subscribers some very unusual services: anyone interested in purchasing books published abroad could order them from the magazine’s

Eduardo Torroja and Architects, 1926–36

SEGUNDO GRUPO Cimientos, puentes y estructuras de ingeniería

141

E) CIMENTACIONES Y MUROS

1) Generalidades. 2) Cimentaciones directas. 3) Pilotajes. 4) Cajones sin fondo. 5) Cajones con fondo. 6) Aire comprimido. 7) Inyecciones. 8) Cimentaciones especiales.

9) Muros. 10) Comportamiento de terrenos. 11) Agotamientos. 12) Sondeos. 13) Temblores de tierra y vibraciones. 14) Experimentación e investigación. 15) Varios.

F) PUENTES Y ESTRUCTURAS DE INGENIERIA

1) Generalidades y elementos varios. 2) Puentes rectos y cantilever metálicos. 3) Puentes rectos y cantilever de hormigón. 4) Puentes en arco metálicos. 5) Puentes en arco de fábrica y hormigón armado. 6) Puentes colgantes. 7) Puentes móviles. 8) Transbordadores.

9) Acueductos. 10) Puentes de madera. 11) Obras de paso y desagüe. 12) Silos. 13) Depósitos. 14) Chimeneas. 15) Hangares y cobertizos. 16) Estructuras varias.

Table 2  Example of the subdivisions in the reference classification system in Hormigón y Acero, showing the sub-headings for the chapters on foundations and walls (E) and on bridges and engineering structures (F), belonging to the second subject group.

administration instead of buying them themselves. The publishers arranged for the books to be delivered to the subscriber’s home address at no extra cost, thus saving the hassle inevitable at the time of shopping in different countries. The magazine also offered subscribers or advertisers (fig. 12) an expanded version or the full translated text of articles reviewed in the Sección Documental for a fee of 25 pesetas per 1,000 words of the translation plus 0.10 pesetas per cm² for images. This option is truly remarkable if we consider the huge number of articles referenced and the wide range of languages involved. For all of the above reasons, it can safely be said at this point that, in terms of its quality, rigour, extension, international scope, and systematic approach, as well as the complementary services on offer, the Sección Documental of Hormigón y Acero set a truly extraordinary example and, in addition to serving as a primary route for the expression and dissemination of its foundational principles, became one of the most characteristic and distinctive features of the journal compared to other publications.

12  Bestoseal waterproofing, Tecnicrom company; advertisement published 1935 in Hormigón y Acero. The works in the Ciudad Universitaria were frequently exploited as advertising tools by building materials retailers and construction companies.

142

Ana Rodríguez García, Rafael Hernando de la Cuerda

Final Thoughts Eduardo Torroja’s collaborations with Manuel Sánchez Arcas on the Algeciras market hall (1932/33), with Carlos Arniches and Martín Domínguez on the Zarzuela racetrack (1935– 41), and with Secundino Zuazo on the Frontón Recoletos building (1935) marked «without doubt, the most creative and interesting era of Eduardo Torroja’s professional activity as a designer»26 and gave rise to several exceptional works that marked an international milestone in the history of reinforced concrete, architecture and engineering – works which are widely recognised and the subject of several publications.27 This chapter has opted to explore less wellknown aspects of Torroja’s relationship with the architects of his generation in the period between 1926 and 1936, specifically, his collaboration with Sánchez Arcas on the extraordinary experience of building the university campus in Madrid. In the words of his son, José Antonio Torroja Cavanillas (1933–2021), also an engineer, working with the team at the university city was «a golden opportunity for the young Torroja»,28 as it enabled him to meet, collaborate, and become friends with the group of young architects forming the design team, thus «allowing him to learn about the new trends in modern architecture and consolidate his own aesthetic and architectural criteria».29 In addition, it facilitated his contribution to other projects outside those for the university. Of the group formed by Zuazo, Arniches, Domínguez, Sánchez Arcas and Torroja, with the exception of Torroja, all were disqualified by Franco’s regime from practising as architects after the Civil War. Secundino Zuazo, the DirectorGeneral for Architecture during the Second Republic, and undoubtedly the most important

Spanish architect of his day, underwent the humiliation of being stripped of all his works and spent several years exiled in the Canary Islands. Carlos Arniches scratched a living designing individual homes. Martín Domínguez went into exile in Cuba and then the United States, where he lectured at Cornell University and ultimately died. Sánchez Arcas, politically the most prominent, was disqualified in perpetuity from the profession, and went into exile in the USSR, Poland, and the German Democratic Republic.30 It is difficult to know what would have happened if this collaboration had not been so traumatically interrupted, but all the signs point to their having left us a legacy of even more exceptionally interesting works. In the fullness of their mutual collaboration, the members of this group sought the architectural expression of new materials in the early days of modern architecture, and, in addition to their unquestionable individual talents, they were also the children of an extraordinary age for educational and scientific advancement in Spain. They were trained under the influence of the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (Board for the Expansion of Scientific Studies and Research, JAE). 31 Founded in 1907 and presided over by Santiago Ramón y Cajal from then until his death in 1934, the Board set itself the task of promoting scientific research and education, and of trying to attain the level of science, technology, and culture it saw in other modern countries. Finally, we should perhaps point out that the title of this article has been deliberately ‹borrowed› from that used by López Otero in the tribute article to Torroja in 1961, where he wrote: «No engineer has ever considered as he did the value of the aesthetic component of the structures applicable to modern architecture».32

Eduardo Torroja and Architects, 1926–36

1 Cabello y Lapiedra 1906, 175. 2 Rodríguez García / Hernando de la Cuerda 2009, 1257. 3 Torroja’s first academic experience in teaching the theory and practice of reinforced concrete structures was at the School of Architecture in the academic years 1928/29 and 1929/30. 4 López Otero 1961, 37. All translations by Alima Translation Services. 5 Fernando García Mercadal, considered the person who introduced modern architecture into Spain, always recalled the architecture of his maestro, Professor Anasagasti, in connection with understanding modern construction and techniques (Hernando de la Cuerda 2016, 129). 6 Work carried out by the Sociedad de Cementos Portland in Sestao with the engineers Cadet, Cordovés and Gallego (Anasagasti y Argán 1923a, 343). 7 Anasagasti y Argán 1923b, 345. 8 Ribera 1936, iii. 9 Torroja Cavanillas 2009, 711. 10 López Otero 1961, 37. 11 García Mercadal 1928, 6. 12 Hernando de la Cuerda 2016, 383. 13 Torroja Miret 1936a, 48; Hernando de la Cuerda 2016, 394–395. 14 Torroja Miret [1958] 1999, 96–101; Hernando de la Cuerda 2016, 394–395. 15 Rodríguez García / Hernando de la Cuerda 2009, 1259. 16 Torroja Miret 1936a, 56; Antuña 2003, 125; Torroja Cavanillas 2009, 712.

