The ballad of the flexible brick - MasD
Transcripción
The ballad of the flexible brick - MasD
REVISTA DIGITAL DE DISEÑO Facultad de Diseño, Imagen y Comunicación Universidad El Bosque The ballad of the flexible brick La balada del ladrillo flexible Por: Juan Martín Piaggio Abstract Resumen The industrialization of architecture is an old concern that has never reached the magnitude and achievements expected, although there are some prefabricated systems of great interest. This article describes a research on the industrialization of brick vaults, in the course of which unexpected options are discovered, resulting in an innovative product and, above all, a new concept with multiple applications in architecture. La industrialización de la arquitectura es una vieja inquietud que no ha terminado de alcanzar la magnitud y los logros que se preveían, a pesar de existir diversos sistemas de prefabricación de gran interés. En este artículo se presenta una investigación en torno a la industrialización de bóvedas de ladrillo, en cuyo curso se descubren nuevas opciones imprevistas, que dan como resultado un producto innovador y, sobre todo, un nuevo concepto con múltiples aplicaciones en arquitectura. Keywords: Industrialized architecture, prefabricated systems, brick vaults, ceramic fabric. Palabras clave: Arquitectura industrializada, sistemas prefabricados, bóvedas de ladrillo, tejido cerámico. Architect, independent proffessional (Milano, Italy) Revista MasD (ISSN 2027-095X) Nº 13, Vol. 7, Año 2013. Investigación MasD Diciembre de 2013 1 REVISTA DIGITAL DE DISEÑO Facultad de Diseño, Imagen y Comunicación Universidad El Bosque Introducción The building process blends several different aspects: technological, structural, environmental, economic, planning, esthetic (artistic), in one word, cultural (which is the reason why we architects see this job as the best in the world). In most cases all aspects are knotted together, and modifying one ends up changing all others. That is the case with the example I am about to tell about: a study on the technology of bricks, i.e. a product of industrial design, allows for the growth of innovative shapes and concepts in the field of construction and of architecture. It is a case, as will be seen, in which the design of a small detail (the way of binding together bricks by means of steel wires in order to make flexible brick “rugs”) gives new possibilities to architecture, esthetic, technological and economic. And once the idea of producing brick “rugs” or “rolls” is born, other materials (wood, stone, etc.) may easily be employed, and these products may be used in unforeseen ways. This is an example of how industrial design, i.e. the design of products and processes, is an open and unlimited creative task. Brick, nowadays, is no longer the eponymous element of the building trade, the piece which, designed to be lifted by the bricklayer’s hand, has for thousands of years been the constitutive element of walls. Nowadays walls are built (if you wish to keep employing terracotta elements, being that many other materials compete with it, such as wood, fibers, special concretes, synthetic materials, etc.) with very large blocks having remarkable thermal and acoustic qualities, manufactured to millimetric precision, moved aroud by large machines, and laid with thin layers of adhesive. These bricks are no longer manufactured in the building site by means of home-made kilns with moveable chimneys, but come out of long tunnels, in ever-larger factories. Figure 1: A girl manufacturing bricks manually, in India; a rectified ceramic block, a great acoustic and thermal insulator. Revista MasD (ISSN 2027-095X) Nº 13, Vol. 7, Año 2013. Sección: Investigación MasD / Diseño U El Bosque / Tribuna (según proceda) The ballad of the flexible brick Juan Martín Piaggio This story tells of how one of the most ancient techniques known by the building man, that of brick vaults, was industrialized (employing highly industrialized elements such as bricks and rolled Steel bars), and how the results came out being very different from what was might have been supposed when the journey started. First stanza – Dieste The sequence which carries to the final product of this tale of investigation curiously starts with an attempt to reverse technological transfer: for over 200 years the north of the world has transferred technologies (and products) which had been developed there to the south of the world, whereas the south transferred to the north only prime