UNIT-II –INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

1. Industrial revolution and its impact

2. Materials and technologies

3. History of steel, concrete, glass

IMPACT OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION:-

Industrial revolution began in Britain in the 18th century. European architecture in the 19thcentury was
profoundly influenced by the industrial revolution. Goods that had traditionally been made in the home or
in small workshops began to be manufactured in the factory.

Tasks which had earlier been carried out slowly were performed more quickly and more cheaply by
machinery.
Large numbers of people moved from rural areas to urban communities in search of work in the new
factories, leading to expansion of cities.
Different types of building were also needed to meet new demands. Among them were houses, town
halls, museums, concerts halls, libraries, hospitals, department stores, shopping arcades, schools, colleges,
banks offices warehouses and factories.
Railways, which affected social life, also influenced architectural practice. With the railways came a need
for new kinds of buildings such as railway stations, railway hotels and goods yards.

CAUSES OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION:-

At the dawn of the eighteenth century, farming was the primary livelihood in England, with at least 75%
of the population making its living off the land.
THE COTTAGE INDUSTRY was developed to take advantage of the farmers' free time and use it to
produce quality textiles for a reasonable price.
THE COTTAGE INDUSTRY helped to prepare the country for the Industrial Revolution by boosting
the English economy.

Thus, when industrialization and the Agricultural Revolution reduced the need for farm workers, many
were forced to leave their homes and move to the city.
The URBANIZATION OF THE ENGLISH POPULATION was largely fueled by farmers who moved
to the city in the hopes of finding new work. This change, which occurred between 1750 and 1830,
happened because conditions were perfect in Britain for the Industrial Revolution.

THREE UNIQUE SOCIAL ELEMENTS which led to the EARLY MECHANIZATION of Britain
were:

 EDUCATION,
 MODERN WORK ATTITUDES, AND
 A "MODERN" GOVERNMENT.

The elements needed or preferred for the Industrial Revolution are:

 MODERN WORK ATTITUDES
 EDUCATION
 A PRODUCT
 TRANSPORTATION FOR THE PRODUCT
 LARGE MARKET
 MODERN GOVERNMENT
 MONEY

KEY INNOVATIONS AND INVENTORS OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION:-
The Agricultural Revolution is the name given to the drastic changes in the farming process that occurred
in the 1600's onwards. The spread-out, shared farms, common under the "open-field system" of
cultivation, turned into more compact farms.
Farmers had discovered a crop rotation system. The other innovations which changed the farming process
include:
Jethro Tull’s major contribution to the Agricultural Revolution, were his two inventions: THE SEED
DRILL and HORSE HOE. During the Agricultural Revolution, the agricultural output of England
increased about three and a half times. With more productive farms and a smaller work load, more people
were able to leave the farms and go to the city.

INVENTIONS IN THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY

In 1733 - Flying shuttle invented by John Kay - an improvement to looms that enabled weavers to weave
faster.
In 1742 - Cotton mills were first opened in England.
In 1764 - Spinning jenny invented by James Hargreaves - the first machine to improve upon the spinning
wheel.
In 1764 - Water frame invented by Richard Arkwright - the first powered textile machine.
In 1790 - Arkwright built the first steam powered textile factory in Nottingham, England.
In 1779- Samuel Crompton combined both the spinning jenny and the water frame to create a machine
known as "Crompton's mule," which produced large amounts of fine, strong yarn.
EFFECT ON TRANSPORTATION  
Improvements to bridges and roads were made early in the 1700's. Roads and rivers carried the factory
made products to the world markets. Canal building came next, and a network of canals soon joined
important cities. Railroads were made when George Stephenson made a steam engine that could transport
on rails. During the mid 19th century wooden steam powered ships took over sailing ships.
    
