Impact of Industrial revolution on architecture

JUNE 2, 2011 SREEKANTH P S13 COMMENTS

The Industrial Revolution, which began inEnglandabout 1760, led to radical changes at every
level of civilization throughout the world. The growth of heavy industry brought a flood of new
building materials—such as cast iron, steel, and glass—with which architects and engineers
devised structures hitherto undreamed of in function, size, and form.

Disenchantment with baroque, with rococo, and even with neo-Palladianism turned late 18th-
century designers and patrons toward the original Greek and Roman prototypes. Selective
borrowing from another time and place became fashionable. Its Greek aspect was particularly
strong in the young United States from the early years of the 19th century until about 1850. New
settlements were given Greek names—Syracuse, Ithaca, Troy—and Doric and Ionic columns,
entablatures, and pediments, mostly transmuted into white-painted wood, were applied to public
buildings and important town houses in the style called Greek revival.

In France, the imperial cult of Napoleon steered architecture in a more Roman direction, as seen
in the Church of the Madeleine (1807-1842), a huge Roman temple in Paris. French architectural
thought had been jolted at the turn of the century by the highly imaginative published projects of
Étienne-Louis Boullée and Claude Nicholas Ledoux. These men were inspired by the massive
aspects of Egyptian and Roman work, but their monumental (and often impractical)
compositions were innovative, and they are admired today as visionary architects.

The most original architect in England at the time was Sir John Soane; the museum he built as
his ownLondonhouse (1812-1813) still excites astonishment for its inventive romantic virtuosity.
Late English neoclassicism came to be seen as elitist; thus, for the new Houses of Parliament the
authorities insisted on Gothic or Tudor Revival. The appointed architect, Sir Charles Barry, was
not a Gothic expert, but he called into consultation an architect who was—A. W. N. Pugin, who
became responsible for the details of this vast monument (begun 1836). Pugin, in a short and
contentious career, made a moral issue out of a return to the Gothic style. Other architects,
however, felt free to select whatever elements from past cultures best fitted their programs—
Gothic for Protestant churches, baroque for Roman Catholic churches, early Greek for banks,
Palladian for institutions, early Renaissance for libraries, and Egyptian for cemeteries.

In the second half of the 19th century dislocations brought about by the Industrial Revolution
became overwhelming. Many were shocked by the hideous new urban districts of factories and
workers’ housing and by the deterioration of public taste among the newly rich. For the new
modes of transportation, canals, tunnels, bridges, and railroad stations, architects were employed
only to provide a cultural veneer.

The Crystal Palace (1850-1851; reconstructed 1852-1854) in London, a vast but ephemeral
exhibition hall, was the work of Sir Joseph Paxton, a man who had learned how to put iron and
glass together in the design of large greenhouses. It demonstrated a hitherto undreamed-of kind
of spatial beauty, and in its carefully planned building process, which included prefabricated
standard parts, it foreshadowed industrialized building and the widespread use of cast iron and
steel.

Also important in its innovative use of metal was the great tower (1887-1889) of Alexandre-
Gustave Eiffel in Paris. In general, however, the most gifted architects of the time sought escape
from their increasingly industrialized environment by further development of traditional themes
and eclectic styles. Two contrasting but equally brilliantly conceived examples are the
sumptuous Paris Opera (1861-1875) by Charles Garnier and Boston’s grandiose Trinity Church
(1872-1877) by Henry Hobson Richardson .

Taxes against glass, windows and bricks were repealed which saw a new interest in using these
building materials. Factory made plate glass was developed and complex designs in iron
grillwork were a popular decoration for the classical and Gothic buildings. There were also
terracotta manufacturing improvements, which allowed for more of its use in construction. Steel
skeletons were covered with masonry and large glass skylights were popular.

