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41 Adam, Robert
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]b. 3 July 1728 Kirkcaldy, Scotlandd. 3 March 1792 London, England[br]Scottish architect, active mostly in England, who led the neo-classical movement between 1760 and 1790.[br]Robert Adam was a man of outstanding talent, immense energy dedicated to his profession, and of great originality, who utilized all sources of classical art from ancient Greece and Rome as well as from the Renaissance and Baroque eras in Italy. He was also a very practical exponent of neo-classicism and believed in using the latest techniques to produce fine craftsmanship.Of particular interest to him was stucco, the material needed for elegant, finely crafted ceiling and wall designs. Stucco, though the Italian word for plaster, refers architecturally to a specific form of the material. Known as Stucco duro (hard plaster), its use and composition dates from the days of ancient Rome. Giovanni da Udine, a pupil of Raphael, having discovered some fine stucco antico in the ruins of the Palace of Titus in Rome, carried out extensive research during the Italian Renaissance in order to discover its precise composition; it was a mixture of powdered crystalline limestone (travertine), river sand, water and powdered white marble. The marble produced an exceptionally hard stucco when set, thereby differentiating it from plaster-work, and was a material fine enough to make delicate relief and statuary work possible.In the 1770s Robert Adam's ceiling and wall designs were characterized by low-relief, delicate, classical forms. He and his brothers, who formed the firm of Adam Brothers, were interested in a stucco which would be especially fine grained and hard setting. A number of new products then appearing on the market were easier to handle than earlier ones. These included a stucco by Mr David Wark, patented in 1765, and another by a Swiss clergyman called Liardet in 1773; the Adam firm purchased both patents and obtained an Act of Parliament authorizing them to be the sole vendors and makers of this stucco, which they called "Adam's new invented patent stucco". More new versions appeared, among which was one by a Mr Johnson, who claimed it to be an improvement. The Adam Brothers, having paid a high price for their rights, took him to court. The case was decided in 1778 by Lord Mansfield, a fellow Scot and a patron (at Kenwood), who,[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsMember of the Society of Arts 1758. FRS 1761. Architect to the King's Works 1761.Bibliography1764, Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro.1773, Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam.Further ReadingA.T.Bolton, 1922, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1758–1794, 2 vols, Country Life.J.Fleming, 1962, Robert Adam and his Circle, Murray. J.Lees-Milne, 1947, The Age of Adam, Batsford.J.Rykwert and A.Rykwert, 1985, The Brothers Adam, Collins. D.Yarwood, 1970, Robert Adam, Dent.DY -
42 Edison, Thomas Alva
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Automotive engineering, Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Metallurgy, Photography, film and optics, Public utilities, Recording, Telecommunications[br]b. 11 February 1847 Milan, Ohio, USAd. 18 October 1931 Glenmont[br]American inventor and pioneer electrical developer.[br]He was the son of Samuel Edison, who was in the timber business. His schooling was delayed due to scarlet fever until 1855, when he was 8½ years old, but he was an avid reader. By the age of 14 he had a job as a newsboy on the railway from Port Huron to Detroit, a distance of sixty-three miles (101 km). He worked a fourteen-hour day with a stopover of five hours, which he spent in the Detroit Free Library. He also sold sweets on the train and, later, fruit and vegetables, and was soon making a profit of $20 a week. He then started two stores in Port Huron and used a spare freight car as a laboratory. He added a hand-printing press to produce 400 copies weekly of The Grand Trunk Herald, most of which he compiled and edited himself. He set himself to learn telegraphy from the station agent at Mount Clements, whose son he had saved from being run over by a freight car.At the age of 16 he became a telegraphist at Port Huron. In 1863 he became railway telegraphist at the busy Stratford Junction of the Grand Trunk Railroad, arranging a clock with a notched wheel to give the hourly signal which was to prove that he was awake and at his post! He left hurriedly after failing to hold a train which was nearly involved in a head-on collision. He usually worked the night shift, allowing himself time for experiments during the day. His first invention was an arrangement of two Morse registers so that a high-speed input could be decoded at a slower speed. Moving from place to place he held many positions as a telegraphist. In Boston he invented an automatic vote recorder for Congress and patented it, but the idea was rejected. This was the first of a total of 1180 patents that he was to take out during his lifetime. After six years he resigned from the Western Union Company to devote all his time to invention, his next idea being an improved ticker-tape machine for stockbrokers. He developed a duplex telegraphy system, but this was turned down by the Western Union Company. He then moved to New York.Edison found accommodation in the battery room of Law's Gold Reporting Company, sleeping in the cellar, and there his repair of a broken transmitter marked him as someone of special talents. His superior soon resigned, and he was promoted with a salary of $300 a month. Western Union paid him $40,000 for the sole rights on future improvements on the duplex telegraph, and he moved to Ward Street, Newark, New Jersey, where he employed a gathering of specialist engineers. Within a year, he married one of his employees, Mary Stilwell, when she was only 16: a daughter, Marion, was born in 1872, and two sons, Thomas and William, in 1876 and 1879, respectively.He continued to work on the automatic telegraph, a device to send out messages faster than they could be tapped out by hand: that is, over fifty