History of construction | EPFL Graph Search

The history of construction embraces many other fields, including structural engineering, civil engineering, city growth and population growth, which are relatives to branches of technology, science, history, and architecture. The fields allow both modern and ancient construction to be analyzed, as well as the structures, building materials, and tools used. Construction has evolved and undergone different trends over time, marked by a few key principles: durability of the materials used, increase in building height and span, the degree of control exercised over the interior environment, and finally, the energy available for the construction process. Chronological development Neolithic construction The Neolithic, also known as the New Stone Age, was a time period roughly from 9000 BC to 5000 BC named because it was the last period of the age before woodworking began. The tools available were made from natural materials, including bone, hide, stone, wood, grasses,

Experimental techniques for suspended structures: the construction of Chauderon hanging building in Lausanne (R. Willomet, P. Dumartheray and J. Prouvé, 1970-1974)

Giuseppe Galbiati

The lecture, starting from a synoptic analysis of the European situation and Belgian realizations of suspended buildings in the years 1960 - 1980, will mainly deal with the construction history of the Administrative Buildings of the Place Chauderon in Lausanne, designed between 1970 and 1974 by the Swiss architects Willomet and Dumartheray, with the expertise of Jean Prouvé. The building represents in many ways the apex in suspended building construction. Here can be found, thanks to a mixed steel and concrete structure, a real optimization in the use of materials, with compressed elements all made of concrete and all tensioned elements made in steel. The facade is cleverly designed by Jean Prouvé with prefabricated modular panels, adopting the CIMT system, directly derived from the railway industry and applied to the construction industry. Thanks to its flexibility and the sliding possibility of the neoprene panels’ joint, the system is capable of supporting vertical deformations up to 50 cm and more, overcoming one of the most challenging constraints, due to the presence of steel hangers. At the same time the sandwich panels, filled with polyurethane foam, assure acoustic and thermal insulation, providing the first link to sustainability themes. According to Roland Willoment, the presence of Jean Prouvé was essential to answer the numerous technological issues of the project, otherwise not manageable in their complexity by any other Swiss architect or engineer. So, the lecture will be focused on the building construction techniques, adopted for the structure and its facade; on the materiality of the complex and its actual condition; on the industrial process conceived for the panels’ fabrication. Particular attention will be also given to construction details, with the analysis of the original technical drawings at the scales 1:10 / 1:5, coming from the EPFL Archives de la Construction Moderne.

2021

The evolution of the cast node of the Pompidou Centre: from the "friction collar" to the "gerberette"

Boris Hamzeian

The paper is devoted to a decisive chapter of the construction history of the twentieth century: one of the most important masterpieces of the contemporary steelworks, the Centre Beaubourg, now the Centre National d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou. Thanks to the availability of previously unpublished documen- tary records and to interviews with some of the protagonists of the design and construction of this building, it is finally possible to retrace the origins and evolution of the most significant detail of the structure of the Centre Beaubourg: the cast steel piece that later came to be known as the “gerberette”

Taylor & Francis2018

Experimental techniques for suspended structures: the construction of Chauderon hanging building in Lausanne (R. Willomet, P. Dumartheray and J. Prouvé, 1970-1974)

Giuseppe Galbiati

2021