Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/542

 520 THE BUILDING NEWS. June. 28, 1872. were perfectly satisfactory. The workmen certainly complained of the mortar being “ short” in working, but workmen always were opposed to new materials of any sort, however meritorious.—General Scorr inquired whether the mortar was mill-made or hand- made. When made in a mill he had never heard it complained against on account of “shortness,”— Captain Seppon replied that the mortar was made in a mill, and Aylesford sand—a very fine-grained sand—was used.—Mr. J. P. Seppown said that in a work on which he was engaged at Broadstairs he had used the selenitic mortar, which, though made in a mill, was objected to as being too “ short.” A good deal of freestone debris was used as sand.— Mr. Drves said that in estimating the strength of materials they ought to be guided by broad rules, for he had known cast iron vary in strength as much as 25 per cent. He did not agree with the statement that Corsham stone was only fit for in- door work. He thought that such a course of ex- periments as had been suggested by Captain Seddon would necessitate a considerable expenditure of time and money, and that the result would not be com- mensurate with the outlay.—Captain Srppon said that his paper was an attempt to point out that we did not know as much as we ought about the strength of iron, wood, and stone. As to Corsham stone, he had said that it was generally considered unfit for any but indoor work, but he was of opinion that that stone, if quarried at the proper time of the year, and not put green into the work when winter was coming on, would resist the weather. In test- ing the strength of materials, the elastic limit might be taken as the point at which a permanent set occurred, Doubtless some permanent set might occur before the elastic limit was reached, but after that point was reached there would be found to bea very considerable increase in the permanent set— indeed, it increased in a very rapid ratio after the limit was passed.—After some further remarks by Professor Kerr, Mr. Dines, Mr. Dawson, Mr. Morris, Mr. Fowler, Mr. Kirkaldy, and the President, the thanks of the meeting were unanimously passed to Captain Seddon for his valuable paper, and to Mr. Kirkaldy for his kind offer to show the members of the Institute over his testing works in Southwark, and the meeting terminated.

MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE.* (Concluded from page 456.) R. WEST proceeded to say it was not to be supposed that, because he was a pupil of M. Viollet le Duc, he blamed modern French architecture for not being Gothic. The whole foundation of M. Viollet le Duc’s teaching was that architecture was not a question of mere outward form; that if architects worked on true principles, their construction would of necessity give rise to some new style, of doubtful and hesi- tating character at first, but which ultimately would become as decided in its various beauties as ever was Gothic; if only architects, instead of dreaming, hermit-like, each in his own cell, used their reason as well as their fingers, and built each one his own knowledge on the foundation of that of his prede- cessor, as did men of science and engineers; if, instead of being mere decorators and scene painters, they would learn to become reasoning con- structors and scientific artists. For architecture was the borderland between art and science; the dwellers on its marshes must be equally at home with their neighbours on either hand, and speak both tongues with equal fluency. They must be a wandering race, now drawing for their resources on the one country, now on the other, now settling in the midst and keeping up equal relations with both. Mr. West then quoted the following résumé of M. Viollet le Duc’s teaching, and his apology for the study of Gothic, in that author’s own words :— For us architects of the nineteenth century, who are called upon to erect very complex buildings, to make light of the laws of matter, who possess materials most divine in their nature, their properties, and the methods of their employment; who are forced in our buildings to satisfy new wants and the very varied conditions of programmes quite different from those of the ancients; for us there is more to be learnt from Gothie than from the primitive and simple structure of the Parthenon at Athens, or even from the concrete and immovable structure of the Pan- theon at Rome. Itisapity that we cannot always build like the ancients, and constantly keep to the rules, which were as simple as they were beautiful, of the Greek and Roman constructors, but we cannot in reason in building 2 railway station, a market, a Parliament House, a bazaar, or an exchange, follow the methods of Greek or even of Roman construction, whilst the wide principles already applied by the architects of the middle ages will, if we study them with care, place uson the true road of modern times—that of constant progress. We may venture on any innovation, we may make use of all kinds of materials, ciation on Friday, May 31, by Mr. G. H. Wes?, A.R.I.B.A. without being false to those principles, since their very essence consists in submitting everything