words per minute or so. An earlier machine by Alexander Bain worked at up to 400 words per minute, but was not good over long distances. Edison agreed to work on improving this feature of Bain's machine for the Automatic Telegraph Company (ATC) for $40,000. He improved it to a working speed of 500 words per minute and ran a test between Washington and New York. Hoping to sell their equipment to the Post Office in Britain, ATC sent Edison to England in 1873 to negotiate. A 500-word message was to be sent from Liverpool to London every half-hour for six hours, followed by tests on 2,200 miles (3,540 km) of cable at Greenwich. Only confused results were obtained due to induction in the cable, which lay coiled in a water tank. Edison returned to New York, where he worked on his quadruplex telegraph system, tests of which proved a success between New York and Albany in December 1874. Unfortunately, simultaneous negotiation with Western Union and ATC resulted in a lawsuit.Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for a telephone in March 1876 while Edison was still working on the same idea. His improvements allowed the device to operate over a distance of hundreds of miles instead of only a few miles. Tests were carried out over the 106 miles (170 km) between New York and Philadelphia. Edison applied for a patent on the carbon-button transmitter in April 1877, Western Union agreeing to pay him $6,000 a year for the seventeen-year duration of the patent. In these years he was also working on the development of the electric lamp and on a duplicating machine which would make up to 3,000 copies from a stencil. In 1876–7 he moved from Newark to Menlo Park, twenty-four miles (39 km) from New York on the Pennsylvania Railway, near Elizabeth. He had bought a house there around which he built the premises that would become his "inventions factory". It was there that he began the use of his 200- page pocket notebooks, each of which lasted him about two weeks, so prolific were his ideas. When he died he left 3,400 of them filled with notes and sketches.Late in 1877 he applied for a patent for a phonograph which was granted on 19 February 1878, and by the end of the year he had formed a company to manufacture this totally new product. At the time, Edison saw the device primarily as a business aid rather than for entertainment, rather as a dictating machine. In August 1878 he was granted a British patent. In July 1878 he tried to measure the heat from the solar corona at a solar eclipse viewed from Rawlins, Wyoming, but his "tasimeter" was too sensitive.Probably his greatest achievement was "The Subdivision of the Electric Light" or the "glow bulb". He tried many materials for the filament before settling on carbon. He gave a demonstration of electric light by lighting up Menlo Park and inviting the public. Edison was, of course, faced with the problem of inventing and producing all the ancillaries which go to make up the electrical system of generation and distribution-meters, fuses, insulation, switches, cabling—even generators had to be designed and built; everything was new. He started a number of manufacturing companies to produce the various components needed.In 1881 he built the world's largest generator, which weighed 27 tons, to light 1,200 lamps at the Paris Exhibition. It was later moved to England to be used in the world's first central power station with steam engine drive at Holborn Viaduct, London. In September 1882 he started up his Pearl Street Generating Station in New York, which led to a worldwide increase in the application of electric power, particularly for lighting. At the same time as these developments, he built a 1,300yd (1,190m) electric railway at Menlo Park.On 9 August 1884 his wife died of typhoid. Using his telegraphic skills, he proposed to 19-year-old Mina Miller in Morse code while in the company of others on a train. He married her in February 1885 before buying a new house and estate at West Orange, New Jersey, building a new laboratory not far away in the Orange Valley.Edison used direct current which was limited to around 250 volts. Alternating current was largely developed by George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla, using transformers to step up the current to a higher voltage for long-distance transmission. The use of AC gradually overtook the Edison DC system.In autumn 1888 he patented a form of cinephotography, the kinetoscope, obtaining film-stock from George Eastman. In 1893 he set up the first film studio, which was pivoted so as to catch the sun, with a hinged roof which could be raised. In 1894 kinetoscope parlours with "peep shows" were starting up in cities all over America. Competition came from the Latham Brothers with a screen-projection machine, which Edison answered with his "Vitascope", shown in New York in 1896. This showed pictures with accompanying sound, but there was some difficulty with synchronization. Edison also experimented with captions at this early date.In 1880 he filed a patent for a magnetic ore separator, the first of nearly sixty. He bought up deposits of low-grade iron ore which had been developed in the north of New Jersey. The process was a commercial success until the discovery of iron-rich ore in Minnesota rendered it uneconomic and uncompetitive. In 1898 cement rock was discovered in New Village, west of West Orange. Edison bought the land and started cement manufacture, using kilns twice the normal length and using half as much fuel to heat them as the normal type of kiln. In 1893 he met Henry Ford, who was building his second car, at an Edison convention. This started him on the development of a battery for an electric car on which he made over 9,000 experiments. In 1903 he sold his patent for wireless telegraphy "for a song" to Guglielmo Marconi.In 1910 Edison designed a prefabricated concrete house. In December 1914 fire destroyed three-quarters of the West Orange plant, but it was at once rebuilt, and with the threat of war Edison started to set up his own plants for making all the chemicals that he had previously been buying from Europe, such as carbolic acid, phenol, benzol, aniline dyes, etc. He was appointed President of the Navy Consulting Board, for whom, he said, he made some forty-five inventions, "but they were pigeonholed, every one of them". Thus did Edison find that the Navy did not take kindly to civilian interference.In 1927 he started the Edison Botanic Research Company, founded with similar investment from Ford and Firestone with the object of finding a substitute for overseas-produced rubber. In the first year he tested no fewer than 3,327 possible plants, in the second year, over 1,400, eventually developing a variety of Golden Rod which grew to 14 ft (4.3 m) in height. However, all this effort and money was wasted, due to the discovery of synthetic rubber.In October 1929 he was present at Henry Ford's opening of his Dearborn Museum to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the incandescent lamp, including a replica of the Menlo Park laboratory. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and was elected to the American Academy of Sciences. He died in 1931 at his home, Glenmont; throughout the USA, lights were dimmed temporarily on the day of his funeral.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsMember of the American Academy of Sciences. Congressional Gold Medal.Further ReadingM.Josephson, 1951, Edison, Eyre \& Spottiswode.R.W.Clark, 1977, Edison, the Man who Made the Future, Macdonald \& Jane.IMcN -
43 Li Jie (Li Chieh)
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]fl. 1085–1110 China[br]Chinese architect who revised the Chinese treatise on architectural method, Ying Zao Fa Shi.[br]He was a first-rate architect and from 1092 was an assistant in the Directorate of Buildings and Construction. He must have shown promise as an architect for he was commissioned to revise the old manuals of architecture. The work was completed in 1100 and printed three years later as the treatise for which he is best known, the Ying Zao Fa Shi (Treatise on Architectural Method). This work has been called the greatest and definitive treatise of any age in the millennial tradition of Chinese architecture. The work is noted for the comprehensive range of constructions covered and the thoroughness of its instruction to architects. The detailed instructions for the construction and shaping of woodwork are not found in European literature until the eighteenth century. The illustrations are fine and the excellence of the constructional drawings makes them the earliest working drawings. He was a distinguished practising builder, as well as a writer, for he erected administrative offices, palace apartments, gates and gate towers, together with the ancestral temples of the Sung dynasty as well as Buddhist temples.[br]Further ReadingJ.Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965, Vols IV. 2, pp. 49, 549, 551; 1971, IV. 3, pp. 84–5, 107.LRD -
44 Lubetkin, Berthold
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]b. 12 December 1901 Tiflis, Georgiad. 23 October 1990 Bristol, England[br]Soviet émigré architect who, through the firm of Tecton, wins influential in introducing architecture of the modern international style into England.[br]Lubetkin studied in Moscow, where in the years immediately after 1917 he met Vesnin and Rodchenko and absorbed the contemporary Constructivist ideas. He then moved on to Paris and worked with Auguste Perret, coming in on the ground floor of the modern movement. He went to England in 1930 and two years later formed the Tecton group, leading six young architects who had newly graduated from the Architectural Association in London. Lubetkin's early commissions in England were for animals rather than humans. He designed the gorilla house (1932) at the Regent's Park Zoological Gardens, after which came his award-winning Penguin Pool there, a sculptural blend of curved planes in reinforced concrete. He also worked at Whipsnade and at Dudley Zoo. The name of Tecton had quickly became synonymous with modern methods of design and structure, particularly the use of reinforced concrete; such work was not common in the 1930s in Britain. In 1938–9 the firm was responsible for another pace-setting design, the Finsbury Health Centre in London. Tecton was disbanded during the Second World War, and although it was reformed in the late 1940s it did not recover its initiative in leading the field of modern work. Lubetkin lived on to be an old man but his post-war career did not fulfil his earlier promise and brilliance. He was appointed Architect-Planner of the Peterlee New Town in 1948, but he resigned after a few years and no other notable commissions materialized. In 1982 the Royal Institute of British Architects belatedly remembered him with the award of their Gold Medal.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsRIBA Gold Medal 1982.Further ReadingJohn Allan, 1992, Architecture and the Tradition of Progress, RIBA publications. R.Furneaux Jordan, 1955, "Lubetkin", Architectural Review 36–44.P.Coe and M.Reading, 1981, Lubetkin and Tecton, University of Bristol Arts Council.DY -
45 Nash, John
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]b. c. 1752 (?) London, Englandd. 13 May 1835 Cowes, Isle of Wight[br]English architect and town planner.[br]Nash's name is synonymous with the great scheme carried out for his patron, the Prince Regent, in the early nineteenth century: the development of Marylebone Park from 1811 constituted a "garden city" for the wealthy in the centre of London. Although only a part of Nash's great scheme was actually achieved, an immense amount was carried out, comprising the Regent's Park and its surrounding terraces, the Regent's Street, including All Souls' Church, and the Regent's Palace in the Mall. Not least was Nash's exotic Royal Pavilion at Brighton.From the early years of the nineteenth century, Nash and a number of other architects took advantage of the use of structural materials developed as a result of the Industrial Revolution; these included wrought and cast iron and various cements. Nash utilized iron widely in the Regent Street Quadrant, Carlton House Terrace and at the Brighton Pavilion. In the first two of these his iron columns were masonry clad, but at Brighton he unashamedly constructed iron column supports, as in the Royal Kitchen, and his ground floor to first floor cast-iron staircase, in which he took advantage of the malleability of the material to create a "Chinese" bamboo design, was particularly notable. The great eighteenth-century terrace architecture of Bath and much of the later work in London was constructed in stone, but as nineteenth-century needs demanded that more buildings needed to be erected at lower cost and greater speed, brick was used more widely for construction; this was rendered with a cement that could be painted to imitate stone. Nash, in particular, employed this method at Regent's Park and used a stucco made from sand, brickdust, powdered limestone and lead oxide that was suited for exterior work.