KEY INVENTIONS - TRANSPORT
In 1800- John McAdam made a roadbed of large crushed stones with smooth layer of crushed stones. The
"macadam" road is still the basis for most of our modern highways.
In 1807- Robert Fulton used steam power to create the first steamboat, an invention that would change the
way and the speed in which materials could be moved between the colonies of Britain.
In 1829- Stephenson used the steam engine to create a steam powered train.
In 1886- The German scientist, Gottlieb Daimler, built the first internal combustion engine.
In 1904- Wilbur and Orville Wright successfully flew their flying machine (Wright Flyer) at Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina.
These first innovations have greatly affected the basic elements of the era: agriculture, power,
transportation, textiles, and communication.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES DUE TO INDUSTRIALIZATION :-

 The Industrial Revolution brought a shift from the agricultural societies created during the
Neolithic Revolution to modern industrial societies.
 Large portions of the population relocated from the countryside to the towns and cities where
manufacturing centers were found.
 Economic changes caused far-reaching social changes, including the movement of people to cities,
the availability of a greater variety of material goods, and new ways of doing business.
 In the long run the Industrial Revolution has brought economic improvement in industrialized
societies.
 Many enjoy greater prosperity and improved health, especially those in the middle and the
upper classes of society.
 Drastic population growth following industrialization has contributed to the decline of natural
habitats and resources. These factors, in turn, have caused many species to become extinct or
endangered.

IMPACT OF INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ON ARCHITECTURE

 Large numbers of people moved from rural areas to urban communities in search of work in
the new factories, leading to expansion of cities.
  In pre-industrial England, more than three-quarters of the population lived in small villages.

 By the mid-19th century, however, the country had made history by becoming the first nation
with half its population in cities.

 The accommodation of such volatile growth led to the transformations of old neighborhoods into
slums.

 These settlements were congested developments and had inadequate standards of light,
ventilation and open space with poor sanitary facilities.

 These conditions naturally provoked a high incidence of disease and eventually the Public health
act was enacted.

 This act in addition to others, made local authorities legally responsible for sewerage, refuse
collection water supply, roads and the burial of the dead.

 Edwin Chadwick inspired the society for improving the conditions of the laboring classes and he
sponsored the erection of the first working class flats in London in 1844.

 Throughout the 19th century integrated industrial settlements emerged, where the industries
provided all the amenities to their workers.

TOWNSHIPS: - GROWTH OF CITIES

 SIR TITUS SALT’S SALTAIRE, near Bradford in Yorkshire (1850), was a paternalistic mill
town, complete with traditional urban institutions such as a church, school, public baths, houses
and park.
 THE FAMILISTERE WAS BUILT BY J.P.GODIN in 1859-70.This complex comprised of
three residential blocks, a crèche, a kindergarten, a theatre, schools, public baths and laundry.

 THE ENGLISH PARK MOVEMENT FOUNDED BY HUMPREY REPTON attempted to

project the “landscaped country estate into the city.
  Repton demonstrated this, in collaboration with the architect John Nash, in their layout of regent’s
park in London (1812-27).

 The proposed development enclosing the park by a continuous display facade penetrating into the
existing urban area and extending as a terraced accommodation from the aristocratic vistas of
regent’s park in the north to the urbanity of St James Park and Carlton House terrace in the south.
The Royal palace of the Carlton House was lined with elegant Neo-Classical buildings with broad
Processional avenues.

 IN 1853 HAUSSMANN regularized Paris into a regional metropolis. The city of Paris built some
137kms of boulevards which were considerably wider, more thickly lined with trees.

 With all this came standard residential plan types, regularized facades and standard system of
street furniture’s. This entire was well ventilated with large open spaces. There was adequate
sewer system and fresh water piped into the city from the Dhuis valley.

 By 1891, inventions like railways, electric tram, passenger lifts, steel frames which gave rise to
multi-storey buildings, emerged as the natural unit for future expansion.

