UNIT IV

Industrial Revolution

What is IR?
The Industrial Revolution was a cultural and economic shift from cottage industry, traditional
agriculture, and manual labor to a system of factory-based manufacturing that included complex
machinery, continual technological growth, new energy sources, and developments in transportation.

Where?
 Industrialization spread from Britain to other European countries, including Belgium, France and
Germany, and to the United States.
 By the mid-19th century, industrialization was well-established throughout the western part of
Europe and America's northeastern region.

Religious conditions:
 Church decreased in power as government increased
 Church is a stable entity but not governing
 Industry, commerce and wealth the new “religion”

Start of Industrial Revolution

 It began with an Agricultural Revolution in the 1700s. New ways of planting and growing crops
were introduced.
 Charles Townshend – Learned that crop rotation led to longer lasting fertile soil.
 Jethro Tull – Invented a seed drill – a cart with a dropper that would plant seeds more
efficiently.
 Enclosure act: Rich landowners bought land of village farmers and enclosed it with fences.
 Movement of small farmers to cities in search of work
 Increased labor in cities

Why England?
 England had resources–harbors, coal, iron, workers and good climate.
 Had a wealthy upper class and bourgeoisie that used their capital to build mines and factories
and buy machines and large farms for profit.
 Economy was strong because it had colonies that supplied resources.
 Naval superiority was an advantage because it protected trade routes.

Improvements in Transportation
Road Transportation- John McAdam – Paved Roads – Early 1800s
Equipped roadbeds with a layer of large stones for drainage. On top, he placed a smoothed layer of
crushed rock. Previously, rain and mud often made roads impassable and men were known to drown in
potholes.
Impact of the Railroads:
 Railroads spurred industrial growth by giving manufacturers a cheap way to transport material
and finished products.
 Railroad boom created hundreds of thousands of new jobs for both railroad workers and
miners.
 The railroads boosted England’s agricultural and fishing industries, which could transport their
products to distant cities.
 By making travel easier, railroads encouraged people to take distant city jobs.

Effects of Urbanization:
 Cities became more common and more populated – some doubled or tripled in size.
 People migrated to cities looking for work, especially unemployed farmers due to the enclosure
acts.
 Cities were dirty and dangerous. There was a lack of sanitation laws, no fire and police
departments, No running water.
 As the factory work replaced traditional manufacturing, the habits of mass production meant
that workers, in a limited way, now had time and money for leisure pursuits.
 Results were: street entertainment, drinking in bars, local festivals and community-based
entertainments gave way to spectator events – circuses or concerts, where large crowds paid an
admission charge for professional entertainers.

Change in Social Structure

 The traditional elite: Aristocratic nobles and landowners were still in control
 The Capitalist Upper Class: They were entrepreneurs who used their money to buy and build
factories and run large businesses.
 The New Middle Class: Professionals, investors, merchants: They were financially stable,
educated, and they aspired to become upper class.
 The New Working Class: Lowly, unskilled, mechanical, poor, uneducated workers

Harsh Factory Work

 There were rigid schedules with long hours and few breaks
 Work was the same day after day, week after week.
 There were high injury rates. Frequent accidents Ex: lost limbs in machine
 There was no job security. Workers were fired for being sick, working too slow, or for no reason
at all.
 Women and children were paid less than men.
 Wages were overall very low
 Factory owners hired women because they could pay them less
 Women with families worked 12 hours a day and were still expected to cook, clean, etc. when
they finally got home.
 Families needed the income working children could provide
 Children could be hired at very low wages
  Children worked in the same dangerous factories, for the same long hours

Emergent New buildings/ Space types

 Factories
 Libraries
 Public amenities (opera houses, museums)
 Government facilities (parliament, regional offices, schools)
 Business blocks
 Apartments and mass housing to serve industry locations
 Exhibition pavilions
(*** sketch of the building types, and write down why they were required)

Expression:
 Architecture serving the immediately requiring utilitarian function
 Steel and concrete design bring new forms to old design methods
 Housing regarded as romantic, industry regarded as technological
 Government regarded as formal (Roman/Greek appearances)
 Skyscraper designs appear in US

New Materials
 New materials were increasingly used. Cast Iron, an essentially brittle material, is approximately
four times as resistant to compression as stone.
 Wrought Iron, which is forty times as resistant to tension and bending as stone, is only four
times heavier. It can be form and molded into any shape
 Structures consisting of metal columns and girders no longer needed walls for their statics. This
marked the onset of the most significant technological revolution in architectural history.
 Solid structures could be replaced by skeleton structures, making it possible to erect buildings of
almost unrestricted height and width very quickly, using prefabricated elements.
 Glass can be manufacture in larger sizes and volumes
 Reinforced concrete construction, particularly in overcoming the weakness which existed in
previous reinforced concrete structures

Split between the architecture and engineering profession

Iron and after 1860 steel, made it possible to achieve spans wider, to build higher, and develop ground
plans more flexible than ever before. Glass in conjunction with iron and steel, enabled the engineer to
make whole roofs and whole walls transparent. Reinforced concrete, introduced at the end of the
century, combines the tensile strength of steel with the crushing strength of stone.