[br]Further ReadingTerence Davis, 1960, The Architecture of John Nash, Studio.——1966, John Nash: The Prince Regent's Architect, Country Life.Sir John Summerson, 1980, John Nash: Architect to King George IV, Allen \& Unwin.DY -
46 Bunning, James Bunstone
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]b. 1802 London, Englandd. 1863 London (?), England[br]English surveyor responsible for some impressive structures in London.[br]For the last twenty years of his life Bunning served as architect to the Corporation of London. During this time he was especially noted for three large buildings: Holloway Prison (1849–52), built in stone in a bold, castellated style; Caledonian Market (1855); and, most important and original, the Coal Exchange (1847–9).Bunning's larger replacement for an earlier building in Lower Thames Street was a ferrovitreous triumph. The exterior was of fashionable Italianate design, but inside it contained an elegant 60 ft (18 m) diameter rotunda of cast iron intended for the meeting of merchants. Galleries made entirely of iron and supported on brackets encircled the walls at three levels, and above was a glazed dome of ground plate glass rising to over 74 ft (22.5 m) from ground level, supported by thirty-two iron ribs. For decoration there were twenty-four painted panels depicting plants and fossils found in coal seams, and eight smaller compartments showing coal implements. The demolition of this outstanding structure in 1962 so that the road could be widened, served as a trigger to public concern over the then-increasing rate of demolition of notable nineteenth-century structures. During excavation for this building, a structure which cost £40,000, a Roman hypocaust system was found beneath and preserved.[br]Further ReadingG.Godwin, 1850, "Buildings and Monuments: Modern and Medieval", The Builder.DYBiographical history of technology > Bunning, James Bunstone
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47 Mansart, Nicolas François
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]b. 23 January 1598 Paris, Franced. 23 September 1666 Paris, France[br]French architect believed by many historians to be the greatest French architect of all time.[br]Mansart was a classical architect who designed in High Renaissance style in France. Chief architect to Louis XIII, he was responsible for a number of fine châteaux and hôtels such as the Château de Maisons (1642–51) near Paris and the Hôtel Carnavalet (1660) in Paris. He was also the architect of the magnificent Paris church of Val de Grâce (begun in 1645).The mansard roof, which has two different slopes of pitch, one steeper than the other, was named after Mansart (with a small change of spelling for euphony). It was a type of roof that was very popular in France from the early seventeenth century onwards and was revived under Napoleon III in the nineteenth century. However, although Mansart popularized this style of roof, he did not invent it; indeed, it was used in earlier works by both Pierre Lescot and Jacques Lemercier.[br]Further ReadingR.Blomfield, 1911, A History of French Architecture, Vol II, Bell (the standard work). A.Braham and P.Smith, 1974, François Mansart, Zwemmer.A.Blunt, 1941, François Mansart and the Origins of French Classical Architecture, The War burg Institute.DYBiographical history of technology > Mansart, Nicolas François
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48 Wright, Frank Lloyd
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]b. 8 June 1869 Richland Center, Wisconsin, USAd. 9 April 1959 Phoenix, Arizona, USA[br]American architect who, in an unparalleled career spanning almost seventy years, became the most important figure on the modern architectural scene both in his own country and far further afield.[br]Wright began his career in 1887 working in the Chicago offices of Adler \& Sullivan. He conceived a great admiration for Sullivan, who was then concentrating upon large commercial projects in modern mode, producing functional yet decorative buildings which took all possible advantage of new structural methods. Wright was responsible for many of the domestic commissions.In 1893 Wright left the firm in order to set up practice on his own, thus initiating a career which was to develop into three distinct phases. In the first of these, up until the First World War, he was chiefly designing houses in a concept in which he envisaged "the house as a shelter". These buildings displayed his deeply held opinion that detached houses in country areas should be designed as an integral part of the landscape, a view later to be evidenced strongly in the work of modern Finnish architects. Wright's designs were called "prairie houses" because so many of them were built in the MidWest of America, which Wright described as a "prairie". These were low and spreading, with gently sloping rooflines, very plain and clean lined, built of traditional materials in warm rural colours, blending softly into their settings. Typical was W.W.Willit's house of 1902 in Highland Park, Illinois.In the second phase of his career Wright began to build more extensively in modern materials, utilizing advanced means of construction. A notable example was his remarkable Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, carefully designed and built in 1916–22 (now demolished), with special foundations and structure to withstand (successfully) strong earthquake tremors. He also became interested in the possibilities of