Why Architects Design Buildings Upside-Down
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- Опубліковано 18 вер 2024
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_Description_
Some of the world's most beautiful buildings were designed upside down. Literally. In this video, we explore how architects and engineers like Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Antonio Gaudi, and Heinz Isler used gravity-defying models to solve complex structural challenges. From St. Paul’s Cathedral to the Sagrada Familia, these innovative techniques have shaped architecture for centuries.
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Architecture with Stewart is a UA-cam journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
_About Me_
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
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University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: arch.uic.edu/
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Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock.
Music provided by Epidemic Sound
#architecture #urbandesign
My tutor said that prior to the understanding of these curves as models for arches, domes etc.. architects and engineers were pretty much just guessing and using the trial and error of previous completed works that were still standing. Which makes all the ancient architecture even more impressive.
I remember that trial and error was taught in mathematics. Before we’d get into the elegant calculations, we’d have to guess with trial and error, inelegant, calculations. 😍
Yeah. Even with the ancient pyramids there were a lot of failed pyramids before they got good at making pyramids. Some of them still survive today with the awkward stopgap measures they installed
They had a bunch of rules of thumb that worked though, but structures were heavier than they needed to be.
You don’t think that’s how the curves were found as well? That’s the basis of learning anything.
Thousands of years of trial and error can achieve amazing results. That's basically all accumulated human knowledge.
Fascinating! This reminds me of the work of the late Robert Mark, a professor of civil engineering and architecture at Princeton. He used photoelastic modeling to analyse the structure of ancient buildings, like Gothic cathedrals and Renaissance domes, including St Paul's. He would make structural models in plastic, hang them upside down, add weights at critical junctures, and then heat the models up enough so that they would deform slightly. Using holographic interferometry, he would pinpoint areas of stress or structural failure. This process illustrated in detail why some of these buildings still stood, while others failed, or at least were problematic.
I was also reminded of several other Renaissance-period domes, which ended up taking on a distinctly pointed or ogival profile for structural reasons. Brunelleschi's dome on the Duomo in Florence is the earliest example I can think of. Michaelangelo's original design for the dome of St Peter's in Rome had a semi-circular profile, but when the dome was completed after Michaelangelo's death by Giacomo della Porta and Domenico Fontana, they altered the dome's semi-circular profile, so it now has the profile of a catenary arch, much like the arches of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia. Even Wren's dome at St Paul's has a catenary arch hidden in its section -- a brick cone in the form of a catenary arch that is hidden by a low interior semi-circular dome and an exterior dome of timber and lead. I don't know if any of these architects hung structural models upside down like Gaudi, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did.
I've heard similar things from early house rafters were based on upside down boat hulls. Woodworkers were really good at building boats and were able to do both in a similar way.
oo well, not sure, do you know what the central axis from east to west is called in a church, the bit with the highest roof?
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Siza's pavillion for the 1998 World Exhibition is kind of an extension of Gaudí's work; he made a seemingly impossible arch by suspending a sheet of concrete over a large plaza. Upside-down engineering that remained upside-down. A very different end result, but a very similar design process. (Just with a lot of much more advanced engineering; it takes a LOT to make such a thin sheet of concrete!)
I had to google it after reading your comment. Never heard of it before, but wow, it's quite impressive. The concrete sheet itself looks so bouncy and soft, it kinda reminds me of that split second when a bedsheet hovers above the bed before falling.
The new Stuttgart train station follows a similar principle. Here, the architect looked for the smallest possible surface area with a film of soap water that forms on a wire frame. This in turn was used for supports and light eyes in the underground station.
Yess, I think it looks awesome! The idea is from Frei Otto, he also designed the Olympiapark in Munich
Why did Wren not adopt the example of Brunelleschi’s 1436 dome in Florence?
The role model for St. Paul's is Michelangelo's cupola of St. Peter's Basilica.
Wren had the problem that the structures at the construction site of St Paul, that already had been build, weren't strong and wide enough to withstand the pressure of the weight if he had build his dome in the same way and materials als Michelangelo, but wanted to reach his planned height of 365 feet, one for each day of the year.
So he had to find another solution.
He did, but improved it. Brunelleschi knew the round copulas fail by lack of support in the middle, and pointed copulas tend to do the opposite, to fail by bending inside on the sides. He just combined the two so they supported each other.
Wern just realized that if the pointed cuppola is a catenary, it can stand alone and the round cuppola is not needed. He just added a fake round one outside because at that time an Egg Shaped cuppola will look very strange. (Inside is disimuled by the paintings)
The fact that Sir Cristopher Wren was too radical for his time sort of blows my mind. Also, a very nice fact to have to serve those who oppose anything that’s “new”. As Peter Gabriel puts it, all these old things “were once just a thought/in somebody’s mind.” Perhaps for something to become a “classic”, it has to started out as revolutionary. There’s no shortage of examples to support this hypothesis!