Architects knew little about these things, they left them to the engineers. By about 1800 architecture
and engineering had become separate professions for which a separate training was provided.
Architects studied in the offices of older architects and in schools of architecture, until they set up
themselves in practice. Engineers were trained at special university faculties or special technical
universities. The most perfect examples of early iron architecture, the suspension bridges are the work
of engineers, not of architects.

Crystal Palace
 The Crystal Palace created to enclose the Great Exhibition of 1851 in England, was a glass and
iron showpiece.
 Designer: Joseph Paxton Duration: 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.
 It was a testament to industrial materials; it was composed of nearly 300,000 panes of glass on
wrought iron framing, and was assembled on site from prefabricated elements.
 The palace was conceived to symbolize this industrial, military and economic superiority of
Great Britain.
 The building was divided into a series of courts depicting the history as well as exhibits industry
and the natural world. Major concerts were held in the Palace's huge arched Centre Transept
 570 m. long and had a very simple form

(*** sketch the elevation and interior view)

Eiffel tower

 The basic principles of gothic architecture were not inimical to new technological processes.
France took to iron and steel enthusiastically, none more so than Gustav Eiffel (1832-1932) who
gave world one of the famous landmark.
 Four huge, tapering, lattice girder piers rise from a huge base square and are laced together at
two levels by connecting girders.
 Immensely rigid, the tower was assumed to be unsafe by many Parisians most of whom hated
its impact on their city.
(*** sketch the elevation)

Chicago School and Emergence of Skyscraper

The next step in the development of modern architecture was the shift from iron-frame to steel-
frame construction. Because of smelting of iron. Steel-frame architecture emerged in Chicago, among a
circle of architects known as the Chicago school, which flourished ca. 1880-1900. Louis Sullivan was the
most important of these, but William Le Baron Jenney can be regarded as the father of the Chicago
School.

Soon after the destruction of the great fire of 1871 and a period of depression that followed, Chicago
was expanding again. At this point in history, architects faced mounting pressure to extend
buildings upward, as cities grew and property values soared.
In response, the Chicago school built the world's first skyscrapers. (A good definition of "skyscraper", for
discussion of architectural history, is "a metal-frame building at least one hundred feet tall".) The Home
Insurance Building (1884; demolished), by William Le Baron Jenney (a member of the Chicago school), is
usually considered the very first skyscraper. Louis Sullaivan’s tripartite theory- skyscrapers as columns
having an articulate base, uninterrupted shaft, and capital on termination.

Guaranty Building: Vertically emphatic design, the piers are connected at the top by arches and there is
a far less emphatic cornice, so that eye is scarcely interrupted on its upward course. The surface
cladding consisting terracotta carved in low relief with delicate geometrical ornament

Carson and Scott department store: A markedly horizontal rhythm to emphasize the flat selling floors in
contrast to vertically piled offices of the Guaranty Building. With their bands of windows set in white
terracotta, the upper storey contrast with the elaborately ornamental treatment of the two lowest
floors.

(***Sketch: Home Insurance Building; Guaranty Building; Carson Scott Department store- elevation)
Arts and crafts movement (1860’s – 1910’s)

From the Industrial Revolution (ca. 1750-1850) onward, the world has been filled with machine-made
products, which led many artists to fear the decline of applied arts (works of art that serve a practical
purpose).
Two major positions emerged:
 One position, known as the Arts and Crafts Movement:
Urged for a return to traditional, hand-made applied arts.
Movement - emerged in late 1900 England, spread across Europe and the United States.
 The other position argued that machine product will result into:
Mass-produced goods, skillfully designed, could indeed be beautiful works of art.
Simple geometric forms and plain, unornamented surfaces; instead of rejecting these properties
as cold and lifeless, some artists argued that they should be embraced.

This approach fuelled the gradual rise of the modern aesthetic.