 Two alternative models for the European garden city were proposed by:
- Axial structure of Spanish linear Garden city by Arturo Soria y Mata in early 1880’s.
- The English concentric Garden city by Ebenezer Howard.
 THE ENGLISH GARDEN CITY BY HOWARD’S was widely adopted than the linear model
sponsored by Soria y Mata. The linear city model was considered to be theoretical rather than
practical and hence it failed.
 In addition to this the growth of heavy industry brought a flood of new building materials.
 Cast iron, steel, and glass—with which architects and engineers devised structures hitherto
undreamt of in function, size, and form.

 THE CRYSTAL PALACE (1850-1851; RECONSTRUCTED 1852-1854) IN LONDON, a

vast exhibition hall, designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, used the new materials.

CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF THE BUILDINGS – 19th CENTURY

  There IS NO SINGLE STYLE WHICH IS CHARACTERISTIC OF THE
19THCENTURY.Architects drew their inspiration from and copied virtually every historical style
know to them: Greek, Roman, Gothic, Renaissance as well as Chinese, Indian and Egyptian.
 Buildings are often more easily recognized as belonging to the 19thcentury by the function they
perform than by the style in which they were built.

 Some buildings were designed in a single historical style, with the fundamental rules of that style
strictly observed. Few others were a blend of different styles.

 A mixture of various styles within the same building is one of the characteristic features of the
19thcentury.

 Some styles were considered suitable for certain buildings ( Neo-Gothic for churches,
Neoclassical for civic buildings).

 Another recognizable feature is mass produced decorative detail using the same mould.

 Other features include stained glass windows, patterned brickwork and ceramic tiling.

 Exteriors of many houses were notable for wrought iron balconies and contrasting colors of bricks.

 Most extraordinary feature of the 19th century architecture was combination of modern
technology and historic styles.

NEW MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGIES

HISTORY OF METALS AND THEIR USAGE:

In architecture before 1800, metals played an auxiliary role. They were used for bonding masonry (dowels
and clamps), for tension members (chains strengthening domes, tie rods across arches to reinforce the
vaults) and for roofing, doors, windows, and decoration.

Small items made of iron, dating from around 4000 B.C., were made in Egypt and Sumer.
The iron used for these probably came from meteorites, which made the metal significant to ancient
people. During the 3rd B.C., smelted iron came into use, mostly for weaponry, across Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and the Mediterranean, and around 1200 B.C. This was wrought iron, a low-carbon,
malleable metal that was painstaking to obtain, by burning iron and charcoal to form bloom, a spongy
mixture from which ash and impurities had to be removed by beating and folding.
Developments in iron-working continued around the globe during the last few centuries B.C. and into the
Middle Ages.
In China, cast and wrought iron were combined to make steel.
In India, crucible steel was already being made, by heating wrought iron, charcoal, and glass to melt the
iron, causing it to absorb carbon.
 The Middle East also produced high-quality weapons from steel. After the Baroque faded slowly away,
eighteenth-century architecture consisted primarily of revivals of previous periods. 
Previously, building materials had been restricted to a few manmade materials along with those available
in nature: timber, stone, timber, lime mortar, and concrete. Metals were not available in sufficient quantity
or consistent quality to be used as anything more than ornamentation. The Industrial Revolution changed
this situation dramatically. The availability of new building materials such as iron, steel, concrete and
glass drove the invention of new building techniques as part of the Industrial Revolution. But for a very
long time architects did not really use them.

 IRON AND STEEL

The development of construction methods in iron and steel was the most important innovation in
architecture since ancient times. Iron was available in three forms.

THE LEAST PROCESSED FORM, CAST IRON, was brittle due to a high percentage of impurities. It
still displayed impressive compressive strength, however.

WROUGHT IRON was a more refined form of iron, malleable, though with low tensile strength. Steel
was the strongest, most versatile form of iron. Through a conversion process, all of the impurities were
burned out of the iron ore, and then precise amounts of carbon were added for hardness.

STEEL had tensile and compressive strength greater than any material previously available, and its
capabilities revolutionized architecture.
The explosion in the development of iron and steel structures was driven initially by the advance of the
railroads. Bridges which were required to span gorges and rivers were of three types:
 The BRIDGE WITH A TRADITIONAL ARCH made of iron instead of stone.
 Later, THE TRUSS BECAME THE PRIMARY ELEMENT OF BRIDGE BUILDING.
Trusses were used to build bridges of unprecedented strength throughout the nineteenth century,
including cantilever bridges consisting of truss complexes balanced on supporting piers.

