History of Construction

In this article we attempt to sketch a few main lines of development in the design and building practice in the cities of Holland over an extended period from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. In examining the leading public works of civic architecture, the authors aim to trace the most significant transformations through the centuries, in the belief that organizational changes can best be explained by reference to shifts in the demand for building work. The emphasis lies on church building in the fifteenth century and on the municipal building industry in later centuries, because these activities showed a high degree of organization.
The article will be published in two consecutive issues of OverHolland, in which we will discuss the periods of growth and contraction in the demand for building work, in chronological order. Each of the two parts will begin with a brief introductory section presenting the periods and major themes to be examined. In part I, which covers the period from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, Hurx begins with the boom in the construction of city churches in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Van Essen then describes how city authorities assumed increasing responsibility for public works in the fifteenth and particularly the sixteenth century. Part II will begin with an examination of the massive increase in the scale of building work in the seventeenth century, stemming from the explosive growth of a number of cities. In this section, Van Essen will describe the development of the office of the stadsfabriek into a largescale municipal construction company. In the second section of part II, Medema will discuss the reorganization of the building sector in the eighteenth century as a result of economic decline.

The study aims to analyse the two static models most widely adopted by Bernardo
Antonio Vittone, through the comparison of two churches in Turin: Santa Chiara and San
Leonardo. They are double envelope buildings, with central dome, respectively 10 and 15
meters in diameter, supported by eight pillars and surrounded by a continuous ambulatory.
The static model of Santa Chiara provides the internal pillars that play the main structural role
and cooperative outer envelope: the dome transmits his loads directly to the interior pillars.
The walls and vaults of the lateral chapels have an important role, arranging themselves
around the main dome, like a ring of containment of the horizontal thrusts induced by the
dome itself. Also the choirs, that Vittone places in smaller spaces behind the pillars, play an
important static role: their horizontal structures connect the pillars with the rear wall, which
thus offers its collaboration to contain the horizontal thrusts.
The church of San Leonardo has a reverse operation, with the dome that rests on the
outer walls, while the internal pillars support only a raised gallery.
Through three-dimensional info graphics models, the study shows that the entire
structure is designed as a discretized system, which replaces the traditional structure based
on continuous wall and uniformly distributed loads. The brick vaults are ribbed structure, in
which arches and ribs convey loads on the pillars or in precise high-resistance points of the
external masonry. This feature makes the space open to the light; also reduces the masonry
mass, saving material and reducing construction costs.
The formal representation of structural components agrees with the effective static
operation of buildings: the decoration on the surface of the dome indicates the presence of
ribs. The groins are hollow and open in order to highlight the condition of non-load bearing
element.

Excavations were carried out in 1999 on the location of Stela 2 at the ancient site of Aksum in northern Ethiopia.
These excavations have permitted the documentation of the foundation of this stela, which was transported to Rome in 1937. Preparations were also made for the stela’s return to the site in 2005 and its re-erection in 2008 at the exact location where it stood in the 3rd or 4th century AD.
The excavations also made it possible to re-examine our perception of the three giant stelae on the site, from their conception and erection to their destruction.

La figura di Bernardo Antonio Vittone rappresenta una singolarità nel panorama dei protagonisti dell’architettura italiana, per il suo essere sospesa tra permanenze dello spirito barocco e nuove istanze della cultura illuminista.
Di entrambe sono state ricercate le ricadute spaziali ed il modo attraverso cui queste sono state rese partecipi della forma architettonica, nel complesso dell’organismo edilizio e nel particolare delle sue parti costituenti: i complessi sistemi voltati; l’introduzione di elementi di transizione tra la forma dell’invaso e quella della cupola, con l’incessante lavoro sul tema del pennacchio, per offrire direzioni multiple ed inattese allo scorrere dello sguardo e della luce; la continuità degli elementi strutturali che, attraverso la messa in rappresentazione e la sublimazione della ineludibile necessità statica, traduce in forma fisica la rispondenza all’utile ed al funzionale.
All’interno della vasta produzione architettonica di Vittone, si è eletto quale oggetto di analisi il tema della pianta centrale, un tipo dal valore altamente simbolico che ha attraversato verticalmente la storia dell’architettura occidentale, e del quale Vittone esplora tutte le possibilità, in una ricerca che si affina progressivamente e conferisce al tema spaziale nuovi e pregnanti significati, densi di riferimenti alla cultura del suo tempo. I ventuno progetti di chiese presi in esame, tutti raffigurati in uno dei due trattati scritti da Vittone, le Istruzioni Diverse, costituiscono un vero saggio sul tema e scandiscono la struttura del volume, in un percorso che isola le questioni progettuali, analizzandole in successione logica, tipo e spazio polare, leggibilità complessiva e gerarchizzazione tra le parti, interrelazione tra modello formale e modello strutturale, per tornare al tema del progetto e del processo ideativo dello spazio centrale ed estrapolarne i principi formali universalmente validi.