matters; you may however find, in the south of the world, original developments, which the north ignores about. One of these is the work of an engineer, Eladio Dieste, who was born, grew up and lived in Uruguay, and who, in a poor environment such as Uruguay, needing to make much with little (something which is commonplace in the south of the world), developed several brilliant technologies for the use of brick. Employing these he built several million square meters of all types of buildings, but mainly industrial, that is to say a kind of building in which the esthetic aspect is little considered. His buildings are, however, and beyond all doubt, works of art (Piaggio, 1996). His main contribution to architecture are structural solutions, including anticatenary vaults1 and beam-walls. [1] La sección anticatenaria es la única que permite anular las flexiones, limitando los esfuerzos que atraviesan la estructura a la sola compresión. De esta manera se logran construir bóvedas increíblemente finas (10-12 cm para 50 m de luz han sido construidas, pero Dieste sostenía, cálculos a la mano, que no hubiera sido ninguna osadía, con espesores semejantes, y con ladrillos huecos de los más comunes, llegar a 100 m de luz). Lo que aumenta el ancho de las bóvedas (y de cualquier estructura) son las ondulaciones de la curva de las presiones, del interior al exterior (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenaria). La construcción de bóvedas con sección anticatenaria tiene el inconveniente que requiere cimbras algo complejas. Artículo cientifico Diciembre de 2013 2 REVISTA DIGITAL DE DISEÑO Facultad de Diseño, Imagen y Comunicación Universidad El Bosque The ballad of the flexible brick Juan Martín Piaggio covered pedestrian route linking Alcalá railway station to the University Campus, made up of a long sequence of 30 m long vaults, each supported by a single pair of columns3. Vicente Sarrablo followed a very different route: involving industries in order to develop a process which, based on a specific technology, could enter the European productive system. We will see, after the first refrain, how this investigation started. Refrain – Prefabrication Figure 2: Eladio Dieste – Horizontal silo in Nueva Palmira (Uruguay) His work has been rather celebrated among architects since the 1960’s, but no one ever attempted, in the industrialized world, to transfer the technologies which he developed. Starting in the last decade of the 20th c. several people, among which I had the privilege of finding myself, started reasoning around the issue; in Germany, Scotland, the U.S., several researches were carried forward on anticatenary vaults, inspired by the distant work of Dieste; Stanford Anderson, professor in Princeton, published an important Book on Dieste’s structures (Anderson, 2004). But the most important achievements were doubtlessly reached in Spain. Carlos Clemente, professor in Alcalá, talked Dieste into travelling to Spain, where they built together several very beautiful churches2, and designed and started building a [2] This is another story which would deserve telling. Carlos Clemente, with his partner Juan de Dios de la Hoz, designed with Dieste several churches for the diocese of Alcalá. This diocese, recently formed, urgently needed 54 new churches, but was short on funds. Clemente saw that Dieste’s techniques were the only ones which could allow to build cheaply churches which were not just utilitarian, but beautiful as well. Initially, they built replicas of churches which Dieste had already built, so as to learn the ways; they then started developing original designs. The churches following the first were mainly built thanks to the offerings made by parishoners, convinced by the beauty of what had already been built. This ambitious program has unfortunately stopped long before reaching the goal of 54 churches. See the article mentioned in the bibliography (Piaggio, 1996). Revista MasD (ISSN 2027-095X) Nº 13, Vol. 7, Año 2013. Sección: Investigación MasD / Diseño U El Bosque / Tribuna (según proceda) If a car could be built as an automobile is, it would cost one tenth of its current cost (I shhot the figure off my head, but am willing and ready to discuss it and, eventually, to adjust it). On the other hand, many people would be out of a job, since construction has always been a source of employment for unspecialized people. This is what allows many people, all over the world, to build their own house with their very own hands and little