Aims, Aesthetics and Ideals

 The Arts and Crafts movement was a social/artistic movement of modern art, which began in
Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth, spreading
to continental Europe and the USA.
 Its adherents - artists, architects, designers, writers, craftsmen and philanthropists - were united
by a common set of aesthetics.
 They sought to reassert the importance of design and craftsmanship in all the arts in the face of
increasing industrialization, which they felt was sacrificing quality in the pursuit of quantity.
 Its supporters and practitioners were united not so much by a style than by a common goal
 A desire to break down the hierarchy of the arts (which elevated fine art like painting and
sculpture, but looked down on applied art),
 To revive and restore dignity to traditional handicrafts
 To make art that could be affordable for all

Its impacts on different artistic mediums:

 The Arts and Crafts Movement was primarily concerned with architecture and the decorative
arts,
 Including stained glass, wallpaper, textiles, furnishings, printed fabrics (chintzes), tapestry art,
furniture, wood carving, metalwork, ceramics, jewellery and mosaic art.
Characteristics of the movement
 Individual expressions
 Vernacular
 Use of local Materials
Movement as a counter attack on Industrial Revolution
 Social reform
Change in the working hours and condition of the labor, artist, and worker
Believe in restorative power of craftsmanship
 Simple life
Art as a way of life
Flexibility in day to day activities; whereas an industry worker had a motorized life

Principles of arts and crafts movement

 Honesty- Work and way of life

 Eclecticism- Inspirations drawn upon different theories
 Joy in labor
 Regionalism- Vernacular

Architects involved in this movement

- William Morris
- Philip Webb
- C R Ashbee
- W R Lethaby

The Red House designed by William Morris

 The Red House (1859), Morris's home in Bexley Heath, marked the emblematic start of the
movement.
 Morris commissioned it from his friend, the architect Philip Webb, for himself and his new bride.
 The red brick house (hence the name), with its free-flowing design, the absence of pretentious
facades, the concern for structure and sensitivity to local materials, traditional building methods
and the particularities of location.
 Morris himself designed the garden, and the interior was fitted and decorated by Webb
 The house is described as 'more a poem than a house'.
 It is, in fact, the earliest example of the concept of a 'total work of art' that would become
central not only to the Arts and Crafts philosophy, but to many other movements, among them
Art Nouveau, the Bauhaus and Art Deco.
(***Sketch and name the different parts of the building)

Standon House designed by Architect Philip Webb

(***Sketch and name the different parts of the building)

Millard house by Frank Lloyd Wright , US

(***Sketch and name the different parts of the building)
Wain Wright Building (A&C), US
(Formal looking but richly decorated, influenced from natural forms)
(***Sketch and name the different parts of the building)

Failures of the Movement

 Architects of arts crafts movements never solved the problem enough for common man.
 William Morris agreed that design catered for the prosperous middle class.
 It requires an architect to be on spot through-out the construction, modifying details, & it was
possible only if there was plenty of time.
 Not economical for common man.

Art Nouveau 1890s-1910s

Principals of Art Nouveau

 Imbibing all art forms
 Art as a way of life
Intention of arts and crafts movement and Art nouveau movement are same but the approach was
different
Difference:
 Use of New materials
 Protest against the traditional

Art nouveau architecture features:

 Asymmetrical shapes
 Extensive use of arches and curved forms
 Curved glass
 Curving, plant-like embellishments
 Mosaics
 Stained glass
 Japanese motifs
 Use of hyperbolas and parabolas.

Two tendencies of Art nouveau movement

1) Rationalist: dependent on the straight line
 An abstract, structural style with a strong symbolic and dynamic tendency (France & Belgium)
Example: Victor Horta’s staircase at a house in Brussels; Van de Velde’s house, Brussels and
Guimard’s Metro station Paris
(*** Sketch the examples)
  A floral approach focusing on organic plant forms

 The linear, flat approach, with a heavy symbolic element

Example: Glasgow School of Art: the Library, 1907-1909. Architect: Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
(*** Sketch the examples)

 A structured, geometric style (Austria & Germany)

Example: Olbrich, House of the Vienna Secession and Stoclet House, Brussels, designed by Josef
Hoffmann, 1905.
(*** Sketch the examples)

2) Organic: gives precedence to the curved line and floral shapes

Example: Antonio Gaudi- Casa Mila; Sagarda Familia
(*** Sketch the examples, Casa Mila -plan and elevation)

Failure:
 This was a short-lived movement, burnt itself in 1914.
 It was concerned with surface decoration than with plastic structure.
 It was a subjective creation and insufficiently rational.
 It lacked simplicity, integrity and clarity of proportion and symmetry.
 It disregarded functional efficiency concerning the interiors.