 A third, more attractive TYPE OF STEEL BRIDGE WAS THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE, in
which the roadway is hung from steel cables strung from supporting towers.

Availability of Iron and Steel in large quantities enabled architects to build on a new and massive scale.
The evolution of steel frame construction in the 20th century entirely changed the concept of the wall and
the support. These methods provided for stronger and taller structures, greater unsupported spans over
openings and interior or exterior spaces.

USE OF CAST IRON:

 The RAIL WAS THE FIRST UNIT OF CONSTRUCTION. Iron was avoided for dwelling
houses and used for arcades, exhibition halls and railway stations. But the social conditions for its
increase utilization as a building material came into being a hundred years.
 Cast iron, was used in bridge building as early as 1779. WILKINSON assisted DARBY and his
architect, T.F.PRITCHARD in designing and erecting the first cast-iron bridge, a 30.5-metre span
built over the severn near coalbrookdale in 1779.

 In 1796 THOMAS TELFORD made his debut as a bridge builder39.5 –metre span bridge erected
over the severn.

 William strut’s six-storey cotton mill,built at derby in 1792 and charles bage’s flax-spinning mill
erected at shrewsbury in 1796, employed cast iron columns.

 In 1830s that EATON HODGKINSON introduced the section beam, leading to widespread use of
iron construction.

 The CRYSTAL PALACE BY JOSEPH Paxton at the Great Exhibition of 1851 was an early
example of iron and glass construction;

 Cast and wrought iron products had been used extensively in building, especially in the 19th
century, but were largely superseded by the beginning of the 20th century by hot-rolled steel members.

USE OF WROUGHT IRON:

 Wrought-iron masonry reinforcement in France had its origins in Paris, in PERRAULT’S east
façade of Louvre(1667) and SOUFFLOT’S portico of Ste-Genevieve(1772).
 VICTOR LOUIS used wrought-iron roof for theatre Francais of 1786 and theatre in the palais-
Royal of 1790.

 Around this time the technique of Iron construction underwent an independent evolution,
beginning with the AMERICAN JAMES FINLAY’S invention of stiffened flat deck suspension
bridge in 1801.

 In Britain Brown’s wrought iron flat bars were used in Union Bridge( span-115-metre), built over
Tweed in 1820.

 British wrought- iron suspension construction culminated IN BRUNEL’S CLIFTON BRIDGE

(span-214-metre), Bristol designed in 1829.

 Stephenson and FAIRBAIRN BRITANNIA’S Tubular Bridge over the Menai straits and
Brunel’s salt ash viaduct (1859) made use of plated wrought iron.

 The Britannia Bridge comprised of iron plated box tunnels which bridged the straits in 70-metres
span. Stone towers at intervals introduced for the anchorage of suspension members.

 The PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1889, which included Eiffel’s iron tower was designed by
Gustave Eiffel with overall height of 300 metres.

USE OF STEEL:
 The major disadvantage of iron, low tensile strength, was overcome in the mid-1850s, when the
Bessemer process of making steel (an alloy of iron and carbon).

 The first major structure built entirely of steel was the CANTILEVERED FORTH BRIDGE IN
SCOTLAND, completed in 1890. Its two record-setting spans of 521 m (1,710 ft) were the longest in
existence until 1917.

 FORTH BRIDGE

 THE ARCHED EADS BRIDGE over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri, designed by
James Eads and completed in 1874, was the first steel bridge in the United States. At the time the Eads
Bridge was built, it was the longest structure in the United States.