The study aims to analyse the two static models most widely adopted by Bernardo Antonio Vittone, through the comparison of two churches in Turin: Santa Chiara and San Leonardo. They are double envelope buildings, with central dome, respectively 10 and 15 meters in diameter, supported by eight pillars and surrounded by a continuous ambulatory. The static model of Santa Chiara provides the internal pillars that play the main structural role and cooperative outer envelope: the dome transmits his loads directly to the interior pillars. The walls and vaults of the lateral chapels have an important role, arranging themselves around the main dome, like a ring of containment of the horizontal thrusts induced by the dome itself. Also the choirs, that Vittone places in smaller spaces behind the pillars, play an important static role: their horizontal structures connect the pillars with the rear wall, which thus offers its collaboration to contain the horizontal thrusts. The church of San Leon...

In Colombia, at the end of the first half of the 20th Century and as many Latin American countries, stadium design and construction processes were initiated to stimulate and popularize sports. With very little local  background knowledge and limited economic resources, engineers like Guillermo González Zuleta, Colombian, bagan a process of authentic constructive experimentation in this type of buildings, adapting formal solutions to the conditions of their country and developing technological innovations in thin canopies of low weight able to cover large surfaces with a minimum number of supports. This paper describes the construction process of some exemplary structures from information contained in original plans are still preserved, as well as in personal testimonies and photographs of the time. Conclusions are aimed at assessing the experimental and innovative nature of the design in the context in which they were developed.

The title of the present paper – 'building better, faster and cheaper' – was the fundamental requirement of the program of rationalisation for school building developed during the 1960s in Canton Vaud, but it could be assumed as a general paradigm for the prefabrication in Swiss school buildings. In the postwar Europe, following the stalemate of the building sector and several changes in the educational system, the rationalisation of building and the aim of reducing costs and production time involved also school buildings. In comparison to other countries, which knew intensive industrialisation programmes, in Switzerland – due to its political and administrative structure –the standardisation of school buildings was characterised indeed by single , but not unimportant, episodes which were often due to urgent circumstances, or conceived on the initiative of individual architects and specific builders. The characteristic of the Swiss case is the great variety of solutions which during the 1960s fosters the debate on school building , especially compared with the international context. The paper presents this great variety of experimentations, examining the reasons of their achievement or failure. Swiss industry is characterised by an outstanding attention to detail and by a high level of innovation, some results of which command niche prominence also outside the country. Aim of the paper is to relate the unique solutions developed in Switzerland to the Euro-pean development and investigate the relevance of the diverse development for prefabrication industry in Swiss school building. Through period magazines and original documents, the paper focus on four particular episodes , which deal with different aspects of the history of construction: the systems conceived by the architect Fritz Stucky for the company Variel; the heavy prefabrication system Barets by Induni company, applied in Geneva; the case of the Centre de Rationalisation et d'Organisation des Constructions Scolaires – CROCS – in the Canton Vaud; and the attempt to import in Swit-zerland the famous British Clasp-System for school buildings. Each of these cases it is meaningful for a different aspect of construction history, and each one highlights the potentials and the limits of prefabrication in school building, especially in the Swiss political and economic system.

dans Les temps de la construction - Actes du 2e Congrès francophone d'histoire de la construction 29-31 janvier 2014, éditions Picard, 2016, p. 793-802.
L'Ecole nationale des Ponts et Chaussées conserve un « Mémoire relatif aux expériences faites au bâtiment de [l'église] Saint-Sulpice [de Paris] sur le levage et le transport des pierres ». Il est composé d'une observation sur le levage des pierres, leur transport, et le nombre d'ouvrier employés à la manœuvre. Il éclaire donc à la fois l'histoire sociale du bâtiment, la technicité et l'histoire économique et normative du bâti.