17 The same day in 1934, the Centro de Exposición e Información Permanente de la Construcción, C.E.I.P.C. (Construction Exhibition and Information Centre), was founded in the Carrera de San Jerónimo in Madrid. In January 1935 the C.E.I.P.C. published the first issue of its monthly magazine RE-CO, Referencias de la Construcción (Building References), the first of 17 issues published up to May 1936. 18 Hormigón y Acero 1934, 284. 19 The first Institute as a private association ended in 1936. After the Civil War it was refounded by Torroja and renamed several times, depending on official institutions. 20 López Otero 1960, 7. 21 Aguirre Gonzalo 1960, 10. 22 Torroja Miret / García Reyes 1934a, 1. 23 Torroja Miret / García Reyes 1934b, 395. 24 Torroja Miret / García Reyes 1934a, 2. 25 For a list of the journals sorted by language see p. 145, after the bibliography. 26 Torroja Cavanillas 2009, 713. 27 Among others: Torroja Miret 1936a; Torroja Miret 1936b; Rodríguez García / Hernando de la Cuerda 2009, 1259– 1261. 28 Torroja Cavanillas 2009, 713. 29 Ibid. 30 Vicente Garrido 2007. 31 Guerrero 2007; Sánchez Ron 2007. 32 López Otero 1961, 38.

Aguirre Gonzalo 1960 J. M. Aguirre Gonzalo: Intervención, in: Sesión académica conmemorativa del 25 aniversario de la fundación del i.t.c.c. Bodas de plata 1934–1959 (Madrid 1960) 9–14.

Fernández Ordoñez et al. 1999 J.A. Fernández Ordoñez et al.: Eduardo Torroja Ingeniero (Madrid 1999).

Anasagasti y Argán 1923a T. Anasagasti y Argán: El Edificio, La Construcción Moderna 21, 1923, no. 21, 341–344. Anasagasti y Argán 1923b T. Anasagasti y Argán: La belleza del cemento armado, La Construcción Moderna 21, 1923, no. 21, 345–347. Antuña 2003 J. Antuña: Manuel Sánchez Arcas (1897–1970) y Eduardo Torroja Miret (1899–1961), in: C. Sambricio (ed.): Manuel Sánchez Arcas. Arquitecto (Barcelona 2003) 123–132. Cabello y Lapiedra 1906 L. Cabello y Lapiedra (ed.): Congrès internationale des architectes, sous la haute protection de S. M. le roi d’Espagne et le patronage du gouvernement. Sixième session tenue à Madrid du 6 au 13 avril 1904. Organisation. Compte rendu et notices (Madrid 1906) 175.

García Mercadal 1928 F. García Mercadal: Encuesta sobre la Nueva Arquitectura, La Gaceta Literaria 2, 1928, no. 32 (15 April), 1–3, 6. Guerrero 2007 S. Guerrero: La Colina de los Chopos: un campus para la pedagogía y la ciencia modernas en la España del primer tercio del siglo XX, in: M.A. Puig-Samper Mulero / M. Angel (eds.): Tiempos de investigación JAE-CSIC, cien años de ciencia en España (Madrid 2007) 47–53. Hernando de la Cuerda 2016 R. Hernando de la Cuerda: Fernando García Mercadal y el Movimiento Moderno, PhD diss. Univ. Politécnica de Madrid 2016. Hormigón y Acero 1934 N. N.: Creación del Instituto Técnico de la Construcción, Hormigón y Acero 1, 1934, no. 6, 284–285.

143

144

Ana Rodríguez García, Rafael Hernando de la Cuerda

Ingeniería y Construcción 1933 N. N.: Pruebas de una estructura en la Ciudad Universitaria, Ingeniería y Construcción 7 (1933), no. 127, 397, 399.

Torroja Miret 1936b E. Torroja Miret: Cubiertas laminares de hormigón armado, Hormigón y Acero 3, 1936, no. 24, 140–155, no. 25, 173–185.

López Otero 1960 M. López Otero: Intervención, in: Sesión académica conmemorativa del 25 aniversario de la fundación del i.t.c.c. Bodas de plata 1934–1959 (Madrid 1960) 6–9.

Torroja Miret / García Reyes 1934a [E. Torroja / E. García Reyes]: [Editorial], Hormigón y Acero 1, 1934, no. 1, 1–2.

López Otero 1961 M. López Otero: Eduardo Torroja y los arquitectos, Arquitectura [Madrid] [3], 1961, no. 31, 37–40. Ribera 1936 J. E. Ribera: Prólogo, in: E. Torroja. Sus obras 1926–1936. Obras principales de hormigón armado proyectadas y dirigidas por Eduardo Torroja de 1926 a 1936 (Madrid 1936) iii–iv. Rodríguez García / Hernando de la Cuerda 2009 A. Rodríguez García / R. Hernando de la Cuerda: Timbrel construction and reinforced concrete in Madrid Rationalism (1925–1939), in: K.-E. Kurrer et al. (eds.): Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Construction History. Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus, 20th–24th May 2009, Vol. 3 (Berlin 2009) 1257–1264.

Torroja Miret / García Reyes 1934b [E. Torroja / E. García Reyes]: La nueva Sección de Instalaciones de «Hormigón y Acero», Hormigón y Acero 1, 1934, no. 8, 395. Vicente Garrido 2007 H. Vicente Garrido: Arquitecturas desplazadas. Arquitecturas del exilio español (Madrid 2007).

Image Sources

Torroja Cavanillas 2009 J. A. Torroja Cavanillas: Semblanza de Eduardo Torroja, in: S. López-Ríos Moreno / J. A. Gónzalez Carceles (eds.): La Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de Madrid, en la Segunda República. Arquitectura y Universidad durante los años 30 (Madrid 2009) 711–715.