else. That is to say that what in certain places is seen as progress, in other places may be something socially harmful and economically unfeasible. The industrialization of Dieste’s techniques, which will be seen in the next stanza, while it was reasonable in Europe, would have been impossible there where Dieste built, since the industrial technologies required were not available, while cheap manpower was easily at hand. Figure 3: Richard Buckminster Fuller - Dymaxion House (1929) and Dymaxion Car (1933) Source: Wikipedia [3] Only two of the vaults were built; the program was halted because of an accident which happened on site, and which was due to a faulty interpretation of construction papers by the contractor. Artículo cientifico Diciembre de 2013 3 REVISTA DIGITAL DE DISEÑO Facultad de Diseño, Imagen y Comunicación Universidad El Bosque Figure 4: Mud house in Maranguape, Estado de Ceará, Brasil (photograph by Eugenio Hansen, OFS); sun-dried brick house in Mali (photograph by Mike Thibert). Architecture being a highly circumstantial art, or trade, each of the examples shown above is, in its context, perfect. In the “first world” many parts of the building process have been industrialized for a long time (Le Corbusier, back in 1925, defined the house as a “machine for living in” – one of his most quoted, and most misunderstood, sentences), achieving success especially as concerns semi-worked materials (e.g. rolled steel for structures, bricks, cement) or finishings (doors and windows) or plants. But the prefabrication of whole buildings, after a short success in the second half of the past century, and excepting some still marginal sectors [4], has been set aside. Many eminently intelligent people spent time on this issue, especially after World War II, when large parts of Europe were reduced to rubble, and many people had to be quickly provided with shelter. Le Corbusier set the theme very clearly with his celebrated Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, dating rom 1946, which, in theory, could have been partially prefabricated, at least as concerns the “boxes” which make up each apartment. After this, especially in countries behind the iron curtain (but not just there) for many years houses were collective and prefabricated (and usually horrible, badly placed and badly finished, contributing to give prefabrication its bad name). A special mention must be made, among those who tried to industrialize the building process, of Jean Prouvé: the attention which he gave to detail, and the lightness of the solutions he studied, are remarkable (Huber & Steinegger, 1971). These themes, starting from very different premises, are dealt with by the investigation here described. [4] One exception: in Europe, in recent years, high quality wooden houses, tailor made but industrialized, have met with a good success. Industrialization of wooden houses has a centuries-old tradition in the U.S. Revista MasD (ISSN 2027-095X) Nº 13, Vol. 7, Año 2013. Sección: Investigación MasD / Diseño U El Bosque / Tribuna (según proceda) The ballad of the flexible brick Juan Martín Piaggio Figure 5: Le Corbusier, Unité d’Habitation. Marseille, 1946 - A typical house-module (contemporary illustration) Figure 6: Jean Prouvé – Light prefabrication system (1945) structures made of folded sheet steel. Right: Club des Espérances in Ermont, France (1966). Source: Wikipedia. Second stanza- ISO-Brick In 1998 a young architect from Barcelona, Vicente Sarrablo, passionate like me about Dieste’s architecture, asked me to participate in an investigation on the industrialization of reinforced brick vaults, which lasted six years, and which involved Universities and Research Centers from several European countries5. When the investigation ended, in 2004, the initial idea of building vaults without the aid of [5] La investigación, bautizada “ISO-Brick” (Industrialized Solutions for Construction of Reinforced Brick Masonry Shell Roofs – Proj. N° CRAFT-1999-70420), fue desarrollada a beneficio de PYMEs (Pequeñas y Medias Empresas), principalmente en Portugal, España e Italia, con el apoyo económico de la Comisión Europea. Las empresas que participaron fueron: Suceram s.a. (E), Cerámicas Palau Chiloeches (E), Incisión s.a. (E), JMEF (P), Gruppo Stabila S.p.A. (I), ILA Valdadige (I), Mangiavacchi R& C. s.p.a. (I), Krypton (B), GFM (D). Unidos, donde se venden casas de madera, con terminaciones en varios “estilos” (colonial, moderno, gótico, etc.), pero con plantas iguales, en general