This paper aims to analyze the contemporary works of the history of the indigenous people in Taiwan. On the one hand, the author examines the transformation of historical vicissitude from “oral tradition” to “written text” to show how “the past in the present” is re-memorized, presented, and constructed. On the other hand, the author explores the dialectical relationship between “myth” and “history.” As the title implies, this paper draws a theoretical response to the well-known book chapter, “When Myth Becomes History,” by Claude Lévi-Strauss. Not only the government departments have coordinated the writing, revising, and publishing projects of “history of the indigenous people in Taiwan” actively, but also the indigenous intellectuals have realized the importance of construction of history, which plays an inevitable role in the subject matter of racial identities and subjectivity when they went back to revive the tribes since the 1990s. Nevertheless, how “the past” is selected, created, and quoted when the government departments intervene tactfully in the projects of “history of the indigenous people in Taiwan” in “cultural politics” terms? A crucial point that the author wants to make concerns the de-contextualization, re-contextualization, and textualization of “oral tradition.” This triangulation has ruptured the tradition of socio-cultural meanings and their practices of the rituals and everyday life in tribes. Meanwhile, this rupture might “reconstruct” the cultural roots and ancestral depth of emotion of the indigenous people with an “origin” of myth or history. The author believes that the argument mentioned above is a dialectical process concerning with historical construction and cultural politics for the indigenous people in Taiwan.

No history of modern building construction can avoid making reference to the Zeiss-Dywidag (Z-D) system. It will tell in brief the story of a nondescript test planetarium that had been erected 1922/23 on a factory roof in the Zeiss works at Jena, Germany, and that became the cradle of modern thin concrete shell construction. It will furthermore narrate how the building
company Dyckerhoff & Widmann (Dywidag) developed out of this prototype within a couple of years an array of different shell constructions that gained world-wide fame such as the Frankfurt and Leipzig Market Halls. And, it will usually mention their planers, in particular Franz Dischinger and Ulrich Finsterwalder – names who are well-known to engineers dealing with thin shell constructions until today.
Despite this extensive reputation,  the Zeiss-Dywidag system usually is depicted as a significant contribution of the “German School” of engineering that – notwithstanding its fame – mainly was of local importance for thin concrete shell design. Consequently, no thorough study on the Zeiss-Dywidag system’s influence on the early international development of thin concrete shell construction has been carried out so far. An important process of knowledge transfer during the beginnings of thin concrete shell construction  therefore has widely fallen into oblivion. 
This paper wants to recall the fact that there were successful efforts to promote and establish the Z-D system far beyond the German borders. It describes the global dissemination of the Z-D system before the outbreak of the Second World War, which gave a vast number of engineers on four continents a first possibility of gaining practical experience in the erection of thin concrete shells. Furthermore, it reveals that the underlying concepts were acting as important stimulators
for a world-wide growth in the examination of shell theories.

Timbrel vaults are masonry vaults, with a good strength in compression, and can be constructed with remarkable thinness and without the use of formwork. Known in the fourteenth century and commonly constructed by the sixteenth, until the middle of the nineteenth century, timbrel vaulting was used vaulting in churches, floor systems and staircases. At the end OF the nineteenth century Rafael Guastavino exported the method to the United States, where it was used in many important buildings. This paper examines the development of the theory of
timbrel vaults from Espie in the eighteenth century, through Bails and Fornés in the nineteenth, to Guastavino and Guastavino, Jr. in the twentieth, to the use of Finite Element Methods (FEM) today.

Stimulé par le renouvellement des techniques, le XIXe siècle se plaît à rêver de halls pour de grandes assemblées, en réalise quelques-uns, mais n’imagine guère encore qu’ils puissent être dédiés à des manifestations sportives : la création d’une telle architecture est pour ainsi dire l’œuvre du siècle suivant. Dans quelle mesure la restauration des Jeux olympiques procure-t-elle des opportunités comparables à celles des expositions universelles pour conduire les concepteurs à se dépasser ? Feuilleter les sagas et les classiques de la modernité architecturale pourrait laisser croire que l’histoire des prouesses constructives ne rencontre qu’épisodiquement celle des équipements sportifs avant la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle. Pour autant, examinée rétrospectivement loin de toute perspective héroïque, cette catégorie d’édifices illustre bien souvent les enjeux touchant la production de structures capables d’abriter ou d’enclore de grands espaces. Il s’agit même volontiers pour les architectes, les ingénieurs et les constructeurs d’un terrain de démonstration, bénéficiant en outre de la valeur spectaculaire et médiatique désormais acquise par le sport. Si la veille de la Seconde guerre mondiale voit culminer l’affirmation d’un fonctionnalisme déterminé par les attendus des programmes et/ou par la mise en scène des matériaux, les réalisations acquièrent ensuite progressivement une part d’autonomie qui en fait primer le signe et la force évocatrice. Jusqu’à quel point ces structures reflètent-elles un imaginaire propre, où par exemple la conception plastique des ouvrages voire la rhétorique de la performance technique font écho à une idée de l’effort physique et du corps en tension ?