1 Photo composition by the authors. R. and A. M. Prados García Collection 2 Torroja Miret 1936a, 48. 3 Torroja Miret 1936a, 65. 4 top 4 bottom right  Antuña 2003, 127. 4 bottom left, 5, 7 right, 8 left  CEHOPU-CEDEX Fondo de Eduardo Torroja Miret. 6 Ingeniería y Construcción 1933. 7 left Antuña 2003, 128. 8 top right  Fernández Ordoñez et al. 1999, 75. 8 bottom right  Photo by Lladró. 9 Photo by Sybille von Kaskel. 10 Torroja Miret 1936a, 56. 11 Hormigón y Acero 2, 1935, no. 20, (146). 12 Hormigón y Acero 1, 1934, no. 7, cover.

Torroja Miret 1936a E. Torroja. Sus obras 1926–1936. Obras principales de hormigón armado proyectadas y dirigidas por Eduardo Torroja de 1926 a 1936 (Madrid 1936).

Tables 1 and 2 as well as the list of periodicals on the following page elaborated by the authors from information published in Hormigón y Acero.

Sánchez Ron 2007 J. M. Sánchez Ron: La JAE un siglo después, in: M. A. PuigSamper Mulero (ed.): Tiempos de investigación. JAE-CSIC, cien años de ciencia en España (Madrid 2007) 29–38.

Eduardo Torroja and Architects, 1926–36

List of Engineering Periodicals referenced in Hormigón y Acero Spanish periodicals: Revista de Obras Públicas Cemento Arquitectura Arquitectura i Urbanisme Revista de Ingeniería Industrial Madrid Científico Ingeniería y Construcción Obras Proelium Relación El Progreso de la Ingeniería Economía Española Metalurgia Española Memorial de Ingenieros del Ejército Administración y Progreso El Eco Patronal Ibérica Ingar Arcos Anales de la Asociación de Antiguos Alumnos del Instituto Católico de Artes e Industrias Tiempos Nuevos Latin American periodicals in Spanish: Irrigación en México Planificación México Revista del Colegio de Ingenieros de Venezuela Revista Mexicana de Ingeniería y Arquitectura Caminos (Buenos Aires) Anales del Instituto de Ingenieros de Chile Arquitectura (Santiago de Chile) Anales de Ingeniería (Colombia) Revista del Consejo Administrativo de los Ferrocarriles Nacionales (Colombia) Periodicals in French: Bulletin Technique de la Suisse Romande Revue Genérale des Routes La Technique des Travaux Travaux La Génie Civil Le Constructeur de Ciment Armé Science et Industrie Annales des Travaux Publics de Belgique Annales des Ponts et Chaussées L´Architecture La Métallurgie Revue de Matériaux de Construction et des Travaux Publics Le Ciment Chantiers

L´Industrie Métallique Industrie Minérale Mémoires de l´Association Internationale de Ponts et Charpentes Recherches et Investigations L´Entreprise Française Revue des Matériaux de Construction Revue de l´Aluminium et de ses Applications Procès-verbaux des Séances de la Société des Ingénieurs Civils de France Revue Mensuelle de la Chambre Syndicale des Entrepreneurs de Maçonnerie, Ciment et Béton Armé Bulletin de la Société des Ingénieurs Soudeurs Comptes rendus des Séances du Congrès d´Économie Sociale de l’Institut Technique du Bâtiment et des Travaux Publics L’Age du Ciment Mémoires de la Société des Ingénieurs Civils de France Bulletin de l´Association Internationale du Congres des Chemins de Fer Revue Générale du Froid Bulletin de l’Institut International du Froid Bulletin de l´Association International Permanente des Congrès de la Route Acier L´Ingénieur-Constructeur Glaces et Verres Chauffage et Ventilation La Technique Sanitaire et Municipale La Technique Moderne Annales de l’Institut Technique du Bâtiment et des Travaux Publics L´Ossature Métallique Bulletin de l´Association International Permanente des Congrès sur les Ponts Periodicals in English: Journal of the American Concrete Institute Engineering News Record Concrete Construction Methods The Architectural Review The Quarry and Road Making Ericsson Review The Structural Engineering Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers The Engineer Roads and Streets

Roads and Road Construction Power Engineering Public Roads Civil Engineering Public Works and Road Construction Heating and Ventilating Main Roads Better Roads The American City Journal of Research of the National Bureau of Standards The Highway Engineer Plumbing and Heating Trade Journal The Brown Boveri Review American Highways Domestic Engineering Concrete & Constructional Engineering Building Periodicals in German: Der Bauingenieur Beton und Eisen Monatshefte für Baukunst und Städtebau Moderne Bauformen Zeitschrift des Vereines Deutscher In­ge­ ni­eure Die Bautechnik Zement Schweizerische Bauzeitung Bautenschutz Die Betonstraße Die Straße Deutsche Bauzeitung Der Stahlbau Asphalt und Teer Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Strassen­ wesen Deutsche Wasserwirtschaft Bebauungspläne und Quartierpläne Gesundheits-Ingenieur Der Straßenbau Tonindustrie-Zeitung Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung Periodicals in other languages: L’Industria Annali dei Lavori Pubblíci Le Strade L´Ingegnere Técnica (Lisbon) Anales Técnicos de Grecia Texnika Xponika Kholodilnoïe Dielo Buletinul Societăţii Politehnice (Bucarest) Buletinul A. G. T. R. (Romania)

145

The ‹Queen of Engineering› The Engineer Max Mayer’s ‹Science of Management› and its Impact on German Modernist Architectural Design around 1930 Gernot Weckherlin