EADS BRIDGE

 The Eads Bridge has three main spans. The center span is 160 m (520 ft) long, and the spans on
either side are each 153 m (502 ft) in length.
 JOHN AND WASHINGTON ROEBLING also designed and built the BROOKLYN BRIDGE,
which was the world’s longest suspension bridge at the time of its completion in 1883, having a main
span of 486 m 31 cm (1,595 ft 6 in).
 BROOKLYN
BRIDGE

 The completion of the Brooklyn Bridge marked the beginning of an 80-year period of large-scale
suspension-bridge design in the United States.

 GEORGE FULLER'S innovative steel-cage system for buildings, which involved a unified steel
framework to support the weight of tall buildings, created the multi-story factories and the
skyscrapers.
 The masonry bearing wall was transformed to the steel frame, which assumed all the load-bearing
functions. The building’s skeleton could be erected quickly and the remaining components hung on it
to complete it, an immense advantage for high-rise buildings on busy city streets.

 The Chicago architect LOUIS SULLIVAN, IN HIS WAINWRIGHT BUILDING (1890-1891)

in St. Louis, Missouri, his Guaranty Building (1895) in Buffalo, New York, and his Carson Pirie Scott
Department Store (1899-1904) in Chicago, gave new expressive form to urban commercial buildings.
 His career converges with the so-called Chicago School of architects, whose challenge was to
invent the skyscraper or high-rise building, facilitated by the introduction of the electric elevator and
the sudden abundance of steel.


 The best example is the development of the tall steel skyscraper in Chicago around 1890 by
William Le Baron Jenney and Louis Sullivan.

 In the same time another huge steel building was build in Paris. THE "GALLERIE DES
MACHINES" a huge 422m long, 114m wide and 47m high hall by Charles Dutert and Victor
Contamin
 Russian Constuctivist Vladimir Tatlin's proposal for a spiraling steel monument to the Third
International in 1920 provided a dynamic and optimistic visual image for the new technology.

 By mid of 18th century cast iron columns and wrought iron rails used in conjunction with modular
glazing,had become the standard technique for the rapid prefabrication and erection of urban centres.

Examples of modern structures of steel

1. The Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building

The Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building is a landmark department store building at State Street
and Madison, Chicago, Illinois. It was designed by Louis Sullivan, built in 1899 for the retail firm
Schlesinger & Meyer, and expanded and sold to Carson Pirie Scott in 1904.The building is remarkable for
its steel structure, which allowed a dramatic increase in window area, which in turn allowed far more
daylight into the building interiors, and far more display of merchandise to outside pedestrian traffic. The
lavish cast-iron ornamental work above the rounded tower was also meant to be functional. Sullivan
designed the corner entry to be seen from both State and Madison, and that the ornamentation, situated
above the main entrance, would be literally attractive. The building is one of the classic structures of the
Chicago school.

The Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building Wainwright Building

2. Wainwright Building
The Wainwright Building is a 10-story red-brick landmark office building in downtown Missouri. Built
in 1891 and designed by Adler and Louis Sullivan, it is among the first skyscrapers in the world. Sullivan
used a steel frame and applied his intricate terra cotta ornament in vertical bands to emphasize the height
of the building.

3. Tatlin’s Constructivist tower

Tatlin's Constructivist tower was to be built from industrial materials: iron, glass and steel. The tower's
main form was a twin helix which spiraled up to 400 m in height. The main framework would contain
three enormous rotating geometric structures. At the base of the structure was a cube which was designed
as a venue for lectures, conferences and congress meetings. In the centre of the structure was a cone,
housing executive activities. The topmost one, a cylinder, was to house an information centre. There were
also plans to install a gigantic open-air screen on the cylinder. Although there were plans to build Tatlin’s
Tower, the monument was never constructed.

Tatlin's Constructivist tower

CONCRETE
The Industrial Revolution provided another building material, a stronger more durable and fire resistant
type of cement called Portland cement was developed in 1824. The new material was still limited by low
tensile strength, however, and could not be used in many structural applications. The nineteenth century
builders came up with the idea of reinforced concrete. Though expensive, iron and steel had high tensile
strength and could be easily formed into long, thin bars. Enclosed in cheap, easily formed concrete, the
bars were protected from fire and weather. The result was a strong, economical, easily produced structural
member that could take almost any form imaginable, including columns, beams, arches, vaults, and
decorative elements. It is still one of the most common building materials used today.