The idea of icing a burlap rag is just ... well, genious!
I had no idea Gaudi's plans for the catherdral got destroyed, so glad that the young arcitect was able to figure out a way to rescue the work.
Shame they couldn’t build it upside down too, and flip it over upon completion.
"Wren went back to the drawing board." I see what you did there! 😆
Leo Chow from SOM spoke to our studio last week and he showed us several slides of them doing structural studies upside down, very cool to see a video explaining it more in depth. Crazy coincidence!
Good stuff as always!
This was insanely interesting - thanks for sharing this!
Great video Stewart! has given me a couple ideas for a project I'm thinking on. Thankyou.
Thank you for this explanation! I've been to see the Sagrada Familia and even saw the model in the basement being told that it was how he designed the structure. Until now, I didn't really have a conception for how or why his model worked.
This very much reminded me of the book "Miracles in Concrete" about the engineer August Komendant who worked intimately with Louis Kahn to create amazing solutions and often individual prefab systems.
This is so damn clever. When you see it, it's intuitive -- but it takes a really flexible mind to notice it in the first place.
I think you should look at Tulsa’s rose bowl (bowling alley) and chapel on the hill in broken arrow.
It is thin shell concrete but weirdly I think my friend could have designed it upside down but he designed it like you normally would.
It’s also an architect and engineer duo as well. Beautifully done and beautifully executed.
Excellent!
Good morning. Do you know the work of Engineer Eladio Dieste? He built curved walls with bricks and the shape, not the mass, is what kept the walls upright. He has a vast and recognized work. The most named is the "Church of Atlantida", of which (as far as I know) a copy was made in Spain. Your channel is excellent. Greetings from Uruguay. P.S. Will you one day be able to incorporate Spanish dubbing with AI? The subtitles, while good, distract from the image.
Fascinating!
The upside down model of Sagrada Familia is amazing. Go watch it when you're in Barcelona.
The picture in the thumbnail shows Cologne Cathedral, I doubt, that this church has been designed from upside done. Although the building has been finished in the 19th century it follows plans from the medieval period, before any theories of catenaries had been developed.
Gaudi's plans for Sagrada familia should already be out of copyright protection, but maybe there wasn't a good visualiation for this church for using it in the thumbnail...
I had a request for you. Would you consider doing a video about how the Astrodome (Houston, TX) and similar structures were made possible? Arenas are so large that it’s crazy some of them even exist. I used to see the Astrodome as a child and wonder how on earth humans could make such a thing; however, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still look at it with wonder as an adult. Thanks for the videos!
-Brandon (long time subscriber and fan)
Visited the Gaudi Museum in barcelona, its worth a visit.
This video gives a whole new perspective on the Sagrada Família. It is well known that cathedrals are designed to reach toward heaven (God). In this case, it is as if Sagrada Família is being pulled by God the Father. It’s a beautiful concept even if one is not religious.
I wonder if you could make a negative model using the hanging model. You wouldn't want to dip it, because that would introduce pressure from buoyancy, but maybe something that could deposit on it slowly.
Edit... doh, like freezing it... I guess I should wait until the end of the video to make my comments!
so you're telling me that Robert Hook's favourite thing to do was to hang things from hooks?
We have a beautiful airport in Medellín that was built like that.
Very interesting
Fighting gravity with the force of gravity.
Цікаве та пізнавальне відео. Дякую ❤️
Isler got Hooked and then he just Wren with it.
Leave it to a guy named Hook to design stuff swangin!
It's not a cathedral, it's a minor basilica.
Just want to mention that Sagrada Familia is not a cathedral but a basilica as Barcelona already has a medieval cathedral, that of St Eulalia.
Doesn't really matter. Who cares about the internal structure of an organization? This is about architecture and a building is a building…
The Empire State Building was built from the top down using technology the Azteca learned from aliens.
I see a connection to my design and 3D printing method of various buildings and objects. I deliberately avoid overhangs for efficiency and easy printing with less failures and waste in support material. With resin of course it's printing upside down but it also helps with your standard FDM printing. So I am always thinking about the object upside down.
Antoni, NOT Antonio
Mechanical calculators. Nice.
As above so below
i was watching the whole video upside down
We need to build some more cool, new, charming walkable towns in the US.
So it can be Resin 3D printed. DUH
Stalactite technology
Just like in Elden Ring
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I dont know why people believe anything you say.
9:12 The "official" date for the Sagrada Familia to be completed is 2034.
And I seriously doubt that, since they need to demolish an entire block to build the main grand staircase.