L’acciaio, artefice di radicali metamorfosi dell’architettura moderna e contemporanea, è da sempre promotore di un’estetica nuova che privilegia leggerezza e trasparenza, qualità formali dissonanti in città come Roma in cui la storia millenaria è tradizionalmente rappresentata dall’immagine delle sue architetture secolari, ma che non disdegna di accogliere recenti e originali tentativi di rinnovamento in cui l’acciaio, la ghisa e il ferro, assurgono al ruolo di protagonisti in architetture capaci di instaurare con essa un dialogo mai banale. Nei quattro capitoli del libro, ordinati secondo due criteri che rimandano all’ordinamento cronologico associato all’uso dell’acciaio e alla localizzazione delle opere, è proposta la disamina di singolari architetture contraddistinte dall’uso esclusivo della costruzione metallica nei sistemi resistenti in un arco temporale di circa un secolo. Un particolare approfondimento è dedicato al periodo compreso tra il secondo dopoguerra e il 1980, quando la città vive una stagione di intensa attività costruttiva che affida all’acciaio la soluzione di specifici problemi tecnici e il soddisfacimento dell’esigenze di rappresentatività espresse dalla committenza pubblica e privata. Un libro che prova a mettere in primo piano tratti sconosciuti o poco noti del volto ferrigno della Capitale, Città Eterna e in continua trasformazione.

It is commonly known that modern architecture became deeply influenced by the severe beauty inherent in the engineers’ structures since the beginning of the twentieth century. But it is far less known that at the same time also a noticeable change in engineering occurred. A central occurrence for this shift of paradigms in engineering is the Cologne Bridge Quarrel, which developed subsequently to the design competitions for the Hindenburgbrücke in 1913. It is the aim of the author to discuss the main arguments that were given by the experts in the course of this fascinating judicial proceeding about the artistic qualities of an engineer’s construction, and by this, to revive our knowledge of what can be identified as a milestone in Construction History.

The proposed paper offers a preliminary comparative study of the construction and afterlife of four war memorials that were erected, or initiated at least, by different Belgian war veterans’ associations, reflecting different nationalisms that had slumbered in the trenches of the Belgian front of the First World War. The Belgenmonument in Amersfoort in the Netherlands was built as a job-creating and learning project for interned Belgian soldiers in the Netherlands towards the end of the war. It wanted to express the gratitude of the Belgian nation towards the Dutch people for taking in refugees during the war, but became subject to a diplomatic  riot between both nations after the Armistice and was not inaugurated before 1938. The IJzertoren memorial (1925-1930) in Dixmude, a crowdfunded private memorial constructed by Flemish nationalist veterans, evolved into an ambiguous and divisive symbol already during its construction process, and reflected growing tensions between regionalist and belgicist factions in the interwar years. It’s entanglement with collaborationism during the Second World War ultimately lead to its destruction in 1946, and its reconstruction between 1952-1965. The Albert I gedenkteken (1938) in Nieuport, initiated by the National Belgian Veterans Association, was heralded as Belgium’s official memorial but never came close to fulfilling that role. Finally, the Mémorial Interallié (1925-1938) in Liège-Cointe was to represent international solidarity and reconciliation between all former belligerents, but failed to include the defeated nations and instead developed into a memorial of the victorious. It was erected on a symbolic location by diverse international veterans associations. Looking into neutrality, regionalism, nationalism, and internationalism, a quick-scan of these four memorials illustrates the diversified political landscape of the interwar years that had emerged in circles of war veterans, and hints towards the divisive nature of post-war commemoration, which would resonate until deep into 20th-century society. Furthermore, this study unveils the until now underexposed agency of war veteran associations within the material and memorial culture of the First Word War.