reinforced concrete; in 1906 he built his church at Oak Park, Illinois, entirely of this material. In the 1920s, in California, he abandoned his use of traditional materials for house building in favour of precast concrete blocks, which were intended to provide an "organic" continuity between structure and decorative surfacing. In his continued exploration of the possibilities of concrete as a building material, he created the dramatic concept of'Falling Water', a house built in 1935–7 at Bear Run in Pennsylvania in which he projected massive reinforced-concrete terraces cantilevered from a cliff over a waterfall in the woodlands. In the later 1930s an extraordinary run of original concepts came from Wright, then nearing 70 years of age, ranging from his own winter residence and studio, Taliesin West in Arizona, to the administration block for Johnson Wax (1936–9) in Racine, Wisconsin, where the main interior ceiling was supported by Minoan-style, inversely tapered concrete columns rising to spreading circular capitals which contained lighting tubes of Pyrex glass.Frank Lloyd Wright continued to work until four days before his death at the age of 91. One of his most important and certainly controversial commissions was the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum in New York. This had been proposed in 1943 but was not finally built until 1956–9; in this striking design the museum's exhibition areas are ranged along a gradually mounting spiral ramp lit effectively from above. Controversy stemmed from the unusual and original design of exterior banding and interior descending spiral for wall-display of paintings: some critics strongly approved, while others, equally strongly, did not.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsRIBA Royal Gold Medal 1941.Bibliography1945, An Autobiography, Faber \& Faber.Further ReadingE.Kaufmann (ed.), 1957, Frank Lloyd Wright: an American Architect, New York: Horizon Press.H.Russell Hitchcock, 1973, In the Nature of Materials, New York: Da Capo.T.A.Heinz, 1982, Frank Lloyd Wright, New York: St Martin's.DY -
49 Breuer, Marcel Lajos
[br]b. 22 May 1902 Pécs, Hungaryd. 1 July 1981 New York (?), USA[br]Hungarian member of the European Bauhaus generation in the 1920s, who went on to become a leader in the modern school of architectural and furniture design in Europe and the United States.[br]Breuer began his student days following an art course in Vienna, but joined the Bauhaus at Weimar, where he later graduated, in 1920. When Gropius re-established the school in purpose-built structures at Dessau, Breuer became a member of the teaching staff in charge of the carpentry and furniture workshops. Much of his time there was spent in design and research into new materials being applied to furniture and interior decoration. The essence of his contribution was to relate the design of furniture to industrial production; in this field he developed the tubular-steel structure, especially in chair design, and experimented with aluminium as a furniture material as well as pieces of furniture made up from modular units. His furniture style was characterized by an elegance of line and a careful avoidance of superfluous detail. By 1926 he had furnished the Bauhaus with such furniture in chromium-plated steel, and two years later had developed a cantilevered chair.Breuer left the Bauhaus in 1928 and set up an architectural practice in Berlin. In the early 1930s he also spent some time in Switzerland. Notable from these years was his Harnischmacher Haus in Wiesbaden and his apartment buildings in the Dolderthal area of Zurich. His architectural work was at first influenced by constructivism, and then by that of Le Corbusier (see Charles-Edouard Jeanneret). In 1935 he moved to England, where in partnership with F.R.S. Yorke he built some houses and continued to practise furniture design. The Isokon Furniture Co. commissioned him to develop ideas that took advantage of the new bending and moulding processes in laminated wood, one result being his much-copied reclining chair.In 1937, like so many of the European architectural refugees from Nazism, he found himself under-occupied due to the reluctance of English clients to embrace the modern architectural movement. He went to the United States at Gropius's invitation to join him as a professor at Harvard. Breuer and Gropius were influential in training a new generation of American architects, and in particular they built a number of houses. This partnership ended in 1941 and Breuer set up practice in New York. His style of work from this time on was still modern, but became more varied. In housing, he adapted his style to American needs and used local materials in a functional manner. In the Whitney Museum (1966) he worked in a sculptural, granite-clad style. Often he utilized a bold reinforced-concrete form, as in his collaboration with Pier Luigi Nervi and Bernard Zehrfuss in the Paris UNESCO Building (1953–8) and the US Embassy in the Hague (1954–8). He displayed his masterly handling of poured concrete used in a strikingly expressionistic, sculptural manner in his St John's Abbey (1953–61) in Collegeville, Minnesota, and in 1973 his Church of St Francis de Sale in Michigan won him the top award of the American Institute of Architects.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsAmerican Institute of Architects Medal of Honour 1964, Gold Medal 1968. Jefferson Foundation Medal 1968.Bibliography1955, Sun and Shadow, the Philosophy of an Architect, New York: Dodd Read (autobiography).Further ReadingC.Jones (ed.), 1963, Marcel Breuer: Buildings and Projects 1921–1961, New York: Praeger.T.Papachristou (ed.), 1970, Marcel Breuer: New Buildings and Projects 1960–1970, New York: Praeger.DY -
50 Lever, William Hesketh
