STRUCTURAL DESIGN FOR ARCHITECTURE

Structural design for achitecture

Fig. 2.6 Renault

Warehouse and

Distribution Centre,

Swindon, England, 1983.

Foster Associates, archi-

tects, Ove Arup &

Partners, structural

engineers. Many of the

features which are

associated with high

structural efficiency are

visible here, such as the

semi-trussing of the

main elements, the use

of tapered profiles, the

1-shaped cross-sections

and the circular lighten-

ing holes. They were

adopted for visual

reasons, however, as few

of these complexities can

be justified on technical

grounds due the

relatively short span

involved. [Photo: Alastair

Hunter]

Movement. In the early Modern period, in the
works of architects such as Mies van der Rohe,
the use of technical imagery was accomplished
with restraint and refinement, and confined to
the repetitive use of elements such as parallel-
sided I-section beams (see Fig. 1.2). Later
practitioners of the so-called 'high-tech' genre
used a much richer palette of structural images,
many of which were 'borrowed' from the fields
of vehicle and aeronautical engineering rather
than from structural engineering. The purpose
was to create an architectural style which was
celebrative of the idea of technical progress and
of the condition of modernity.
In the high-tech style the 'structure symbol-
ised' approach resulted, with a few notable
exceptions, in an architecture which was based
on steel framework structures, principally

because steel was the only structural material

which possessed the necessary high-tech

image and which also provided a large enough

number of different element and component

types to give the architectural language a

reasonably large vocabulary.^8

The use of steel frameworks in this way

meant that the constraints which are associ-

ated with steel had to be accepted and the

It is significant that one of the very few buildings of this

type to have a reinforced concrete structure - the

Lloyd's Headquarters Building in London -was

intended originally to have a steel frame and was

detailed as though the structural material were indeed

steel. This provides a good illustration of the fact that,

contrary to the claims which are often made for it, this

is not a structurally 'honest' type of architecture. 31