[ES] La cabecera de la iglesia de Santa María del Salvador de Chinchilla, construida a mediados del siglo XVI por Jerónimo Quijano, maestro mayor del Obispado de Cartagena, ha despertado un gran interés como pieza clave del Renacimiento en el sur de España. Consta de dos partes: un ábside cubierto por una bóveda de horno avenerada, y un crucero de planta rectangular que lo precede. Frente a las bóvedas ovaladas o tóricas empleadas en otras ocasiones por Quijano, aquí parte de una imposta definida por un rectángulo central rematado por dos semicircunferencias en sus extremos, que se cubre mediante una bóveda de cañón rematada por dos rectángulos en los extremos. Dado que los tratados y manuscritos del período no exponen con detalle la solución completa, nos  proponemos abordar el análisis geométrico del conjunto a partir de un levantamiento riguroso llevado a cabo mediante fotogrametría de imágenes cruzadas para pasar después a su estudio constructivo y la comparación con las soluciones parciales del manuscrito de Alonso de Vandelvira. El dibujo a línea desempeñarán un papel central en toda la investigación, desde el levantamiento hasta la comparación con el texto vandelviriano; de esta manera, esperamos mostrar además el notable potencial de los medios gráficos en la investigación en Historia de la Construcción
[EN] The ensemble of the presbytery and crossing of the church of Our Lady in Chinchilla, built in the mid sixteenth century by Jerónimo Quijano, master mason of the bishopric of Cartagena, has fostered a remarkable interest as a key piece of Renaissance architecture in Southern Spain. It consists of two parts: an apse covered by a halfdome, and a rectangular crossing before it. In the crossing, instead of employing oval domes or torus vaults, as in previous works by Quijano, he used a plan defined by a central rectangle with two semicircles at the ends, which is covered by a combination of a barrel vault and two half-domes. Since treatises and manuscripts of the period do not discuss in detail the complete solution, in this paper we present out a geometrical analysis of the whole through a rigorous survey carried out using crossed-images photogrammetry. This survey will furnish a solid foundation for the study of the vault construction, confronting it with the partial solutions shown in Alonso de Vandelvira’s manuscript. Line drawing will play a central role throughout the study, from the survey to the comparison with Vandelvira’s text; in this way, we hope also to show the significant potential of graphic media as a research resource in the field of Construction History.

Until recently, studies in the architectural history of medieval and early modern Europe have assumed an all-male labor force on the construction site and in the related building trades.  Historical chronicles and manuscript illuminations of construction sites support this notion, purporting the total exclusion of women from this complex industry.  This chapter demonstrates the true nature of women's contribution to construction sites from the 13th to the 17th centuries in western Europe, uncovering a wide range of occupations in which they engaged: poor women hired for manual labor, women working as slaves, women working with their husbands and fathers in the building trades, widows continuing the workshops of their deceased husbands, and women supplying building materials for particular sites.  There is a history to be told of women's repeated participation in and subsequent denial from working in the building trades that echoes a theme between towns and across language barriers and indicates a common experience shared by women in this era.

De  las  casas-torre  defensivas  (s. XIV-XV)  a  los  primeros  palacios  gótico-renacentistas  de  principios  del  XVI, las Residencias Señoriales fueron evolucionando durante el periodo bajomedieval,  adaptándose  a  las  necesidades  de  cada  momento. La casa-torre de Nograro es un buen ejemplo de esta evolución hacia un nuevo modelo más residencial. Junto a la torre, de reducidas dimensiones en planta, se construyó un palacio anexo, buscando cierto confort. Tanto la torre como el palacio fueron construidas a finales del siglo XIV por Diego López de Salazar, sobre las ruinas de una construcción anterior.
Este  trabajo  ha  tenido  como  objetivo  analizar  el sistema  constructivo de una Residencia Señorial Bajomedieval defensiva. La  labor  desarrollada  se  ha  llevado  a  cabo  en  tres  apartados  complementarios:  la  labor  de  campo,  la  investigación documental y el análisis histórico-constructivo del edificio.
Se ha podido determinar el sistema constructivo original de la torre y, parcialmente, el del palacio.  Los muros están realizados en mampostería bien trabajada, sobre todo en el Palacio, con sillares en vanos y esquinales. El material empleado en estos paramentos es heterogéneo, aunque destaca el uso caliza en la parte baja de la torre y en el interior de la misma, posiblemente elementos reaprovechados de la construcción anterior. Estos muros tienen un rebaje o retallo en su interior a la altura del primer piso, donde se apoyan directamente los solivos. Los pisos superiores, en cambio, disponen de unas vigas centrales de gran escuadría que van empotradas directamente en los muros, ya que no existe rebaje alguno del muro del el primer al último piso. Es muy probable que la cubierta se rematase mediante una cubierta a cuatro aguas, que volaba hasta la línea de los matacanes.
La labor realizada se inscribe dentro de una tesis doctoral que  pretende estudiar la evolución del sistema constructivo de las Residencias Señoriales Bajomedievales en el País Vasco.

