can make a nonsense of a building in the longer term. But
the main reason is that modern technology has made
twentieth-century buildings more exciting structurally
than in any other way. Hence designers such as Renzo
Piano, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw and Sir Michael Hopkins
concentrate on structural and material daring in
preference to proportional harmony or the expression of a
building’s programme. It is often a case of constructional
invention being linked to new ways of servicing buildings,
with the result that our current ‘green’ awareness finds
expression in buildings with solar panels, stepped
sections and ventilating chimneys.
There are three broad ways of constructing a building:
by frame, by load-bearing wall, and by self-supporting
panel. Framed structures probably pre-date the others
simply because of the wide availability of building timber
in the ancient forests of the temperate world. Load-
bearing brickwork was introduced into Britain by the
Romans and began to become commonplace as timber
became scarce in the late Middle Ages. Large panel
construction is chiefly a twentieth-century invention and
has the benefit that it can be prefabricated and speedily
erected. As the panels are load bearing, the walls provide
both enclosure and structure within the same unit and
this leads to obvious economies, though often at the cost
of aesthetics.
This simple classification of constructional systems
can be enlarged to include suspended structures where
the tensile rather than compressive strength of materials
is exploited. A mixture of structural systems is frequently
15.6a, b, c, and d
These studies of the façades of
1930s buildings on Faro Island in
southern Portugal show the
influence of international
modernism on seaside
architecture.
126 Understanding architecture through drawing