20th century | EPFL Graph Search

The 20th century began on 1 January 1901 (MCMI), and ended on 31 December 2000 (MM). It was the last century of the 2nd millennium, and was marked by new models of scientific understanding, unprecedented scopes of warfare, new modes of communication that would operate at nearly instant speeds and new forms of art and entertainment. The 20th century was dominated by significant geopolitical events that reshaped the political and social structure of the globe: World War I, the Spanish flu pandemic, World War II and the Cold War. Unprecedented advances in science and technology defined the modern era, including the advent of nuclear weapons and nuclear power, space exploration, the shift from analogue to digital computing and the continuing advancement of transportation, including powered flight and the automobile. The Earth's sixth mass extinction event, the Holocene extinction, continued, and human conservation efforts increased. Major themes of the century include decolonization,

Architecture, environnement et artefact total : la ville selon Reyner Banham et Oswald Mathias Ungers

Thibaut Jean Bernard Pierron

When looking at the city and the land, current architectural practices face a double limitation. On the one hand, the discipline is asked to react to its own specter: the body of authoritarian spatial devices based on a questionable tradition of which the history is well established. All the usual rules that perpetuate themselves in the name of "the good settlement, one relevant and responsive to any human context" [K. Lynch, 1981]. On the other hand, architecture, as a positive and effective strength, is called upon to demonstrate its ability to resist the most evident threat weighting on the land: can architecture - its knowledge and means - contribute to counter territorial consequences of pervasive and expansive logic of advanced capitalism? In taking up this double-task for the city, is architecture then left with only two lasting dead-ends: the dissolution of its lore within a larger ensemble of social practices or the seclusion of the last parcels of its prerogatives, those that can still be rescued? In order to trace an "other" path, our research simultaneously examines the routes taken on both sides of the Atlantic by two figures of the architecture of the second half of the 20th Century: British historian and critic Reyner Banham (1922-1988) and German architect and theoretician Oswald Mathias Ungers (1926-2007). At first sight, such a choice raises two questions: that of the dissimilitude of their respective work and that of the distance which seems to separate their positions within the intellectual field of their time. One of the goals of our research is to draw closer different modes of comprehending the city and the land. Both protagonists used a wide range of tools available - those of the architectural discipline understood as a set of practices and a collected knowledge - to render, in particular, the state of the world, of the western land, of the city and what it became. The main goal of our research is then to track a possible common ground for their positions about the city, which are contemporary to one another and regarded as being differing. Our parallel study of the works on the city of R. Banham and O. M. Ungers must lead to an actualization of our understanding of a set of trails already opened and to seize the consequences on a historiographical, theoretical and practical level. Therefore, our research tends to verify the existence of such common ground in measuring the proximity of the urban and territorial conception in their work, focusing on an interval starting at the beginning of the 1960s to the end of the 1970s. To achieve it, we formulate three hypotheses regarding the themes at the basis of their convergence: the recognition of the emergence of a new condition of the western land; the will to oppose to urbanism and planning different methods; and the definition of a critical equipment based on images.