Scientific management and industrial engineering offered essential lessons for modern architects after the First World War.1 It comes as no surprise that ‹Taylorism› and ‹Fordism› – widespread ideas in contemporary engineering and industry – were regarded as major sources of inspiration for architects such as Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and a significant number of mainly European admirers of the American building industry. 2 In architectural history, however, engineers and architects involved in the everyday practice of learning from these new managerial studies rarely receive close scrutiny. Strangely, this new managerial vanguard does not garner the attention given to the key figures of modernism in architectural history as written by Sigfried Giedion and many others. This case study tries to analyse those influences from civil engineering not primarily visible in architectural form, let alone within a general history of architecture culture. It takes a closer look at a collaboration between two experts around 1930: the structural engineer Max Mayer (1886–1967, fig. 1) and the architect Ernst Neufert (1900–86, fig. 2). This preliminary study may help to understand better how such a transfer of expert knowledge from one discipline to another permeated everyday routine work in architectural design practice. Mayer and Neufert did not share the same prominence as contemporary architects like Walter Gropius or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. However, their collaboration exemplifies a special relationship between architectural design practice and a new science of management in the German civil engineering and architecture literature. The

science of management enjoyed widespread popularity in German modernist architectural circles after a sequence of new publications around 1910 in the United States. In the building industry this science encompassed two interdependent aspects: an operational aspect of efficient management, cost calculation, and organisation, and secondly a techno-scientific complex ‹within› the architectural objects. It is quite apparent why architects favoured the latter. Modern buildings can visualize rationalisation and standardisation. Obviously, this was more attractive for architectural thinking than cost calculation, improved site operations and the rationalisation of workflows, although many German modernists argued that the architect of the future was to become a «calculating engineer of housing construction», and to a lesser degree a «mere artist» at least in job descriptions.3 Modern architects, particularly in Germany in the years of the Weimar Republic, for some time regarded themselves as heroic figures of a future

1  Max Mayer, 1961.

2  Ernst Neufert, c. 1970.

148

Gernot Weckherlin

3  Cover of Mayer’s Stuttgart lecture on Taylors Anregungen für den Baubetrieb, published in 1914 (Taylor’s Suggestions for the Construction Business).

housing industry, in charge of organising mass housing production. On the other hand, they were not intending to step back from an idealised position as universal supervisors of building processes as a whole.4 This presumptuous self-esteem – to give but one example – is based on the idea that unlike the engineer the architect is the all-encompassing organizer being able to summon up all scientific, social, technical economical and design problems in one head and uniting these problems in collaboration with a large number of experts and workers into one consistent piece of work.5

Not as many words have been lost on the fact that design procedures in daily office routines were changing slowly while the rules of scientific management were taking hold of those practices. This effect on office routines of the artist-architect’s studio culture is the main concern of this chapter.

4  Max Mayer: Betriebswissenschaft, book cover, 1926.

Max Mayer The first character in this story is Max Mayer. He graduated from Munich’s Technische Hochschule (TH) with a PhD dissertation on beamless floor slabs in reinforced concrete6 and later worked for the building company Wayss & Freytag in Neustadt an der Haardt. The company’s executive director and structural engineer, Emil Mörsch (1872–1950), was one of the pioneers of reinforced concrete technology and theory in Germany. Later, Mayer worked for the Tiefbau- und EisenbetonGesellschaft in Stuttgart and for the Hamburg branch of Dyckerhoff & Widmann.7 In 1929 he became a scientific consultant for the Soviet Government in Moscow.8 In 1934 he returned to Munich where he practised as a consulting civil

The ‹Queen of Engineering›

engineer.9 Mayer regularly published articles in Bauwelt reporting on planning and building activities in the USSR and, after his return to Germany, on what he called «descriptive static calculations»10. His main concern was to provide builders and designers with guidelines for approximate dimensioning of building elements at an early stage of the design process. In Stuttgart Mayer met Robert Bosch (1861– 1942), one of the pioneers of scientific management in German industry, who introduced Mayer to the writings of Frederick W. Taylor (1856–1915). As early as 1913, Mayer published a book on Economic Efficiency as a Principle of Construction in Reinforced Concrete Building.11 Like Taylor, who had already begun to study the efficiency of construction operations in the USA in 1894, Mayer tried to achieve more efficient concrete structures by balancing the economic and technical aspects of structural dimensioning. As he worked for the construction industry, he was familiar with both these aspects: the calculation of structural dimensions and the logic of cost estimation and calculation. Mayer describes these two aspects as hitherto partly contradictory ways of accessing reinforced concrete building calculation methods. As early as 1915 Mayer published a lecture (fig. 3) given in March of the previous year in Stuttgart for the Association of Building Science, Taylor’s Suggestions for the Construction Business.12 This lecture is a rare example of an in-depth analysis of the results of research from 1912 by Taylor and Sanford E. Thompson (1867–1949) on «concrete costs».13 In 1926 Mayer summarised his research results in a book titled Betriebs­wissenschaft. Ein Überblick über das lebendige Schaffen des Bau­ ingenieurs (Science of Management: An Overview of the Civil Engineer’s Creative Work, fig. 4),14 one volume in a series of manuals for university education and practice, a Reference Library for Civil Engineers, edited by the motorway pioneer Robert Otzen (1872–1934). It is noteworthy that Mayer’s Science of Management was the fifth volume in a

149

series of books on auxiliary sciences, following earlier volumes on mathematics, mechanics, machine engineering, and surveying. In his introduction, Mayer claimed that scientific management should be prized as the «Queen of Engineering»:15 Everything concerning the whole (professional) life of the engineer is a matter of the science of management. It must be the high point of his studies, the highest consecration of his job. It gives an overview on the single aspects of his field of studies […] The science of management is the comprehensive shell of all expert knowledge in engineering.16

Mayer extended the science of management from simple lessons in such matters as building site management, the operating of machines, and timeand-motion studies (fig. 5), in other words from an auxiliary to a core discipline of the whole profession. One central aspect of Mayer’s project was to include the ‹human factor› in areas ranging from ergonomics to psychology into all production processes, from workers on building sites to the engineer’s calculating office, an effort, as he observed, not yet undertaken in the structural engineering

5  Illustration of a book with hidden stop clock for time motion studies from Max Mayer’s book Betriebswissenschaft, 1926.