History of Concrete in Architecture:

Concrete was employed in ancient Egypt and was highly developed by the ancient Romans, whose
concrete made with volcanic-ash cement (pozzolana) permitted a great expansion of architectural
methods, particularly the development of domes and vaults (often reinforced by brick ribbing) to cover
large areas, of foundations, and of structures such as bridges and sewerage systems where waterproofing
was essential. The technique of manufacture declined in the middle ages and was regained in the 18th
century.

Use of Concrete –Building examples

 The first modern concrete bridge was a solid concrete bridge, 12 m (39 ft) long, built over the
GARONNE CANAL AT GRISOLES, FRANCE, IN 1840.
 All early concrete bridges used arched designs by necessity because concrete has great
compressive strength but is very weak in tension.

 Early structures to employ concrete as the chief means of architectural expression include Frank
Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple, built in 1906 near Chicago,

 And Rudolf Steiner's Second Goetheanum, built from 1926 near Basel, Switzerland.

REINFORCED CONCRETE:
Reinforced concrete was developed to add the tensile strength of steel to the compressive strength of mass
concrete. Reinforced concrete emerged simultaneously in Germany, the United States, England, and
France between 1870 and 1900. Three 20th-century developments in production are destined to have a
radical effect on architecture:
1. The first, concrete-shell construction permits the erection of vast vaults and domes with a concrete
and steel content so reduced that the thickness is comparatively less than that of an eggshell.
2. The second development, precast-concrete construction, employs bricks, slabs, and supports made
under optimal factory conditions to increase waterproofing and solidity, to decrease time and cost in
erection, and to reduce expansion and contraction.
3. Finally, prestressed concrete provides bearing members into which reinforcement is set under
tension to produce a live force to resist a particular load. Since the member acts like a spring, it can
carry a greater load than an unstressed member of the same size.

USE OF REINFORCED CONCRETE –BUILDING EXAMPLES

 IN FRANCE, FRANCOIS COIGNET was the first to use the reinforced concrete. In 1861 he
developed a technique for strengthening concrete with metal mesh (ferroconcrete) and used this
material in building sewers, other public structures including a remarkable series of six-storey
apartment blocks in 1867.

 IN 1892 FRENCH ENGINEER FRANÇOIS HENNEBIQUE combined the strengths of both

steel and concrete in a new system of construction based on concrete reinforced with steel.
Hennebique’s invention of monolithic joints created monolithic frames. His invention made possible
 previously unimaginable effects: extremely thin walls with large areas of glass; roofs that cantilever to
previously impossible distances; enormous spans without supporting columns or beam; and corners
formed of glass rather than stone, brick, or wood.

 One of the earliest architects to experiment with these new effects was BELGIAN ARCHITECT-
ENGINEER AUGUSTE PERRET, whose 1903 apartment building on Rue Franklin in Paris,
France, exemplified basic principles of steel reinforcement. On the façade, Perret clearly separated the
structural elements of steel-reinforced concrete from the exterior walls, which were simply decorative
panels or windows rather than structural necessities. The reinforced concrete structure also eliminated
the need for interior walls to support any weight, permitting a floor plan of unprecedented openness.
Perret's building stood eight stories high, with two additional stories set back from the front of the
building, the typical height of most Paris buildings at the time

 ROBERT MAILLART designed the reinforced concrete bridges in dynamic parabolic curves.
(eg. Bridge at Zuoz(1901),Bridge at Salgina Gorge(1929-30).

 The most dynamic building of the early 20th century was the Jahrhunderthalle(1911-13) built in
Breslau. Max Berg conceived the interiors with gigantic arched ribs of reinforced concrete supporting
a glass dome over a 65-metre circular auditorium. The external appearance was suppressed by Neo-
classical elements and with concentric tiers of glazing.