EPFL2021

Construire à distance

Habib Sayah

Through a case study, this research aims at contributing to the historic understanding of the international architecture after the Second World War. It is based on the monographic analysis of the projects realised by the Geneva agency Addor & Julliard in Lebanon during the years 1950 to 1960. The general theme of "constructing at distance" embraces and problematizes two types of considerations: on the one hand, the challenges that international architecture of the years 1950-1960 had to face when the operations of conception and execution where realised in different contexts (i.e. functional and technical challenges due to climatic imperatives; logistical challenges linked to the characteristics of the local culture of construction ; strategic challenges in relation to the specific political and economic situation in the developing countries) ; on the other hand, the specific creative opportunities that the internationally active agencies were able to seize abroad and of which also their local production took advantage (treatment of prestige programs and ambitious operations with partners open to avant-garde experimentations). The operations realised at distance by the Geneva agency Addor & Julliard in Lebanon constitute an architectural corpus of approximately ten buildings in the urban and suburban zone. These realisations, which are not well known in the circles of researchers and architects, both locally and internationally, deserve to be analysed in detail, as they are very representative for the atmosphere of experimentation during the years 1950-1960 in Lebanon and generally in the other contexts of north-south collaboration. The work of the agency Addor & Julliard is still not well known in Geneva, with the exception of some publications on important projects like the Cayla campaign, or the Budé and Lignon blocks. Especially, the importance of the profitable interactions that the agency was able to establish between its two fields of activities in Geneva and Lebanon, and its significance for the development of this big agency, have not been stressed enough. The introductory part of our work situates the actuality of the problematic, in relation to the specific stakes of the protection of architectural and urban heritage in Lebanon. Still today, the heritage of the 1950-1960's is insufficiently understood in its cultural significance. It is also very much threatened. When it is not destroyed, it suffers from a camouflage that makes it totally unrecognisable. We then present the abundant documentation that we have gathered. This work on source material is necessary to counteract the superficial prejudice with which this architectural corpus is confronted. This part is then followed by a historical chapter on the agency Addor & Julliard before the opening of its Lebanese branch, as well as an overview of the Lebanese context between the beginning of the XXth century and 1960. These elements allow us to assert that the decisive factor allowing the agency to develop its foreign activity is to be found in the profile of particular competencies that it displayed by closely associating the architectural project and the real estate management. The apartment- and office-building realised in 1954 in Geneva the Zschokke enterprise, with its easily adaptable spatial organisation, played the trigger role : it encouraged the first Lebanese clients, the Beydoun family who had financial relations in Geneva, to mandate the agency for a project involving a multifunctional building in Lebanon. The Lebanese context of this period is characterised by a strong economic boom and a political stability conducive to investments. The real estate sector was in full growth and asked for innovative typologies and modern architectural images. This allowed the agency Addor & Julliard to emancipate itself from the still quite regionalist references that it was entertaining in Geneva and to direct itself resolutely towards the international tendencies. These elements of historic information are then followed by the detailed survey of the agency's Lebanese production. Several buildings were realised in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, but it is in Lebanon that the principal operations are concentrated, which explains that the survey limits itself to this country. The inventory concerns the ten buildings that have been spared from the destruction of the Lebanese War (1975-1991) and of which the archive documents have been preserved. The description of each object includes the history of the commission, the urban situation, the legal and regulatory situation, as well as the project variants when they exist. Then, the realised variant is analysed in detail by paying attention to the distributive, constructive and stylistic aspects. This survey then leads to a more interpretative reading that aims at evaluating the impact of these constructions on the urban development of Beirut. Addor & Julliard never had real town-planning mandates in Lebanon. But even though their realisations limited themselves to the architectural scale, they nevertheless contributed to the concretisation of a resolutely modern representation of the city, especially because they succeeded in treating orders of a considerable symbolic importance. The theme of "constructing at distance" is addressed via a comparative method that integrates the Lebanese, Geneva and international projects of the same period. This chapter also deals with the contribution of the buildings of Addor & Julliard to the local Lebanese construction culture on both the technical and expressive level. The demonstration is based on the curtain-wall that Addor & Julliard used twice in two very different buildings: the STARCO centre (1954-1962) and the Lebanese Bank (1962-1963). The in-depth analysis of the conception and the realisation of the curtain-wall, emblem of the "international style", allows to discover that in Beirut its use resulted much less from the importation of generic and abstract solutions than from a skilled synthesis between technical resources, which were locally available, and the aimed-at iconic effect. We thus perceive that "constructing at distance" is more complex than a simple knowledge transfer from one environment to another. The local differentiation of constructive elements of the international repertoire between 1950 and 1960, such as the curtain-wall, prompts us to question and complement the analysis of Hitchcock et Johnson on these phenomena in their famous publication "The International Style" of 1932, which seems too superficial. Our study finishes with an advocacy for the protection of the projects of Addor & Julliard in Lebanon. Without being exhaustive, this advocacy is based on the examination of the transformations touching these projects until today and establishes a series of recommendations for their protection. It is said that in Lebanon modern architecture of the years 1950 to 1960 constitutes the witness of the efforts undertaken in this period by the local actors in order to emancipate their country from a certain marginality in international relations. For this reason, the modern heritage fully belongs to the Lebanese history. The annexes especially contain the data bases, which we have constituted during the inventory of the projects and the archives, as well as some particularly important documents: The contract established between the architects and their first client represents the start of their work in Lebanon, whereas the minutes of the press conference of 21 March 1963, during which the Society of engineers and architects of Beirut criticizes the work of Addor & Julliard in Lebanon, symbolises the end of their Lebanese collaboration. Finally, an album exposes the photographs of the buildings of Addor & Julliard at the time and in their present state. ------------------------------ 3 Imm. Zschokke à Genève. In Werk, Bauen & Wohnen, 1957: pp. 367-368. 4 Lambert, S., STARCO Center, Beirut, Lebanon. UK, in Architectural Design, Mars 1963: pp. 138-140.

