ARC423 Advanced Building Systems

Lecture Notes for Monday March 17, 2003

• Soufflot was interested in Greek architecture.
• Soufflot designs the Pantheon in Paris. The building is a masonry building but incorporates a great deal of embedded cast iron for tension. This allows the building to be thinner and lighter.
• The dome is thin which is made possible by the iron strapping.
• See additional material on the the Pantheon.

• Henri Labrouste designs a library to store the growing collection of the St.Genevieve monastery.
• Labrouste wins the "Prix de Rome" at the end of his schooling. This provides him a 4 year stay in Rome for study at the French academy
• Labrouste chooses a Grecian set of buildings in Paestum for his studies.
• He also researches the buildings for their social value at the time.
• Durand writes an architectural theory book ( the Précis) written for engineers at the Ecole Polytechnique.
• The book describes elements of buildings. It attempts to codify the design of buildings.
• Labrouste discovers one of the buildings at Paestum has an odd number of columns, thus an even number of spaces. As a result a row of columns is laid down the center of the structure.
• Upon his return to Paris his professors reject the project and methodology of study. As a result he is black listed for some ten years..
• In 1838 he is appointed as the architect for the library of st. Genevieve.
• 1845 construction begins for the building.
• The building, although generally masonry, has elements of iron work for its doors and roundels.
• In general, the vertical elements of the building are masonry while the horizontal elements are cast iron.
• See additional material on the Biblioteque St. Genevieve.

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