to our reason, our materials, the form we adept, the whole of our design ; in its generality and in its details, in reaching the limits of possibility, in substituting the resources of industry to inert force, the search after the unknown to tradition. It is certain that if the Gothie builders had had at their disposition cast iron in large pieces they would not have failed to employ this material in their buildings, and I am by nomeans sure that they would not have arrived at more judicious and more logical results than those which we have attained, for they would have frankly taken this material for what it is, and have pro- flted by all the advantages which it offers without troubling themselves to give it any other forms than those which best suit it. Their system of construction would have allowed of their using together cast iron and stone, a thing which no one has dared to attempt in our time, so greatis the influence of routine upon our builders, who keep on talking of progress like those opera-singers who shout “Let us away” for a quarter of an hour without leaving the stage. For the academic course can scarcely permit these attempts which the architects of the middle ages would certainly not have failed to make, and probably with thorough success. Our pure Gothic Renaissance, Mr. West then went on to say, is, if possible, more contemptible than the Classic Renaissance, for by this time we ought to know better, and most assuredly no form of Gothie will ever take root in modern France, all the traditions aud associations of the people being opposed to it. Having shown, per contra, that the Gothic style was pre-emiuently that of English national architecture, Mr. West insisted that the principles of Gothic, though not its outward dress, ought to be the foundation of all modern architecture. Now in France the architect thought of nothing of this outward form, and left his construction to fit in with that as best it might; and the teaching of the Ecole des Beaux Arts went entirely to encourage him in doing this. When architects became enamoured of the details of Classic art, which was partly due to a reaction against the chilling maze of rules and formule into which French Gothic had degenerated, they ceased to pay any attention whatever to the materials they made use of, and this carelessness had gone on increasing till the present time. The rustications and all the details of the Renaissance which belonged to a small stone style had been kept, in spite of the steady increase in the size of the materials used, so that one now constantly saw rustications indicating stones, some 2ft. 6in. by 1ft. 3in., running over blocks which frequently measured 8ft. or 10ft. by 4ft. or 5ft., the real joints of which passed anyhow over the face of the rustication. Mr. West said he had even seen lintels rusticated like flat arches. At present, owing to the cleaning-down system, by which the buildings are raised in block, and almost any facade was cut out of the mass with planes and scrapers, the waste was immense, for the contractor was paid for the cube of the stone taken before the cleaning-dovn. The author said he had seen a three-quarter column and the window-sills on either side taken out of a single block about 3ft. high. Joints ran anywhere and anyhow. Mr. West had seen them cross the acanthus leaves of a Corinthian capital, and in the vestibule of a house in the Avenue de Douai four joints ran across a large head cut in bas relief. Ashlar work was frequently, if not generally, paid for by the visible face, the working of the other sur- faces being included in that, so that it was to the workman’s interest to scamp the beds and joints, the more so since, instead of laying the stones directly on a bed of rather dry mortar, as with us, they laid them on wooden wedges of uniform thickness, and run in liquid mortar with a jagged instrument called a fiche. These wedges ought to be removed, but they very frequently are not, especially if the beds are not properly worked, and they constantly become causes of serious trouble. Though all this was bad enough, on the other hand there was much to learn from the French, especially in the scaffoldings, or rather in their absence, for frequently there was nothing but a chure, a sort of wooden crane, or a tall square equipe, with a windlass for hoisting the stone, no general scaffolding at all being used ; when it was used, it was scarcely ever composed of the rough poles and cords with which we were so familiar over here, but was scientifically and econo- mically framed. The Paris houses invariably bad iron floors, but otherwise they scarcely showed any sign of thought or any intelligent attempt to solve the problems given. They were, in short, just what one might expect them to be from the teachings of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, the inevitable result of which system, its final expression and its reductio ad absurdum, might be found in the New Opera House, which was won in an universal competition by an ex Grand Prix de Rome, otherwise unknown to fame, who possessed the usual facility of compo- sition so appreciated at the Ecole, and doubtless the usual amount of constructive knowledge