[br]b. 19 September 1851 Bolton, Lancashire, Englandd. 7 May 1925 Hampstead, London, England[br]English manufacturer of soap.[br]William Hesketh Lever was the son of the retail grocer James Lever, who built up the large wholesale firm of Lever \& Co. in the north-west of England. William entered the firm at the age of 19 as a commercial traveller, and in the course of his work studied the techniques of manufacture and the quality of commercial soaps available at the time. He decided that he would concentrate on the production of a soap that was not evil-smelling, would lather easily and be attractively packaged. In 1884 he produced Sunlight Soap, which became the trade mark for Lever \& Co. He had each tablet wrapped, partly to protect the soap from oxygenization and thus prevent it from becoming rancid, and partly to display his brand name as a form of advertising. In 1885 he raised a large capital sum, purchased the Soap Factory in Warrington of Winser \& Co., and began manufacture. His product contained oils from copra, palm and cotton blended with tallow and resin, and its quality was carefully monitored during production. In a short time it was in great demand and began to replace the previously available alternatives of home-made soap and poor-quality, unpleasant-smelling bars.It soon became necessary to expand the firm's premises, and in 1887 Lever purchased fifty-six acres of land upon which he set up a new centre of manufacture. This was in the Wirral in Cheshire, near the banks of the River Mersey. Production at the new factory, which was called Port Sunlight, began in January 1889. Lever introduced a number of technical improvements in the production process, including the heating systems and the recovery of glycerine (which could later be sold) from the boiling process.Like Sir Titus Salt of Saltaire before him, Lever believed it to be in the interest of the firm to house his workers in a high standard of building and comfort close to the factory.By the early twentieth century he had created Port Sunlight Village, one of the earliest and certainly the most impressive housing estates, for his employees. Architecturally the estate is highly successful, being built from a variety of natural materials and vernacular styles by a number of distinguished architects, so preventing an overall architectural monotony. The comprehensive estate comprises, in addition to the factory and houses, a church, an art gallery, schools, a cottage hospital, library, bank, fire station, post office and shops, as well as an inn and working men's institute, both of which were later additions. In 1894 Lever \& Co. went public and soon was amalgamated with other soap firms. It was at its most successful high point by 1910.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFirst Viscount Leverhulme of the Western Isles.Further Reading1985, Dictionary of Business Biography. Butterworth.Ian Campbell Bradley, 1987, Enlightened Entrepreneurs, London: Weidenfeld \& Nicolson.DY -
51 Barry, Sir Charles
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]b. 23 May 1795 Westminster, London, Englandd. 12 May 1860 Clapham, London, England[br]English architect who was a leader in the field between the years 1830 and 1860.[br]Barry was typical of the outstanding architects of this time. His work was eclectic, and he suited the style—whether Gothic or classical—to the commission and utilized the then-traditional materials and methods of construction. He is best known as architect of the new Palace of Westminster; he won the competition to rebuild it after the disastrous fire of the old palace in 1834. Bearing this in mind in the rebuilding, Barry utilized that characteristic nineteenth-century material, iron for joists and roofing plates.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1852. Member of the Royal Academy; the Royal Society; the Academies of St Luke, Rome; St Petersburg (and others); and the American Institute of Architects. RIBA Gold Medal 1850.Further ReadingMarcus Whiffen, The Architecture of Sir Charles Barry in Manchester and Neighbourhood, Royal Manchester Institution.H.M.Port (ed.), 1976, The Houses of Parliament, Yale University Press.H.M.Colvin (ed.), The History of the King's Works, Vol. 6, HMSO.DY -
52 Fox, Sir Charles
[br]b. 11 March 1810 Derby, Englandd. 14 June 1874 Blackheath, London, England[br]English railway engineer, builder of Crystal Palace, London.[br]Fox was a pupil of John Ericsson, helped to build the locomotive Novelty, and drove it at the Rainhill Trials in 1829. He became a driver on the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway and then a pupil of Robert Stephenson, who appointed him an assistant engineer for construction of the southern part of the London \& Birmingham Railway, opened in 1837. He was probably responsible for the design of the early bow-string girder bridge which carried the railway over the Regent's Canal. He also invented turnouts with switch blades, i.e. "points". With Robert Stephenson he designed the light iron train sheds at Euston Station, a type of roof that was subsequently much used elsewhere. He then became a partner in Fox, Henderson \& Co., railway contractors and manufacturers of railway equipment and bridges. The firm built the Crystal Palace in London for the Great Exhibition of 1851: Fox did much of the detail design work personally and was subsequently knighted. It also built many station roofs, including that at Paddington. From 1857 Fox was in practice in London as a consulting engineer in partnership with his sons, Charles Douglas Fox and Francis Fox. Sir Charles Fox became an advocate of light and narrow-gauge railways, although he was opposed to break-of-gauge unless it was unavoidable. He was joint Engineer for the Indian Tramway Company, building the first narrow-gauge (3 ft 6 in. or 107 cm) railway in India, opened in 1865, and his firm was Consulting Engineer for the first railways in Queensland, Australia, built to the same gauge at the same period on recommendation of Government Engineer A.C.Fitzgibbon.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1851.Further ReadingObituary, 1875, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 39:264.F.Fox, 1904, River, Road, and Rail, John Murray, Ch. 1 (personal reminiscences by his son).L.T.C.Rolt, 1970, Victorian Engineering, London: Allen Lane.PJGR -
53 Anthemios of Tralles