150

Gernot Weckherlin

of his time. Rather, the ‹Queen of Engineering› was the missing link between theory and practice, between calculations and operations on building sites, between the sources of information and the office work of the structural engineer. Management was in fact the science of a man of will in a quite Nietzschean sense. His task, as Mayer proudly wrote in describing his fundamental principles in Betriebswissenschaft, was […] not an anxious glimpse back into the past, but his aim is to bring up far-reaching future goals voluntarily […]. A future paradise ought to be the last point of his endeavour. Thus the scientist of management following the chronological setting of his thinking may be called a futurist, whose job is to equate becoming with will. […] The man of scientific management ought to be driven by a mission as do-gooder [Weltverbesserer] if only in his circle, at least he should call himself an ameliorant of the company [Betriebsverbesserer].17

The novelty of Mayer’s book is rooted in its character as an all-encompassing survey of various scientific and managerial concerns. From psychology, including psychoanalysis of the ‹human factor›, to standardised and improved cost calculation, he is an expert in procedures and the operational efficiency of the building industry. He addresses the problem of the personal use and systematisation of essential knowledge resources in the engineer’s daily work. Mayer gives an overview of fundamental principles of self-management, psychotechnics as well as organisational or communicative aspects of the (building) company and includes Taylor’s analysis and aspects of the division of labour. As a book based on the expertise of a man from management, he struck the right note for its professional readership. Ernst Neufert One early and enthusiastic reader of Mayer’s book on the science of management was Ernst Neufert, appointed by Otto Bartning (1883–1959) in 1926 as professor in ‹rapid design› (Schnellentwerfen) at the Staatliche Bauhochschule Weimar. Bartning, in

comparison with Gropius a more moderate modernist, had taken over the direction of this school of architecture just the same year, when it had been (re)opened as the successor institution to the Bauhaus, which had moved from Weimar to Dessau in 1925.18 The very beginning of Ernst Neufert’s career dates back to 1919, when he actually became one of the first students of the Weimar Bauhaus, as he never failed to mention later, even in the days of the Third Reich when the Bauhaus was equated with cultural decay and decadence. Neufert was the almost paradigmatic embodiment of a new type of a future architect, someone his master teacher Walter Gropius dreamt of in his early Bauhaus period. Unlike many contemporaries Neufert joined architectural education not as a university-educated middle-class academic. His career literally began on buildings sites as a talented apprentice concrete worker, and thus within the German educational system of 1919 he was not eligible for architecture schools on university level, which were to be found at the Technische Hochschulen. Paul Klopfer (1876–1967), his teacher at the Weimar-based Baugewerkeschule (a technical school for experienced and talented future handicraft masters), shared sympathies with the Bauhaus in Weimar and gave Neufert a recommendation to visit Gropius’s experimental laboratory of the arts.19 Gropius accepted the application by Neufert, who, he later confessed, as a freshman could not learn much in these early days of the now world-famous art school. He recalled that the only two other architecture students soon left the school, frustrated by the nonexistent activities of Gropius in architectural education, while he himself «got lost in the Bauhaus hustle and bustle». 20 Neufert decided to leave and worked for Gropius’s private studio, at the time located within the school premises in Weimar. In the studio he found a more expedient job under the guidance of its chief architect, Adolf Meyer (1881–1929).

The ‹Queen of Engineering›

Between 1919 and 1926 Neufert contributed to a number of buildings designed by Gropius’s studio in various office positions, for example, a theatre project in Jena (1921/22), as a site manager for industrial buildings in Alfeld (1922–24) and Kirchbrak (1925/26), and on the construction sites of the new Bauhaus buildings in Dessau (1925/26).21 However, Neufert soon realised that Gropius’s ideals strangely departed from the reality of daily studio work routine. Gropius was restlessly travelling all over Germany, proclaiming the achievements and concepts of his school in lectures, advocating a new prototype of managerial architects. He favoured a new ‹housing industry› to come in the near future, competing with Henry Ford’s (1863–1947) car industry. But studio reality lagged behind public announcements. While in 1923 Gropius promised on paper a future «Big Box of Bricks» assembled by standardised construction elements to form a «machine for living» (fig. 6), a popular modernist term borrowed from Le Corbusier, these ideals were hardly ever realised in his studio’s own design practice not to mention on his building sites.22 In real life, Neufert as a site manager was sometimes literally waiting for drawings to be sent from the Weimar studio to Alfeld and Kirchbrak, but in many cases, he later recollected, «he received the ‹final drawings› when he had to cable to the studio that the building is already completed».23 The studio itself – despite all the announcements of a new organisation of architecture – cultivated a quite traditional, almost 19th-century master’s studio atmosphere, where the efficiency of the studio’s (paper) workflow was in no way the first priority. Neufert showed great talents for organising work and business routines, even in that at times chaotic artistic environment of the studio. Yet his almost obsessive sense of order suffered and he tried to improve a – in his view – desperate situation. As early as 1924 Neufert, therefore, planned to join the large number of German architects from Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953) to Martin Wagner (1885–1957) touring through the entire USA to

151

6  Walter Gropius, «Baukasten im Großen» (Big Box of Bricks). Elementary housing as shown at the Bauhaus exhibition in 1923.

study technical aspects of the advanced American building industry.24 The German architectural historian Wolfgang Voigt later ascribed the title «Vitruvius of Mod­ern­ ism» to Neufert and put him on the list of the most influential German architects of the 20th century.25 The main reason for this rating was the huge success of Neufert’s book Bau­ent­wurfs­lehre (literally ‹teaching architectural design›, although the English translation uses the title Architect’s Data), one of the best-selling German-language architectural books, which was published in more than 23 translations and 43 revised and updated editions (fig. 7).26 The book was originally published in Hitler’s Germany in 1936 and became an immediate major success – sometimes only half-jokingly called the «bible of architects».27 The main concept of this encyclopaedia of dimensions and sizes is as simple as it is convincing: Neufert and his team measured and recorded in

152

Gernot Weckherlin

7  Title page of the first edition of Ernst Neufert’s Bauentwurfslehre from 1936, dust jacket of the 15th edition from 1954 and cover of the 43rd edition from 2021.

8  Drawings from the 1936 edition of Neufert’s Bauentwurfslehre showing minimum dimensions for house entrance doors, furniture to be placed in entrance areas and everyday situations taking place there.