Improvements to the iron making process encouraged the building of bridges and other
structures. Large indoor open spaces were now made possible with the use of strong iron framed
construction; this was ideal for factories, museums and train stations. The Eiffel Tower, built for
the 1889 Exhibition in Paris was a dramatic demonstration by the French of their mastery of this
new construction technology. “To the architect-engineer belongs a new decorative art, such as
ornamental bolts, iron corners extending beyond the main line, a sort of Gothic lacework of iron.
We find that to some extent in the Eiffel Tower.”

But it was heavily criticized by some architects and artists who scorned it as an example of the
“blackness of industry” and saw it as blight on the city’s skyline.

The Crystal Palace created to enclose the Great Exhibition of 1851 inEnglandwas a glass and
iron showpiece, which dazzled the millions of visitors who passed through its doors. Built by
Joseph Paxton within six months, its design mimicked the greenhouses that were his customary
stock in trade. It was spacious enough to enclose mature existing trees within its walls.

There was some rejection of the new Industrial Revolution architecture and it’s emphasis on
classical construction, Palladian styles and Victorian “gingerbread” houses; some impressive
Gothic revival architecture was commissioned instead. Notable examples were the British
Parliament Buildings with their pointed spires and suggestion of strength and moral values.
“Strawberry Hill”, built after the mid-eighteenth century, seems patterned after a Gothic castle
and though it combined some novel construction materials which reflected strong spiritual and
religious sentiments in its design.

Regarding architecture of this era, John Ruskin, a co-founder of the Arts and Crafts movement
toward simplicity argued, “You should not connect the delight which you take in ornament with
that which you take in construction or in usefulness. They have no connection, and every effort
that you make to reason from one to the other will blunt your sense of beauty…. Remember that
the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”

Architecture and the Industrial Revolution

Beginning in the 18th century the Industrial Revolution made fundamental changes in agriculture,
manufacturing, transportation and housing. Architecture changed in response to the new industrial
landscape. Prior to the late 19th century, the weight of a multistory building had to be supported
principally by the strength of its walls. The taller the building, the more strain this placed on the lower
sections. Since there were clear engineering limits to the weight such load-bearing walls could
sustain, large designs meant massively thick walls on the ground floors, and definite limits on the
building's height.
Forged iron and milled steel began to replace wood, brick and stone as primary materials for large
buildings. This change is encapsulated in the Eiffel Tower built in 1889. Standing on four huge
arched legs, the iron lattice tower rises narrowly to just over 1000 feet high. When I visited the tower,
I was surprised to find a wooden railing at the top (supported by iron bars) and carved with
innumerable names! The Eiffel Tower not only became an icon for France but for industry itself
heralding a new age in materials, design and construction methods.
In America, the development of cheap, versatile steel in the second half of the 19th century helped
change the urban landscape. The country was in the midst of rapid social and economic growth that
made for great opportunities in architectural design. A much more urbanized society was forming
and the society called out for new, larger buildings. By the middle of the 19th century downtown
areas in big cities began to transform themselves with new roads and buildings to accommodate the
growth. The mass production of steel was the main driving force behind the ability to build
skyscrapers during the mid 1880s.
Steel framing was set into foundations of reinforced concrete, concrete poured around a grid of steel
rods (re-bar) or other matrices to increase tensile strength in foundations, columns and vertical
slabs. (See image at right.)
The people in Midwestern America felt less social pressure to conform to the ways and styles of the
architectural past. By assembling a framework of steel girders, architects and builders could
suddenly create tall, slender buildings with a strong steel skeleton. The rest of the building's
elements - the walls, floors, ceilings, and windows were suspended from the load-bearing steel. This
new way of constructing buildings, so-called column-frame construction, pushed them up rather
than out. Building design in major urban centers now placed a premium on vertical space. Like the
flying buttress of the 14th century, the steel weight-bearing frame allowed not just for taller buildings,
but much larger windows, which meant more daylight reaching interior spaces. Interior walls became
thinner creating more usable floor space.
Because steel framing had no precedent, its use would rewrite the rules of design and engineering
of large buildings and along with them a new formal aesthetic. Architect Louis Sullivan's twelve-story
Prudential Building in Buffalo New York is an early example of column framing. Built in 1894, its tall,
sleek brick veneer walls, large windows and gently curved top pediment ushers in a new century
with the modern style of the skyscraper.
For all of its new technology and design innovations, The Prudential Building still holds some forms
from the past. A large arch hovers over the main entrance and the brick façade has extensive
ornamentation.
The eclectic century: 19th century