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]fl. sixth century AD Tralles, Lydia, Asia Minor[br]Greek architect, geometer, mathematician and physicist.[br]Tralles was a wealthy city in ancient Greece. Ruins of the city are situated on a plateau above the present-day Turkish city of Aydin, in Asia Minor, which is near to Ephesus. In 334 BC Tralles was used as a base by Alexander the Great and later it was occupied by the Romans. After the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD Tralles remained a part of the Byzantine Empire until its destruction in 1282. Anthemios was one of the great sons of Tralles and was probably educated in Alexandria. He is especially famed as architect (with Isodorus of Miletos) of the great Church of Santa Sophia in Istanbul. This vast building, later a Turkish mosque and now a museum, was built for the Emperor Justinian between 532 and 537 AD. It was an early and, certainly for many centuries, the largest example of pendentive construction to support a dome. This form, using the spherical triangles of the pendentives, enabled a circular-based dome to be supported safely upon piers that stood on a square plan below. It gradually replaced the earlier squinch type of structure, though both forms of design stem from Middle Eastern origins. At Santa Sophia the dome rises to 180ft (55m) above floor level and has a diameter of over 100ft (30m). Together with Isodorus, Anthemios also worked upon the Church of the Holy Apostles in Istanbul.[br]Further ReadingG.L.Huxley, 1959, Anthemius of Tralles: A Study in Later Greek Geometry, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Procopius, 1913, De Aedificiis, On the Buildings Constructed by the Emperor Justinian, Leipzig.Richard Krautheimer, 1965, Early Christian and Byzantine Architcture, Penguin.DY -
54 Frost, James
[br]b. late 18th century Finchley (?), London, Englandd. mid-19th century probably New York, USA[br]English contributor to investigations into the making of hydraulic cements in the early nineteenth century.[br]As early as 1807 Frost, who was originally a builder and bricklayer in Finchley in north London, was manufacturing Roman Cement, patented by James Parker in 1796, in the Harwich area and a similar cement further south, at Sheerness. In the early 1820s Frost visited Louis J.Vicat (1796–1861) in France. Vicat was a French engineer who began in 1812 a detailed investigation into the properties of various limestones found in France. He later published his conclusions, which were that the best hydraulic lime was that produced from limestone containing clay incorporating silica and alumina. He experimented with adding different clays in varying proportions to slaked lime and calcined the mixture. Benefiting from Vicat's research, Frost obtained a patent in 1822 for what he called British Cement. This patent specified an artificial cement made from limestone and silica, and he calcined chalk with the clay to produce a quick-setting product. This was made at Swanscombe near Northfleet on the south bank of the River Thames. In 1833 the Swanscombe manufactory was purchased by Francis \& White for £3,500 and Frost emigrated to America, setting up practice as a civil engineer in New York. The cement was utilized by Sir Marc Brunel in 1835 in his construction of the Thames Tunnel, and at the same time it was used in building the first all-concrete house at Swanscombe for Mr White.[br]Further ReadingA.J.Francis, 1977, The Cement Industry 1796–1914: A History, David \& Charles. C.C.Stanley, 1979, Highlights in the History of Concrete, Cement and Concrete Association.DY -
55 Fuller, Richard Buckminster
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]b. 12 July 1895 Milton, Massachusetts, USAd. 1 July 1983 Los Angeles, California, USA[br]American engineer, designer and inventor noted particularly for his creation of the geodesic dome.[br]After naval service during the First World War, Fuller worked for some time in the building industry with his father, who was an architect. In 1927 he became interested in trying to solve social problems by providing good, low-cost housing for an expanding population. Utilizing modern techniques applicable in other industries, such as the design of aircraft and ships, he produced his "Dymaxion House", which was transportable and cheap. This was followed in 1946 by his aluminium, stressed-skin, prefabricated house. The geodesic dome is the structural concept for which Fuller is particularly known. It was patented in 1954 and 300,000 were built over a thirty-year period. He had envisaged the dome being utilized on smaller or larger, simple or complex patterns for a wide variety of needs such as enclosing a covered area for a house, a botanical garden, an exhibition pavilion, a factory, a weather station or, indeed, an entire city. A famous example that he designed was that for the US pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal. A geodesic dome is generally spherical in form, the chief structural elements of which are interconnected in a geodesic pattern, i.e. one in which the lines connecting two points are the shortest possible. The structure is composed of slender, lightweight struts (usually of aluminium) arranged in geometrical patterns, with the metal skeleton covered by a light, plastic material. Inside the dome, all the space is usable and the climate is controllable. Fuller wrote and lectured widely on his patented invention, explaining the importance of structural research particularly in relation to world needs.[br]Bibliography1975, Synergetics: Exploration on the Geometry of Thinking, Macmillan.1973, with R.W.Marks, The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller, New York: Reprint Anchor.Further ReadingM.Pawley, 1990, Buckminster Fuller, Trefoil Books.DYBiographical history of technology > Fuller, Richard Buckminster
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56 Garnier, Tony