Contribution to the history of plastic analysis methods in steel construction. Jacques Heyman has been one of the main contributors to the development of structural theory in the 20th century. After graduating he joined the famous Cambridge Team directed by John Fleetwood Baker (1901-1985) that established the basis for plastic analysis of steel frame structures. Baker had worked for the Steel Structures Research Committee (SSRC) between 1928 and 1936, with the specific task of writing a rational code for elastic analysis of frames. For the first time real structures were tested. The results were surprising; elastic analysis was not suitable for predicting the actual state of the steel structure, contradicting what was believed at the time. This insight caused Baker to Change the direction of his research. In 1936 Baker traveled to Germany to attend the IABSE Conference, where he met those researchers from central Europe who, for over two decades, had been studying the elasto-plastic behaviour of steel beams. Back in the UK, he continued studying this field at Bristol University; the repeated Hermann Maier-Leibnitz's tests and started a program of tests on frames. The Second World War interrupted the work, which would continue at Cambridge once the war was over and crowned with success by the books "The steel skeleton"  and  "Plastic design of portal frames".

Em 1974, na sequência da revolução de Abril, foi criado o Serviço Ambulatório de Apoio Local (SAAL) cujo objectivo era auxiliar as populações com graves carências de habitação na obtenção de uma morada condigna. Incluído na promoção do SAAL foi iniciada a construção do Conjunto Habitacional da Bouça, projecto de Álvaro Siza, correspondendo a uma adaptação de um projecto anterior elaborado para o Fundo de Fomento à Habitação (FFH). O processo de construção é interrompido em 1978, sequente à extinção do SAAL (outubro de 1976) ficando apenas edificada a primeira fase do Conjunto Habitacional da Bouça -58 habitações de um total 131, correspondendo a zonas intermédias e sem acessos definitivos. Em 1999, um quarto de século após o início do projecto original, Álvaro Siza foi convidado para fazer a conclusão da intervenção com a construção dos edifícios em falta e a reabilitação dos edifícios existentes, obra que termina em 2006.

Roman baths are not only fascinating architectural structures but also
provide many insights into the ancient culture. They represent an emblematic
step in the process of civilization, indicative of the importance
of cities or the families that had them built. Their heating systems exemplify
the outstanding level of technological progress achieved by the
Romans. A novel interdisciplinary methodological approach is presented
to bridge the knowledge gap that often still concerns Roman baths.
It integrates in-situ analyses, laser scanning surveys, thematic 3D models,
computational fluid dynamics simulations, thermoluminescence,
and optically stimulated luminescence dating, providing an in-depth
investigation of the 3D spatiality, the functional layout, the construction
techniques, the operation, and the diachronic development of thermal
complexes. In this paper, the proposed approach is applied and validated
on one of the best-preserved thermal buildings anywhere in the Roman
Empire: the Indirizzo baths at Catania (Sicily). The dating campaign
confirmed that the complex was built at the end of the IV century and
stayed in operation until the VII century. The outcomes are a fundamental
premise for future conservation and exploitation activities, while the
proposed methodology constitutes a useful approach that can be effectively
replicated to better understand and promote other Roman thermal
complexes.

Usually, architects face bridge construction quite blankly. A significant exception was Paul Bonatz (1877-1956). The prominent exponent of the "Stuttgart school" produced an unusually extensive and varied oeuvre in this special field. His activities culminated in the time of the construction of the autobahn. Its worldwide acclaimed art of bridge building was substantially influenced by him.
The book traces the fascinating history of this architect's confrontation with the most prestigious field of structural engineering – a confrontation that stretched from the Kaiser's Reich via Weimar Republic and National Socialism through to the young Federal Republic of Germany. In fruitful collaboration with some of the best engineers of his time Bonatz created numerous bridges. Their sophisticated designs have lost nothing of their fascination until our days.

