Structural Design for Architecture
56
Fig. 3.7 German Pavilion, World Exhibition, Barcelona,
- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, architect. The slender
steel structural columns, faced in thin coverings of stain-
less steel, made a significant contribution to the aesthetics
of this seminal building.
questioned, the structural performance of the
glass-clad steel frameworks of the twentieth
century was normally satisfactory. Most of the
buildings fall into the category of 'structure
accepted'^3 in which the technical performance
of the structure was not compromised for
visual reasons.
In many of the buildings discussed above,
and especially the multi-storey buildings, the
steel which formed the loadbearing structure
3 See Section 2.2, and Macdonald, Structure and
Architecture, Chapter 7.
was not actually visible. It was hidden, encased
in fire-proofing materials for good technical
reasons, and its presence was acknowledged
only in the architectural treatment. It is for this
reason that a distinction is made here between
the role of steel in the glass-clad framework,
where it served a purely structural function
which happened to make a new aesthetic
possible, and the other aesthetic part which it
has played in modern architecture, that of a
distinctive element in a visual vocabulary.
Metal components can be shaped with great
precision and this, together with the low
volume of the elements in skeleton frameworks
of steel, can be used to create structures of
great elegance. The exposure of steelwork and
its incorporation into the visual vocabulary is
an aesthetic device which has been used
extensively in the twentieth century. The archi-
tectural intention in this case was more-or-less
