SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE

GROUPWORK FN 01

ORNAMENTATION OF STRUCTURE

DATE ISSUED: MARCH 12, 2014DATE DUE: MARCH 14, 2014REFERENCE:

STRUCTURE AND ARCHITECTURE BY ANGOS J. MACDONALAD

GROUP MEMBERS:

MIRANDA, AILEEN

RACELIS, JOWEL

SANTIAGO, KRISTOFF

TOPINIO, FLOMERLITA

INSTRUCTOR:

ARCH. MARIO CALUB

SUBJECT:

ACHITECTURAL STRUCTURES

ORNAMENTATION OF STRUCTURES

The category ornamentation of structure, in which the building consists of little more than a visible structural armature adjusted in fairly minor ways for visual reasons.

The most celebrated building under this is the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. The architecture is TECTONIC although the purposewas not to celebrate structural technology BUT as part of the visual expression. The DORIC system or order used was more of an ornamentation evolved from the post and beam arrangement.

ON THE OTHER HAND, THE Greek Temples were much more to the architecture than ornamentation of construction system. The architectural expression and structure co-exist in perfect harmony.

Next is the architecture of the Medieval Gothic Period which was constructed entirely in masonry. The archetypal gothic arrangement of buttresses, flying buttresses and finials is a spectacular example of a semi form-active structure with improved cross-section and profile. All elements were adjusted so as to be visually satisfactory. Several other types of ornament were not essentially structural.

The strategy of ornamentation of structure virtually disappeared from Western architecture at the time of the station Renaissance because of the fact the structural armatures of the building were increasingly concealed behind forms of ornamentation which were not directly related to structural function. One example is the pilasters and half columns of the Pallados Palazzo Valmarana.

It was not until the twentieth century, when architects once again became interested in tectonics and in the aesthetic possibilities of the new structural technologies of steel and reinforced concrete, that the ornamental use of exposed structure re-appeared in the architectural mainstream of Western architecture. It made its tentative first appearance in the works of early Modernists such as Auguste Perret and Peter Behrens and was also seen in the architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

The structure of the Farnsworth House, for example, is exposed and forms a significant visual element. It was also adjusted slightly for visual reasons and in that sense is an example of ornamentation of structure. Other more recent examples of such visual adjustments occurred in British High Tech. The exposed-steel structure of theReliance Controls building at Swindon, UK, for example, by Team 4 and Tony Hunt, is a fairly straightforward technical response to the problems posed by the programmatic requirements of the building and stands up well to technical criticism2. It is nevertheless an example of ornamentation of structure rather than a work of pure engineering because it was adjusted in minor ways to improve its appearance. These few examples serve to illustrate that throughout the entire span of the history of Western architecture from the temples of Greek antiquity to late-twentieth-century structures such as the Waterloo Terminal, buildings have been created in which architecture has been made from exposed structure. The architects of such buildings have paid due regard to the requirements of the structural technology and have reflected this in the basic forms of the buildings. The architecture has therefore been affected in a quite fundamental way by the structural technology involved. At the same time the architects have not allowed technological considerations to inhibit their architectural imagination. The results have been well-resolved buildings which perform well when judged by either technical or non- technical criteria.