muy bien diseñadas. Artículo cientifico Diciembre de 2013 4 REVISTA DIGITAL DE DISEÑO Facultad de Diseño, Imagen y Comunicación Universidad El Bosque centering devices had been set aside, and a process for the assembly of bricks and reinforcing steel had been developed, which allowed the construction of vaults of any span; two prototypes may still be seen, the visible results of this investigation, designed by the author of this article, one in the north, the other in the south of Italy. Unfortunately, almost none of the Industries for which the research was performed saw a future in the results, ant the research was sadly forgotten in a drawer, after having been exhibited, in 2004, as the centerpiece of Italy’s mos important building fair, SAIE, in Bologna. The ballad of the flexible brick Juan Martín Piaggio Figure 10: Components of the system: bricks, corrugated steel rebars and “clips”. The 4,5cm-high bricks, purposely designed for this research, rest on a sheet of adhesive paper to prevent mortar from staining the underside of the bricks during joint filling. Clips not only join bars and bricks, but also ensure stable joint dimensions. Right: stacked sheets, ready to be transported to the worksite, with interposed polyurethane sheets to protect bricks. Figure 7: First model of the ISO-Brick research. Figure 11: Finished prototype in Matera (Italy). The inverted catenary section, which can transmit any uniform load as simple compresion stresses, without any bending stress, allows to substantially reduce vault thickness (less than 10 cm in this example). Right: two 6m-span prefabricated vaults arrive to construction exhibition in Bologna (Italy). Refrain – Industrialization Figure 8: A promotional built example of the procedure, designed by V. Sarrablo. Figure 9: Laboratory test in UPC (10m span and stainless steel sheet formwork); test of an asymmetric vault. Revista MasD (ISSN 2027-095X) Nº 13, Vol. 7, Año 2013. Sección: Investigación MasD / Diseño U El Bosque / Tribuna (según proceda) The prefabrication of large-scale buildings, as was stated in the first refrain, has been all but abandoned for a number of years. The building process, however, has not ceased to be industrialized: the steel for structures, closures, anything concerning plants and installations, the very bricks with which walls, slabs ad rrofs are built, are all products of sophisticated industrial processes. Figure 12: Prefabricated elements: rolled steel profiles, PVC windows; roof-window; a modern toilet: a little masterpiece. Artículo cientifico Diciembre de 2013 5 REVISTA DIGITAL DE DISEÑO Facultad de Diseño, Imagen y Comunicación Universidad El Bosque The ballad of the flexible brick Juan Martín Piaggio Third stanza – Flexbrick Even though ISO-Brick seem to have suffered from cribdeath, Vicente Sarrablo kept pondering on this theme on his own, and he saw that what was really new in the research were not the vaults, but the brick and steel strips. He convinced a couple of industries to keep working on the issue, notwithstanding the terrible crisis which was just then starting (and which in Spain was, and still is, among the worst in the world), and he came up with something which was aptly named “brick fabric”, and whose uses are amazingly varied. The Flexbrick system permits the disposition, in the cases of a tartan made up of very thin steel wires, bricks of different sizes and colors. Brick “rugs” of any length are thus obtained, of width modular with the size of bricks, which may be laid down in many different ways: hanging, simply spread on the ground, bound in mortar: you name it. Figure 15: Joints in the top layer are free of mortar; on the right, Flexbrick has been incorporated in concrete panels to form a dividing wall. Figure 16: Top: Bricks can be arranged in endless different ways. Bottom: fixed, removable or draining floors. Figure 13: Basic elements of the Flexbrick system. The following pictures show the building of a Flexbrick vault. The vault is made up of two layers of brick, each 4,5 cm thick. Only the inner one carries loads, while the outer one serves only as a protection for the weatherproofing, and as an elegant finishing layer. Figure 14: “Ceramic fabric” rolls arrive to worksite; they are unrolled on the workform; vault joints are filled with pumped mortar; the second layer of bricks protects the waterproof sheet and offers a beautiful finish to the roof. Revista MasD (ISSN 2027-095X) Nº 13, Vol. 7, Año 2013. Sección: Investigación MasD / Diseño