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]b. 13 August 1869 Lyon, Franced. 19 January 1948 Bedoule, France[br]French architect and urban planner, a pioneer of the concept of segregation of pedestrian and wheeled traffic and of the use of concrete in building construction.[br]Garnier spent almost all his life in Lyon, apart from the years that he passed in Rome as a result of winning the Prix de Rome in 1889. While there, he evolved his concept of the cité industrielle, plans of which he exhibited and published early in the twentieth century. This was an idealized town, powered electrically, with its industrial areas separated from leisure ones. Garnier envisaged flat-roofed buildings supported on pilotis, with glass cladding, a steel structure, and extensive use of concrete. He proposed that each family should occupy its own house in a garden-city concept. In 1905 Garnier became city architect to Lyon, where he was able to carry out some of his ideas of the cité industrielle. He used concrete widely in such schemes as the municipal stadium, the Abattoirs de la Mouche and various housing schemes.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsConseil Supérieur de l'Orde des Architectes. Honorary Degree Princeton University, USA.Bibliography1932, Une Cité industrielle, Paris: Vincent.1920, Les Grands travaux de la ville de Lyon, Paris: Massin.Further ReadingC.Pawlowski, 1967, Tony Garnier et les débuts de l'urbanisme functionnel en France, Paris: Centre de la Recherche d'Urbanisme.M.Rovigalti, 1985, Tony Garnier: Architettura per la città industriale, Rome: Officini Edizioni.DY -
57 Hennébique, François
[br]b. 25 April 1842 Neuville-Saint-Vaast, near Arras, Franced. 20 March 1921 Paris, France[br]French engineer who contributed to the development of reinforced concrete.[br]Hennébique was an important leader in experimenting with various ways of reinforcing concrete with iron and steel. He set up his own firm in 1867, so acquiring valuable experience in the number of commissions that he carried out when using this material. He patented his own invention in 1892; this was for a method of using hooked connections for reinforcing-bars of iron and steel. England lagged behind France in developing the use of reinforced concrete as a structural material: it was Hennébique who was most influential in changing this situation. He had used his new method of reinforcement in the construction of the Spinning Mills at Tourcoing in France in 1895, and he was commissioned by Weaver \& Co., who wished to build a new flour mill in Swansea: the mill was completed in 1898. Soon after, both Hennébique and Coignet established London offices for developing their constructional techniques in England.[br]Further ReadingLe Béton armé 1898–1921 (monthly journal published by the Hennébique Company in Paris).P.Collins, 1959, Concrete: A Vision of a New Architecture (a study of Auguste Perret and his predecessors), Faber.C.C.Stanley, 1979, Highlights in the History of Concrete, Cement and Concrete Association.DY -
58 Bentley, John Francis
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]b. 30 January 1839 Doncaster, Yorkshire, Englandd. 2 March 1902 Clapham, London, England[br]English architect who specialized chiefly in ecclesiastical building, especially Roman Catholic churches.[br]Bentley's work was of high quality, particularly with regard to the decorative materials and finish. Notable among his churches was the Church of the Holy Rood (begun in 1887) at Watford, which is in Gothic Revival style, with fine decorative materials.Bentley's chef-d'oeuvre is the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster in London: begun in 1895, the shell was completed in 1903. He based the banded pattern of the exterior upon the Italian medieval cathedrals of Siena and Orvieto, but at Westminster the banding is in red brick and white stone instead of marble. The cathedral interior is Byzantine in style, with pendentive construction. Built of load-bearing brick, with the saucer domes inside being made of concrete strengthened with brick inserts, there is no steel reinforcement: in choosing this type of structural material, Bentley was more closely following ancient Roman technology than modern use of concrete. The intention was to have all surfaces clad in mosaic of marble, but sadly only a portion of this has yet been achieved.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsBentley was nominated in 1902 to receive the RIBA Gold Medal but died before the presentation ceremony.Further ReadingW.de l'Hopital, 1919, Westminster Cathedral and its Architect, Hutchinson.DY -
59 Coignet, François
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]b. 1814d. 1888[br]French pioneer in the development of the structural use of iron reinforcement of concrete.[br]As early as 1847, Coignet built some houses of poured (unreinforced) concrete, but in 1852, in a house at 72 rue Charles Michel, in St Denis, he first employed his own system of what he called béton armé, meaning reinforced concrete. Coignet exhibited his technique of reinforcement using iron bars at the Paris Exposition of 1855 and was quoted as forecasting that cement, concrete and iron were destined to replace stone. A year later he patented a method of reinforcing concrete with iron tirants, a reference to the metal ropes or bars being under tension, and in 1861 he published a treatise on concrete. Coignet is credited with building several examples of concrete shell casing to iron structures in conjunction with different architects—e.g., the Church of Le Vésinet (1863, Seine et Oise).[br]Further ReadingNikolaus Pevsner, 1984, Pioneers of Modern Design, Penguin.DY -
60 Hopper, Thomas
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building[br]b. 1776 Rochester, Kent, Englandd. 11 August 1856 London, England[br]English architect whose large practice produced Gothic Revival work.[br]Like so many of his contemporaries, Hopper made extensive use of cast iron, both structurally and decoratively. A notable example of this was his Conservatory, added to Carlton House in London in 1807–12 for the Prince of Wales: it was demolished in 1827–8. Constructed with cast iron and stained glass, the Conservatory took the form of slender, tall piers supporting an elaborate fan vault, the design of which was based upon that of the sixteenth-century Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey.[br]Further ReadingH.Colvin, Biographical Dictionary of English Architects, 1600–1840, London: John Murray.Henry Russell-Hitchcock, 1977, Architecture, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, London: Penguin.DY
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