there given. Among the faults of the design Mr. West instanced the want of a pediment, the crushing heaviness of the attic, the want of scale throughout the front, the crowning hideousness of the stone barn which overwhelmed the whole, and the absurdity of the two side pavilions—one of which contained the Emperor’s palace, which was considerably larger than the auditorium, while the other had nothing particular inside it, but was needed to give symmetry to the design (on paper). What evidence of careful study was shown in the arrangement of the great gilt cornice-gutter, which was cut off short round a corner! and how beautiful was the effect produced by the busts of great musicians looking out of portholes round the top of the building, those on the front being gilt so as to be well in keeping with the deli- cate confectionery of the rest of the facade! The whole decoration of the great portico was a mistake. There could be no greater error than to suppose, because the modern Persians, like the ancient Greeks, make free use of bright colour on the outsides of their buildings, that therefore we could afford to be equally bold. The four groups on the angles of the building were quite out of scale with the single figures against the piers, and the bas-relief heads above these latter bore no relation to either. The back of the building resembled a barrack, and the barn-like erection which covered the stage was adorned with two most frightful obelisks, two huge winged horses, and, finally, the whole was crowned by a gigantic lyre, with a statue of Apollo beneath it, who looked for all the world like a modern French version of Moses coming down from the Mount. Some of the detail was good, hut most of it was very heavy, not to say clumsy, while some of it, such as the statues forming candelabra round the outside, was positively atrocious. Considering what the history of France had been during the last eighty years, it was scarcely wise in M. Garnier to make the roof of the auditorium into an imperial crown, and to completely cover the building with imperial symbols. Like nearly all modern official French architecture, the whole building spoke in every stone~ of the extravagant corruption of the régime under” which it was built. So much for thedesign. A's to the construction, £160,000 was spent on the founda- tions, which, being anything but satisfactory, should have led the architect to lighten his superstructure as much as possible. Now the wall separating the auditorium from the stage was some 3 metres thick, in Burgundy stone, a most costly material and difficult to work. M. Garnier excused this on the ground that, had he made this wall of ordinary stone, it must have been 12 metres thick—40ft. He had never been taught at the Ecole that iron would have cost one-tenth the price, and would have saved half the money sunk in foundations. True, he could not then have had his Classic gable with Pegasus and the obelisks, and that was an absolute essential. The clumsy waste of the iron roofs was something in- credible, and the workmanship was as bad as the design. The whole thing was scamped, rivets were wanting, shoes did not fit, and in the square brick dome over the grand staircase the great angle irons in the corners rested on little jumbles of brickwork, and were wedged up with bits of wood! Metal work was decidedly not M. Garnier’s forte. The only decent piece in the building was the dome under the pit, and even this was needlessly heavy and very bad. The arrangement consisted of a number of iron ribs meeting at a central eye, and stiffened by wrought- iron bands. The ribs diminished but slightly towards the centre, and the consequence was that near the springing the rib had to carry its own weight and a certain small proportion of the weight of the pit floor above, which was chiefly taken by the circular walls. Near the eye, however, the ribs were much closer together, so that they had to carry a vastly greater weight of their own, and the whole superincumbent floor at the point furthest from their support, where they need the greatest strength. A constructor would have diminished the number of ribs towards the centre, and so at least not have given them any unnecessary work to do. This, however, would surely have been the place for a brick dome. The vaults, however, are scarcely more successful than the metal work. The voussoirs of the vaults of the vestibules are fastened to iron beams passing above them by iron rods! And this was called architecture ! The immense stone dome of the auditorium and the different floors were carried by fourteen piers thus arranged: 1. Two series of tubes 50 centimetres in diameter placed one above the other and 25in, long; these carry the dome. 2. Two sets of tubes 25 centimetres diameter which only rose to the top story and carried the floors; these tubes ran into one another an inch or two only, and were exactly like big rain-water pipes; they were arranged in fours, placed close together, and were not riveted or stiffened in any sufficient way. Those carrying the floors were the first loaded; they were united to those carrying the dome by wrought collars and bands,
 * Abstract of paper read before the Architectural Asso-