The ‹Queen of Engineering›

hundreds of black and white drawings all the dimensions of the human body and its daily environment from garden tools to cars, from kitchen drawers to offices, from railway stations to hospitals, not to forget crematoriums and graveyards. These dimensions were given as minima to avoid any unnecessary waste of space and to establish the minimum dimensions for most human activities, from eating in restaurants to journeys in airships. The author’s main intention was to enclose all the needs of daily life (fig. 8), thus being encyclopaedic without using too many unnecessary words. But the book is not a simple customisation of Henry Ford’s principles of industrial shop management or an illustration of functionalist debates like the then much discussed «Home for Minimum Incomes».28 Although it is based on the concept of a functionalist reduction of necessary space, this is not the only point of the operational strategy the book advocates. Mayer und Neufert: Weimar Reforms in Architectural Education This encyclopaedia of dimensions, however, had not yet been written in 1926, when Neufert and Mayer met for the first time in Weimar. This meeting was by no means accidental. It was Neufert, while still working in Dessau on the Bauhaus buildings site, who contacted Max Mayer in April 1926 after having read the latter’s book Betriebswissenschaft and successfully invited him to join the faculty. 29 Neufert and Mayer acted as professors at the Staatliche Bauhochschule Weimar from 1926 until 1930 (fig. 9), when the school was forcibly closed by the state government of Thuringia under the rule of NSDAP party member and culture secretary Wilhelm Frick (1877–1946). What was so special about this school named «the other Bauhaus» by architectural historian Julius Posener (1904–96)?30 Bartning’s concept for the school of architecture was based on the principles of ‹learning by building›. This was an unusual departure from the academic ‹paper architecture

153

9  Scene from the ‹Active Building Studio› at the Staatliche Bauhochschule Weimar, c. 1928 (detail from fig. 12). Ernst Neufert is seated at the right end of the table, Max Mayer, wearing a dark suit, behind it. In the foreground, Otto Bartning, also in a suit and apparently mounted into the image by Werner Graeff, turns his back on us.

work› approach then common in many architecture schools in Germany, with classes strictly divided into single subjects. Bartning proposed a new type of experimental education based on a more practical training in workshops and in the studio. All the experiences of the students, many of whom had enjoyed a well-grounded professional education, were brought together through active participation in the design and construction process of real, rather than virtual, buildings. The School’s ‹Active Building Studio› planned two major university buildings in 1929/30 under the guidance of its head Ernst Neufert (fig. 10), to be realised in the nearby city of Jena.31 Thus two hitherto fairly unknown new disciplines where introduced: Neufert’s ‹rapid design› class in the first year (fig. 11), and the ‹Active Building Studio› in the second year. Both courses were taught by Neufert and Bartning, with Max Mayer as a consultant on all questions of structural engineering, calculation, mathematics, and the science of management. But Mayer’s influence exceeded by far the new role as an engineering consultant and educator in the ‹Active Building Studio›.

154

Gernot Weckherlin

10  Presentation of the Jena students’ house in Neufert’s Bauentwurfslehre, 1936. Spatial dimensions derived from work-flow studies in main kitchen and refectory.

In 1926 the inclusion of the science of management in architectural education was in fact innovative, if not unknown; if it was part of the curricula in architecture at all, it took place outside architectural design work and mainly within related faculties at the universities of technology (Technische Hochschulen), where between 1918 and 1927 no less than six chairs for industrial psychology (Psychotechnik) were established.32 For engineering students at the TH Berlin-Charlottenburg, business management seminars had even become compulsory from 1919. Mayer in Weimar combined lectures for a – in comparison with other architecture schools in Germany – small number of students in the first year with an open format for discussions on questions concerning the science of management

11  Result of a ‹rapid design› class at the Staatliche Bauhochschule Weimar, 1929. Design of an architects’ house after three hours of work.

coming up in the second year within the projects designed by the ‹Active Building Studio›. This was achieved as Mayer wrote, less by one-sided lectures but through putting things into question, by bringing forth […] multi-faceted selftaught, self-experienced answers in clear debates of the resulting contradictions. 33

This attitude, enthusiastically shared by Neufert, was expressed even in the layout of the School’s 1929 brochure, designed by Bauhaus alumnus and graphic artist Werner Graeff (1901– 78). The brochure showed working procedures in sequences similar to film scripts: «One day in the Active Building Studio» not only presented results but also the very studio work in progress (fig. 12).

The ‹Queen of Engineering›

12  «One day in the Active Building Studio». Photo reportage in a 1929 promotional brochure on the Staatliche Bauhochschule Weimar arranged by Werner Graeff.

Neufert took Mayer’s lessons even more seriously as he went one step further than Gropius by introducing efficiency into the design process in education and studio work in general. The «twelve principles of efficiency» set out in Mayer’s book Betriebswissenschaft were adapted by Neufert into architectural design. Mayer, for his part, had developed these rules for design by transferring the principles of efficiency of the American efficiency engineer and management theorist Harrington Emerson (1853–1931) to the civil engineer’s office work and the construction business. 34 Thus ‹rapid design› and the ‹Active Building Studio› and project management were organised with the help of an «American system» as Neufert mentioned in negotiations with clients in Jena.35

For better or worse, Neufert painstakingly followed the path proposed by Mayer. One may even say that Mayer’s (and Emersons’s) guidelines in fact defined Neufert’s working principles throughout his professional career. Consequently, the engineer’s and the architect’s own design work had to be organised more efficiently (fig. 13). The whole range of these activities, including the systematic organisation of necessary expert information retrieval, self-organisation, management of schedules and planning work, had to be improved. The analysis of any working process as described by Emerson and Mayer is first to decompose all the elements of a procedure or a plan in order to analyse those elements carefully and to recombine them in a third step in a more and more efficient way. Drawings and solutions to spatial problems,

155

156

Gernot Weckherlin

The Effect of Mayer on Neufert and beyond The ‹rapid design› classes and the ‹Active Building Studio› formed an experimental first stage of the professionalisation of architectural studio management. Efficiency in handling the overabundance of information and a competent enhancement of personal efficiency under the auspices of shared work in ever-growing larger planning companies were especially important. This managerial approach was a radical departure from the atmosphere of Gropius’s ‹artistic studio culture› still prevalent in architectural studios of the time with their predominant artist-authors as key figures. Mayer, and later Neufert, realised in engineering and in architecture that the menacing overabundance of available information for daily work from catalogues to scientific publications made choice and professional action in an industrial consumer society more and more difficult. In Mayer’s words:

13  Increasing the efficiency of the work of architects and engineers, as called for by Mayer, also found its way into Neufert’s Bauentwurfslehre, 1936, for example by optimising the working environment.

once made and approved by experts or reliable institutions, were to be stored in the school’s card index box catalogue developed by the students and maintained and constantly improved by the school and its staff.36 Of course a permanent revision and improvement of these solutions was mandatory, but to Neufert it seemed a useless waste of energy to reinvent each and every architectural ‹solution› with every project. This is a line of thought taken from Mayer’s proposals for the informational self-organisation of the structural engineer.