After acquiring the patent and the exclusive right to use glued laminated timber in Switzerland, the Swiss engineers Bernhard Terner (1875-1960) and Charles Chopard (1879-1954) developed outstanding structures already in the early years of their practice. After the much-acclaimed riding arena in St. Moritz (1910) they realised wide span dome structures for the new university building in Zurich (1914) and the SUVA headquarter in Lucerne (1915) together with numerous industrial and infrastructural projects, such as the locomotive depot in Bern (1913). The early adoption of glulam was put forward through a broad professionalization: While the use of glulam for buildings of the Swiss Federal Railways led to one of the first industrial timber building codes in Europe, the industry pushed for a strict control of the execution of glulam construction work by forming a consortium of carpenter contractors, the Schweizerische AG für Hetzer'sche Holzbauweisen, licensed by Terner and Chopard.
The early glulam construction culture showed great pragmatism using the new technique of shaped wood compounds most directly to built wide span arches and girders. One of the most critical fields in the first years was the appropriate use of connections which often led to a mix of traditional timber joints and modern steel connections. This development seems to have found its first peak with the design and construction of the tram depot in Basel in 1916. Bringing together both requirements from economic and aesthetic considerations, they developed a construction system based on optimised parabolic component shapes forming a three-hinged arch using complex steel connections. These steel connections, for the first time in glulam construction, fully adopted the state of the art construction technology of steel bridges and wide span halls introducing fixed and sliding bearings and hinges controlling precisely the static behaviour of the overall system. Bringing together modern industrial fabrication technologies in glulam and mechanical devices from steel construction, it was possible to „eliminate any statical ambiguity which is still common for timber girders“ and to establish a new standard in modern timber engineering and construction.
This paper traces the circumstances, stakeholders and major decisions throughout the design and construction process of the tram depot in Basel 1915-16 using original archive material and complementary contemporary sources. The findings will be placed in the overall context of early glulam construction, ​and references to other constructions and figures will be made.

RESUMEN La construcción de una bóveda de crucería requiere la ejecución de una importante estructura: las cimbras. Comparada con la estructura de madera que requiere una bóveda románica, las cimbras de una bóveda de crucería se han simplificado considerablemente, lo que explica su rotundo éxito. Estas estructuras auxiliares podían elevar enormemente el coste de la obra, suponiendo en algunos casos la tala de bosques completos, fuente de recursos en el Medioevo. Por ello el maestro de obras siempre se verá obligado a ingeniar nuevos sistemas para la simplificación y la reducción de su uso en obra. El profundo estudio geométrico y estereotómico que hemos realizado de las bóvedas sexpartitas eu-ropeas, las grandes protagonistas del gótico primitivo, nos ha permitido plantear hipótesis sobre los medios auxiliares que hicieron posible su construcción. Para ello se han medido las principales bóvedas sexpartitas de Europa Occidental con estación total, escáner láser o fotogrametría. Únicamente la construcción permite alcanzar un profundo conocimiento que la especulación teórica no puede lograr. Gracias al montaje de una bóveda sexpartita a escala 1/3 en la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, hemos podido poner en práctica las hipótesis teóricas planteadas previamente, así como revelar las destrezas necesarias para la puesta en obra de tan complejas estructuras. La construcción de la bóveda comienza con el montaje de una plataforma horizontal de trabajo donde apoyarían las cimbras de los arcos, situada en el nivel superior de las jarjas o sobre la línea de imposta cuando la bóveda carece de jarjamentos. Los nervios con grandes peraltes requerían el apoyo de sus cimbras a distintas alturas, complicando el diseño de estas plataformas. Las primeras cimbras se cons-truyen a partir de distintas curvaturas o presentan una estandarización parcial, sin embargo a medida que se desarrolla el sistema la estandarización es completa. Además, la evolución de las secciones de los nervios indicaría la transformación del diseño de las cimbras, para conseguir un mayor control de la calidad de la obra, como ya indicaban Choisy y Fitchen. Esta comunicación pretende poner de mani-fiesto el diseño y evolución de los medios auxiliares necesarios para llevar a cabo la construcción de las primeras bóvedas góticas y los procesos que habrían permitido simplificar y reutilizar estas estructuras.