Structural Design for Architecture
and critics, especially in connection with those
strands of Modern architecture in which the
idea of drawing attention to the tectonic
aspects of a building has been fashionable.
The confusion which arises concerns the
allocation of priorities between technical and
non-technical issues. If technical issues have,
in reality, been allocated the highest priority
the building will fall into the category of 'true
structural high tech'. If aesthetic consider-
ations have been given a higher importance
then the building will be an example of 'struc-
ture symbolised' or 'structure ignored'.
The distinction is brought into focus by a
consideration of the consequences of allowing
a high design priority to be given to technical
considerations ('structure accepted' or 'struc-
tural high tech'). If the structural problem is
spectacular, such as a very long span, the
resulting structure, and therefore building, will
also be visually striking. If the structural
problem is modest - a building of small or
medium span - the best structural solution
will almost certainly also be modest and of the
post-and-beam kind. In the early years of archi-
tectural Modernism - the 1920s and 1930s -
such forms were compatible with the prevailing
aesthetic theories and, as a consequence,
many early modern buildings are good
examples of the 'structure accepted' approach.
In the present day, post-and-beam forms are
frequently considered to be visually dull and in
this situation the temptation arises to
manipulate the structure for visual or symbolic
reasons ('structure symbolised') or to ignore its
requirements entirely ('structure ignored').
As is discussed above, the architectural
symbolists of the so-called 'high-tech' school,
who have often claimed that the structures of
their buildings are examples of genuine techni-
cal excellence,^13 provide a good example of the
type of unclear thinking which has surrounded
this topic. The confusion has led, in many
cases, to the creation of buildings which havean unresolved quality, because the full poten-
tial offered by the purely symbolic use of struc-
ture has not been exploited. A better
architecture would probably have resulted if
the true nature of the relationship between
structure and architecture had been more fully
appreciated and acknowledged.
This last statement is generally true: the
final outcome of an architectural design
process is more likely to be satisfactory if the
architect is fully aware of the nature of the
relationship between technical and aesthetic
issues.2.3 Selection of the generic type of
structure
2.3.1 Introduction
Structures for buildings may be placed into the
three broad categories of 'form-active', 'semi-
form-active' and 'non-form-active'.^14 In the
context of gravitational loading, which is the
principal form of load on most architectural
structures, post-and-beam structures are non-
form-active and can be further subdivided into
the two categories of loadbearing-wall struc-
tures and skeleton-frame structures. It is from
this limited range of possibilities that the
structure for a building must be selected.
Within each category an almost infinite variety
of structural possibilities exists, however,
depending on the types of element which are
specified and the manner in which these are
connected together.
It is important to recognise that the process
of structural design is not so much one of
invention as one of selection and adaptation. Most
new structures are in fact versions of one of a
range of basic structural forms which have
evolved in practice as the best arrangements
for the particular material concerned. These
basic forms of structure are reviewed in
Chapters 3 to 6 and they represent the vocabu-
lary of structural form from which the designer13 The late modern deconstruction architects have not
been troubled by this particular item of theoretical
baggage.14 See Appendix 1 and Macdonald, Structure and
34 Architecture, Chapters 4 and 5.