The battle against overabundance, the struggle to keep track of something in personal and professional life is inwardly essential. The relations, […] stimulations and demands at our cultural stage form a never-ending, numbing overabundance. To master it, it is an urgent necessity to separate the Useful and the Useless, Things of Importance and the Insignificant. All this within a minimum expenditure of time: This is an extraordinary art […]. 37

Consequently, the highest priority had to be given to reorganising and improving the flow of information and information processing in the engineer’s (Mayer’s) and architect’s (Neufert’s) offices. Many technical questions were solved by others earlier, and thus common answers already existed in many cases. There is no need to reinvent every girder section or calculation from scratch, or in architecture, to re-design every small spatial element as long as acceptable invariables, floor plan elements and so on were at hand and appropriate to the specific task. Information given had to be clearly written and drawn, using a standardised language of drawings that avoided abundant or even confusing wording. Information processing needs an easy-to-grasp

The ‹Queen of Engineering›

and easy-to-handle systematic access in the studio. Such information did not depend on personal interaction alone, but to a certain degree was objectified whenever appropriate scientific facts were available. Consequently, such information was more an ‹open access› source and no longer a company’s or a personal ‹studio secret›. Norms and standards became instruments to avoid repetitious work and set rules as long as they were accepted by a critical scientific community of experts. Obviously the daily abundance of information requires a great deal of expertise. Information needs to be critically reassessed by a circle of trustworthy experts at any time and solutions have never to be taken for granted. But the architect’s responsibility gradually shifted from invention to choice. The only gate open to inventiveness was to change fronts and to work for an innovative building industry. This was the Bauhaus strategy followed by Gropius and Neufert. Both men started

with varying success to develop innovative building elements, and Neufert focussed on questions of standardisation in the Third Reich war economy. It is no coincidence that he became a key figure in German industrial architecture before, during and after WWII. Mayer and Neufert were not the only actors in applied scientific management. However, the effect of both men’s work in the interwar period has been underestimated for some time. Both men represent a departure from the ‹genius status› of modern architects and engineers who preferred a self-esteem based on the myth of a Beethoven type ‹creating forms from their inner vision›, and not with the fundamental support of standardised forms, data collections, norms and catalogues. What this paper has tried to demonstrate is that the ‹Queen of Engineering› determined the rule of many operations. To some extent, she may even count as the secret sovereign in contemporary architecture.

1 Giedion 1941. Several reprints and translations. 2 Nerdinger 1996. Nerdinger gives an overview on the impact of contemporary debates in Walter Gropius – From Americanism to the New World, 9–28. 3 Lübbert 1926, 10. 4 Nerdinger 1996, 9–28. 5 Gropius 1928, 206. 6 Mayer 1912. 7 Kurrer 2016, 1007. 8 See Mayer 1932. Back in NS-Germany he frequently published on simplified rules for building calculations, see: Mayer 1937 and Mayer 1944; the latter was a «small book dedicated to the engineer’s professional neighbour, the architect» (Mayer 1944, 9). 9 Bauwelt 1961. 10 Mayer 1944, Mayer 1953, Mayer 1966. 11 Mayer 1913, preface. 12 Mayer 1915. 13 Taylor / Thompson 1912. 14 Mayer 1926. 15 Mayer 1926, V. 16 Mayer 1926, V.

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Mayer 1926, 22. Weckherlin 2010. Weckherlin 2010. Neufert 1976. Heymann-Berg et al. 1973, 10; Merkel 2017. Gropius 1923, 167–170. Neufert 1976, 10. Neufert travelled to the USA in 1936 «due to private circumstances»; Gropius went there in 1928. Voigt 1999, 20–34. Neufert 1936; Neufert / Kister 2021. The long story of the ‹architect’s bible› in Weckherlin 2017. CIAM 1930. Neufert 1926. Posener 1980, 72. Neufert 1931a; Neufert 1931b. Rabinbach 2001, 333. Graeff 1929, 12. Emerson 1912; Mayer 1926, 15–22. Engelmann 1996, 61–73. Weckherlin 2010. Mayer 1926, 58.

157

158

Gernot Weckherlin

Bauwelt 1961 N. N.: Professor Max Mayer, Bauwelt 52, 1961, 1080. CIAM 1930 Internationale Kongresse für Neues Bauen / Städt. Hoch­ bau­amt Frankfurt M. (eds.): Die Wohnung für das Existenz­ minimum (Frankfurt a. M. 1930). Emerson 1912 H. Emerson: The Twelve Principles of Efficiency. 6th ed. (New York 1912).

Mayer 1937 M. Mayer: Prüfbare Statische Berechnungen, Bauwelt 28, 1937, 884–885. Mayer 1944 M. Mayer: Die Abmessungen der tragenden Bauteile. Richt­ werte für den Baumeister, besonders für den entwerfenden Architekten zur schätzungsweisen Bemessung der Bauteile (Berlin 1944). Mayer 1953 M. Mayer: Lebendige Baustatik (Vol. 1). Die Statische Be­rech­ nung (Berlin 1953).

Engelmann 1996 C. Engelmann: Ernst Neufert – Studentenhaus und Abbeanum in Jena, in: D. Nicolaisen (ed.): Das andere Bauhaus. Otto Bartning und die Staatliche Bauhochschule Weimar 1926– 1930 (Berlin 1996) 61–73.

Mayer 1966 M. Mayer: Die statische Berechnung. Grundlagen und Praxis der Berechnung und Gestaltung (Berlin 1966).

Giedion 1941 S. Giedion: Time, Space and Architecture (Cambridge, Mass., 1941). Several reprints and translations.

Merkel 2017 P. Merkel: Das Wirken Ernst Neuferts in den Jahren von 1920 bis 1940 (Wiesbaden 2017).

