architecture essay

New Building Types and the Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution

and New Building

Types: Takeaway

• Tremendous growth in manufacturing and transportation with the Industrial Revolution brought huge changes in society

• Industry heralded new technologies, new building materials, new building types

• Raised questions about how historical styles like the Gothic and Classical could be applied to these new building types

• New types of buildings emerging in the 19th century reflect huge cultural and socioeconomic changes

• The Arts and Crafts Movement as spearheaded by William Morris, celebrated the art of the handmade object as a rejection of the Industrial Revolution and as a means to reform society.

Philippe de Loutherbourg, Coalbrookdale by Night, 1801

Abraham Darby III, Thomas Pritchard, Iron Bridge at Coalbrookdale, 1779-81

Mortise and tenon joints, 800 struts for stability

William Strutt, plan and sections of West Mill, 1793, Belper

Sectional view of Strutt's model cotton mills, Belper, Derbyshire, England, 1820. Power was generated by the water wheel and distributed via a shaft and belting. A schoolroom was situated at the top of the building.

Interior of mill building

Genesis of the Great Exhibition

Henry Cole First Christmas Card

Winterhalter, Albert, Prince Consort of Victoria

Early design for Great Exhibition, 1850, contributions from I.K. Brunel

Sir Joseph Paxton, Head Gardener of Chatsworth

Paxton, The Great Conservatory, Chatsworth, 1836-40, the largest glass building in the world

Nature’s structural lessons

Greenhouse for the Victoria Regia House, Paxton

Early design for Great Exhibition space, 1849, dome by Brunel, note the traditional architectural language: roman arches, arcades and dome

Quick sketch for the Great Exhibition Hall, Joseph Paxton, 1850

First Drawing

Feat of Engineering, pre- fabrication

Construction of the Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace construction

• Raising of the trusses

Crystal Palace Construction

Erecting the first columns, saving the elms, raising transept ribs

“The interior offered ‘a delicate network of lines without any clue by means of which we might judge their distance from the eye or the real size…the eye sweeps along an unending perspective which fades into the horizon.’” Lothar Bucher

“The Crystal Palace is a revolution in architecture from which a new style will date.” Lothar Bucher, journalist

Excavation of Olive Mount, Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 1831, T.T. Bury

• W.P. Frith, The Railway Station, 1866: “Creative Destruction” Nietzsche

Lewis Cubitt, King’s Cross Station, London,

1851-2

St. Pancras Station and Grand Hotel, London: Train shed: W.H. Barlow, Hotel: G.G. Scott, 1860s

. A. Duquesny, Gare du l’Est, Paris, 1847

• Gare du Nord, Paris, Hittorf, 1860s. How to dress this new building type?

A. W. N. Pugin “Contrasting View of Modern and Ancient Poor House,” from Contrasts, 1841

Detail: Medieval houses for the poor

Second Drawing: Detail: Poorhouse in 1840

Pugin, Contrasting Views of a Town,

William Morris 1834- 1896 • ‘apart from my desire to produce beautiful things,

the leading passion in my life is hatred of modern civilization.’

The Crystal Palace and typical 19th century designs

Philip Webb, Red House, 1859, Bexleyheath, England: “unpretentiousness and honesty” ‘more a poem than a house’

Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co., and then Morris and Co.

‘dignity and joy through craftsmanship’

“have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”

Designing everything from chairs to stained glass windows