The 19th-century fascination in Europe with the architecture of the past begins with Greek temples and
Gothic cathedrals, but soon extends to encompass a bewildering range of other historical styles -
Egyptian, Byzantine, Romanesque, Venetian Gothic, Muslim Indian, and even, in a final convolution, the
many Renaissance styles which are themselves a response to earlier periods.

This most self-confident of centuries takes what it likes from these many sources, mixes and matches
them, develops and distorts them to create magnificent buildings. The effect is of its time, but the
ingredients are not. Only one feature of 19th-century architecture is entirely new in the west - the use of
cast iron.

Glass, iron and prefabrication: 1837-1851

The public first becomes aware of the glorious potential of cast-iron architecture in the 1840s, when
extraordinary conservatories are erected at Chatsworth and in Kew Gardens. But the technology derives
from factory construction in the 1790s.

With Boulton and Watt's steam machinery in operation, conventional factories using timber for joists
and floors are prone to disastrous fires. The occasional use of cast iron for structural purposes goes back
many centuries in China, for temple pagodas, but it is an innovation in Britain when William Strutt builds
the first fireproof mill at Derby, in 1792-3, with floors on shallow brick arches supported on cast-iron
pillars.

Strutt's mill still contains some massive wooden beams, but an entirely wood-free factory is constructed
at Ditherington, near Shrewsbury, in 1796-7. Arched brick floors, on cast-iron beams and pillars, become
the standard factory and warehouse interior of the 19th century.

The next and most glamorous stage in cast-iron architecture is linked above all with the name of Joseph
Paxton. As superintendent of the duke of Devonshire's gardens at Chatsworth, he builds there in 1837-
40 a great conservatory, shaped like a tent (277 feet long and 67 feet high) but consisting entirely of cast
iron and glass.

In a ducal garden this building is not much visited, but it astonishes all who see it. Queen Victoria notes
in her diary in 1842 that it is 'the most stupendous and extraordinary creation imaginable'. Two years
later a similar building is commissioned from Richard Turner and Decimus Burton for the royal gardens
at Kew. Since 1841 these gardens have been open to the public, so the beauty of the Palm House,
completed in 1848, becomes more widely known than the Chatsworth conservatory.
But it is Paxton's building for the Great Exhibition of 1851, the astonishing Crystal Palace, which reveals to
the millions the potential of the new architecture.

The Crystal Palace is gigantic compared to its predecessors in cast iron and glass. It is five times as long
as the Palm House in Kew and nearly twice as high; or, put another way, it is longer than the palace of
Versailles and higher than Westminster Abbey. But even more significant is the famous speed of its
design (one week of detailed drawing, after a preliminary jotting by Paxton on a piece of blotting paper)
and of its construction (six months).

The reason, and the reason for its lasting architectural significance, is that Paxton's building is the first
thoroughgoing example of prefabricated architecture (a concept perfectly suited to cast iron, and
pioneered seventy years earlier for the bridge at Coalbrookdale).

The statistics of the Crystal Palace are bewildering (3300 iron columns, 2150 iron girders, 250 miles of
sash bar, 293,635 panes of glass), but the crucial detail is that these all conform to a basic 24-foot
module. The manufacture of the pieces can be subcontracted to several foundries and glass factories;
assembly on site is like putting together a giant's dolls' house. Hence the fact that this palace of glass is
created, from scratch, in less than 200 days. As if to emphasize the point, it is dismantled in 1852 and
moved to another site at Sydenham - where it stands until its contents catch fire in 1936.

The modular steel-frame tradition of late 20th-century architecture has in this building its most
distinguished ancestor.