U El Bosque / Tribuna (según proceda) Figure 17: Hanging cladding. Using Flexbrick Vicente Sarrablo has already built a beautiful house not far from Barcelona, while other Spanish and internationally renowned architects are experimenting with it. Right: Casa Mingo, S. Martí de Tous (Spain). Arq. Vicente Sarrablo & Jaume Colom. The quality of light under the ceramic vault is remarkable. Artículo cientifico Diciembre de 2013 6 REVISTA DIGITAL DE DISEÑO Facultad de Diseño, Imagen y Comunicación Universidad El Bosque The ballad of the flexible brick Juan Martín Piaggio Moreover, and this justifies the apparent oxymoronic title, we see how brick, which has always been synonymous with rigidity and hardness, becomes, under Vicente’s inquisitive eye, a flexible and ductile material, a thin fabric which gives lightness to the entire building, and which drives the architect to retink the role played by the parts of the constructive process. This is what industrial design, rightly understood, should always endeavor for. Figure 18: A renovation in La Rioja (Spain). Arq. Octavio Pérez, BLUR arquitectura. Finale – Brick and innovation With the system developed by Vicente extremely light vaults may be quickly built with very simple formwork. But the system may be applied to many other uses: façades, floors, roofs (flat or otherwise), gabions, lost coffering and others yet to be imagined. As often happens, the product itself suggests new uses; a function leads to the development of an organ, but afterwards it is the organ itself which generates new functions. Brick, in all its many different varieties, has been used for so many centuries, that it seems hard to imagine ways of employing it which have not been tested by tradition. Dieste showed how brick, even in the 20th c., still had unexplored uses as a structural element. Vicente Sarrablo’s double investigation, which started where Dieste had left off, gradually distanced itself from the master’s path. It shows how the view may be shifted, imagining, even through small fragments such as those here illustrated, different universes. FINAL NOTE The title alludes to a famous Italian song from 1961, “Il Ballo del Mattone”, by Rita Pavone. “The dance of brick” is the term used, in Italy, to ironically refer to the ups and downs (mainly the latter) of the building market since 2008, and to which Vicente Sarrablo’s work seems at least to show there might be hope in a better future. Figure 19: The future: Renovation of the façade of Banco Caixa General Headquarters, in Barcelona; Parking in Montpellier. Revista MasD (ISSN 2027-095X) Nº 13, Vol. 7, Año 2013. Sección: Investigación MasD / Diseño U El Bosque / Tribuna (según proceda) Artículo cientifico Diciembre de 2013 7 REVISTA DIGITAL DE DISEÑO Facultad de Diseño, Imagen y Comunicación Universidad El Bosque References Anderson, S. (ed.), (2004): Eladio Dieste. Innovation in Structural Art, New York: Princeton University Press The ballad of the flexible brick Juan Martín Piaggio Presentación Flexbrick en Cali: http://tecnoconstruccion.com.co/content/wp-content/ uploads/pdf/13.Tejidos-Ceramicos-Vicente-Sarrablo.pdf Huber, B., Steinegger, J.-C. (1971): Jean Prouvé. Une Architecture par l’Industrie. Zurich, Artemis Verlag. Jeanneret, Ch. E. (Le Corbusier), (1923): Vers une Architecture. 1st ed. Paris: G. Crès ed. López Almansa, F. (project coordinator), Da Porto, F., Lourenço, P, Piaggio, J.M., Roca, P., Sarrablo, V., (2004): ISO-Brick Deliverable n° 20 (Task 1.7) – Technical Report (N.P.) Piaggio, J.M. (1996): “Eladio Dieste. L’ingegno e l’architettura”. Costruire in Laterizio n° 52-53, pp. 156-179 Piaggio, J.M. (1999): “Chiesa di San Juan de Avila ad Alcalá, Madrid”. Costruire in Laterizio n° 71, pp. 18-25 Piaggio, J. M. (ed.) (2007): “Le Volte Laminari in Laterizio Armato”. Costruire in Laterizio n° 107, pp.60-73 Piaggio, J.M. (2011): “La costruzione di Casa Mingo a S. Martí de Tous”. Costruire in Laterizio n° 143, pp. 54-59 On-line resources Curva catenaria: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenaria Casa Dymaxion: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Dymaxion Auto Dymaxion: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coche_Dymaxion Bóvedas de Jean Prouvé: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_des_Esp%C3%A9rances Flexbrick: http://www.flexbrick.es Revista MasD (ISSN 2027-095X) Nº 13, Vol. 7, Año 2013. Sección: Investigación MasD / Diseño U El Bosque / Tribuna (según proceda) Artículo cientifico Diciembre de 2013 8