Graeff 1929 W. Graeff (ed.): Staatliche Bauhochschule Weimar, 1929 (Weimar 1929).

Meyer 1925 A. Meyer (Red.): Ein Versuchshaus des Bauhauses in Weimar (Bauhausbücher 3) (Munich 1925).

Gropius 1923 W. Gropius: Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar 1919–1923 (Weimar, München 1923). Gropius 1928 W. Gropius: Der Architekt als Organisator der modernen Bauwirtschaft, in: F. Block (ed.): Probleme des modernen Bauens (Potsdam 1928) 202–214. Heymann-Berg et al. 1973 J. P. Heymann-Berg / R. Netter / H. Netter: Ernst Neufert. Industriebauten (Wiesbaden, Berlin 1973). Kurrer 2016 K.-E. Kurrer: Geschichte der Baustatik. Auf der Suche nach dem Gleichgewicht. 2nd ed. (Berlin 2016). Lübbert 1926 W. Lübbert: Rationeller Wohnungsbau: Typ/Norm (Berlin 1926). Mayer 1912 M. Mayer: Die trägerlose Eisenbetondecke, Deutsche Bau­ zeitung, Zementbeilage, 46, 1912, 162–166. Mayer 1913 M. Mayer: Die Wirtschaftlichkeit als Konstruktionsprinzip im Eisenbetonbau (Berlin 1913). Mayer 1915 M. Mayer: Taylors Anregungen für den Baubetrieb (Berlin 1915). Mayer 1926 M. Mayer: Betriebswissenschaft. Ein Überblick über das lebendige Schaffen des Bauingenieurs [R. Otzen (ed.): Hand­ bibliothek für Bauingenieure. Ein Hand- und Nach­schlage­ buch für Studium und Praxis] (Berlin 1926). Mayer 1932 M. Mayer: Ergebnis des Wettbewerbs um den Palast der Sowjets in Moskau, Bauwelt 23, 1932, 322–326.

Nerdinger 1996 W. Nerdinger: Der Architekt Walter Gropius. Zeichnungen, Pläne und Fotos aus dem Busch-Reisinger-Museum der Harvard University Arts Museums. 2nd revised ed. (Cambridge, Mass., Berlin 1996). Neufert 1926 Letter (Carbon Copy) from Ernst Neufert to Adolf Meyer, 9 April 1926. Archiv der Moderne der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Nachlass Neufert. Neufert 1931a E. Neufert: Das Studentenhaus in Jena, Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst und Städtebau 15, 1931, 213–220. Neufert 1931b E. Neufert: Abbeanum der Universität Jena, Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung 51, 1931, 253–261, 265–269. Neufert 1936 E. Neufert: Bauentwurfslehre. Grundlagen, Normen und Vor­ schrif­ten über Anlage, Bau, Gestaltung, Raumbedarf, Raum­ be­zie­hun­gen, Maße für Gebäude, Räume, Einrichtungen und Geräte mit dem Menschen als Maß und Ziel. Handbuch für den Bau­fachmann, Bauherrn, Lehrenden und Lernenden. 1st ed. (Berlin 1936). Neufert 1954 E. Neufert: Bauentwurfslehre. Grundlagen, Normen und Vor­ schrif­ten über Anlage, Bau, Gestaltung, Raumbedarf, Raum­ be­ziehungen, Maße für Gebäude, Räume Einrichtungen und Geräte mit dem Menschen als Maß und Ziel. Handbuch für den Baufachmann, Bauherrn, Lehrenden und Lernenden. 15th ed. (Berlin 1954). Neufert 1976 E. Neufert: Typescript with handwritten annotations. Lecture given 12 May 1976 at Fachhochschule Darmstadt. Archiv der Moderne der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Nachlass Neufert.

The ‹Queen of Engineering›

Neufert / Kister 2021 Neufert Bauentwurfslehre. Grundlagen, Normen, Vorschriften über Anlage, Bau, Gestaltung, Raumbedarf, Raumbeziehungen, Maße für Gebäude, Räume, Einrichtungen, Geräte mit dem Menschen als Maß und Ziel. Revised by J. Kister, with contributions by M. Lohmann, P. Merkel, M. Brockhaus. 43rd revised ed. (Wiesbaden 2021). Posener 1980 J. Posener: Vorlesungen zur Geschichte der Neuen Ar­chi­tek­ tur II. Die Architektur der Reform (1900–1924), Arch+ 13, 1980, no. 53. Rabinbach 2001 A. Rabinbach: Motor Mensch. Kraft, Ermüdung und die Ur­sprün­ge der Moderne (Wien 2001) [orig. title: The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York 1990)]. Taylor / Thompson 1912 F. W. Taylor / S. E. Thompson: Concrete Costs. Tables and Recommendations for Estimating the Time and Cost of Labor Operations in Concrete Construction and for Introducing Economical Methods of Management (New York 1912). Voigt 1999 W. Voigt: Vitruv der Moderne: Ernst Neufert, in: W. Prigge (ed.): Ernst Neufert. Normierte Baukultur im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a. M., New York 1999) 20–34. Weckherlin 2010 G. Weckherlin: «… die herrliche Atmosphäre eines bauenden Ateliers …». Die Staatliche Bauhochschule für Handwerk und

Baukunst und das «aktive Bauatelier» von 1926 bis 1930, in: F. Simon-Ritz et al. (eds.): aber wir sind! wir wollen! und wir schaffen! Von der großherzoglichen Kunstschule zur BauhausUniversität Weimar 1860–2010, Vol. 1 (Weimar 2010) 281–304. Weckherlin 2017 G. Weckherlin: BEL. Zur Systematisierung des architektonischen Entwerfens am Beispiel von Ernst Neuferts Bau­ent­wurfs­ lehre (Tübingen 2017).

Image Sources 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Bauwelt 1961. Heymann-Berg et al. 1973, 9. Mayer 1915, cover. Mayer 1926, cover. Mayer 1926, 113. Meyer 1925, 8. Neufert 1936; Neufert 1954; Neufert / Kister 2021. Neufert 1936, 92. Graeff 1929, 19. Neufert 1936, 166. Graeff 1929, 10. Graeff 1929, 18/19. Neufert 1936, 168.

159