 In United States, F.L. Wright began to use reinforced concrete for Bank project( 1901),E-Z Polish
factory and Unity Temple (1905-06).
 Adolf loos’s Steiner house in Vienna (1911) was perhaps the first modern example of reinforced
concrete house construction. Its cubist appearance with flat roofs and plain walls and its freedom of
plan- form were features of the material.

 "Erich Mendelsohn's, Einstein Tower is a small, but powerfully modeled tower, built to
symbolize the greatness of the Einsteinian concepts, was also a quite functional house.

Examples of early Concrete constructions

1. Rue Franklin apartments – Auguste Perret

This apartment building with which Perret established his reputation is to be regarded as one of the
canonical works of 20th-century architecture. Perret deliberately made the apartment partition walls
nonstructural throughout and their partial removal would have yielded an open space, punctuated only by
a series of free-standing columns. The cantilevers at the first floor level were made possible with use of
the new material. Each floor is organized with the main and service stairs to the rear (each with its own
elevator) the kitchen to one side and the principal rooms to the front.

Rue Franklin apartments – Auguste Perret Einstein Tower

2. Einstein Tower
"Erich Mendelsohn's small, but powerfully modeled tower, built to symbolize the greatness of the
Einsteinian concepts, was also a quite functional house. It was designed to hold Einstein's own
astronomical laboratory. Mendelsohn was after a completely plastic kind of building, moulded rather than
built, without angles and with smooth, rounded corners. He needed a malleable material like reinforced
concrete, which could be made to curve and create its own surface plasticity, but due to post-war
shortages, some parts had to be in brick and others in concrete.

GLASS
The invention of glass took place around 4000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean. Two thousand
years passed between the initial discovery and the appearance of blown glass, which led to the production
of thin transparent sheets strong enough for windows. This marked the beginning of a symbiosis between
glass and buildings. The use of glass as a building material allowed architects to explore on a larger scale.
The next quantum leap occurred in the nineteenth century, with the introduction of the skeletal structural
frame, initially fabricated from cast and wrought iron, and latterly steel and reinforced concrete. Iron and
glass technology generated a new architectural language and new typologies - conservatories, arcades,
heroic glazed rail sheds and exhibition buildings, notably Paxton's seminal Crystal Palace of 1851 which
used over 300,000 sheets of glass.

History of Glass
Glass production flourished in Egypt and Mesopotamia until about 1200 bc. In the 9th century bc, the
industry spread throughout the Mediterranean region.In Churches of the medieval period, mosaic glass
was used in Mediterranean Europe and stained-glass windows in the north.Mosaics were made of small
glass cubes, or tesserae, embedded in cement. The tesserae, cut from solid cakes of glass, could be
extremely elaborate, with gold and silver lead inlaid.
Glass windows in churches are found as early as the 6th century. But the finest windows are considered
those from the 13th and 14th centuries, primarily in France and England.Medieval cathedral windows
used flat coloured glass. The glass was colored, or flashed with color, and then cut into the shapes required
by the design. Details were painted into the glass, often with brownish enamel. The pieces were fitted into
lead strips and set in an iron framework. The art declined in the late Renaissance but was revived in the
19th century. The discovery of thin transparent sheets of glass marked the beginning of a symbiosis
between glass and buildings.

Use of Glass – Building Examples

 Fontaine’s Galerie d’Orleans built in the Palais Royal in 1829 was the earliest arcade to have a glass
barrel vault.
 Richard Turner and Decimus Burton’s Palm House at Kew Gardens built in 1845-48, was one of the
first structures to use sheet glass.

 The Crystal Palace(1851) by Joseph Paxton at the Great Exhibition of 1851 was an early example of
iron and glass construction;

 Gropius' Fagus Factory of 1911 was one of the first examples of a glass facade supported by a thin
steel framework;

 Bruno Taut's polygonal Glashaus Pavilion for the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne was made
entirely from glass.

 Wain wright Building of Louis Sullivan.