EPFL2007

Optimalisation des formes d'organisation dans l'industrie de la construction

Philippe Pot

A piece of work carried out by the construction industry, whether a building or a civil engineering project, is not a mass-produced item. It is always a unique piece of work, by dint of its response to the specific needs of the owner and its potential users, its integration or otherwise into a built environment, and its construction on ground whose geo-technical properties are always specific. This unique piece of work, carried out outside on a site subject to numerous hazards, must nevertheless meet the programme's fixed objectives first time round. Unfortunately, unlike most industrial products, it is usually, even nowadays, the outcome of a fragmented approach: designers and builders of the shell of the building and those engaged in the finishings are in fact involved in a segmented and sequential process, without any real interaction between the various disciplines, to the detriment of overall quality and the cost of the end-product. The author of this thesis has had the opportunity, in his professional career in the management of major construction companies, of testing most organisational forms in the sector. He has observed that, depending on the model chosen, they exercise a more or less beneficial effect on quality, costs and time-frames for completing the works, as well as on the capacity for innovation of the participants themselves. The first objective of the thesis was to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the most common organisational models in the construction industry and to identify factors in the success of the construction process. The second objective was to suggest an original organisational model which would make optimum use of these factors, taking into account modern organisational theory and project management. The first section of the thesis is an historical study of organisational forms of construction from antiquity to the modern times, and examines in particular the relationships between those actively and directly involved (owner, designers and builders) and their relationships in turn with those involved indirectly (users, public administration, finance providers, environmental and heritage protection organisations, laws and standards, etc.). This historical perspective makes a useful contribution because, although much has been written on architecture and architects, especially the most famous among them, and sometimes on engineers, work looking systematically at the organisational forms used in the construction industry over the centuries is rare. This study demonstrates that the fragmented organisation of construction characteristic of the 20th century is merely an accident in the long history of construction; the twenty-five preceding centuries almost always favoured close collaboration between designers and builders and the wonderful works they left behind demonstrate the wisdom of this approach. Study of the history also provides us with a list of the main success factors and the demands to which the successful organisation of construction must respond. The second part endeavours to verify the relevance of the needs drawn, in the light of modern organisational theory, from project management and creativity, and to complete the list. It goes on to analyse on that basis the strengths and weaknesses of the organisational models most commonly used in the modern construction industry and demonstrates that organisation as a design and build, is in the best position at this stage in the research to meet the needs of owners. The third section verifies, through case studies of five pieces of work recently completed or under construction, whether this organisational model effectively satisfies the expectations of those involved in the construction project, simultaneously examining potential improvements. To that end, a series of interviews was conducted in each case study, with a view to eliciting the views of representative participants: owner, operator, user, project manager, architect, engineer and sub-contracting trades. The process was completed with an analysis of the attitude of some public sector owners to the design and build organisational model. Finally, the lessons drawn from these case studies were used to complete the list of success factors already identified. A final section sets out an original organisational model named Integrated Construction Management (ICM), which recommends an inter-disciplinary approach to construction and responds to the success factors identified in the first three sections. It involves a new division of the production process, which provides the owner with a broader and more cost-effective range of innovative architectural and construction options. It also delivers a series of practical recommendations to assist in the application of the proposed model. In conclusion, Integrated Construction Management places the owner at the centre of a transparent and progressive production process, simultaneously removing the majority of the risks involved in construction. Through its inter-disciplinary approach, it offers innovative solutions together with improvements to the overall quality of the piece of work itself on favourable economic terms. Finally, it enables the owner to take informed decisions and to use his or her financial resources as and when the feasibility of the project is confirmed. It is hoped that, as a result, these advantages will be demonstrated through pilot projects carried out using the ICM model, which will without doubt make possible further improvements in performance.

EPFL2005