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King's College SCAFFOLDING TO STRUCTURE CONSTRUCTION IN THIN-SHELL MASONRY CAMBRIDGE, UK October 23 - 30, 2010 Prof. Dr. Philippe Block | Lara Davis 1 CONTENTS ETH Zurich Department of Architecture 2 Introduction 3 Institute of Technology in Architecture 3 Workshop Schedule 5 Assistant Chair for Building Structure 4 EXCURSIONS Prof. Dr. Philippe Block King’s College Chapel 8 Lara Davis Peterborough Cathedral 46 Ely Cathedral 58 Book design and text by Lara Davis Wren’s Library 78 Photos by Lara Davis unless noted otherwise. 5 VAULTING WORKSHOP 86 Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 15, HIL E 46.1 6 LECTURES 122 CH - 8093 Zurich Switzerland 7 Workshop Faculty 130 8 Illustration credits 134 © BLOCK Teaching, ETH Zurich, 2010 SCAFFOLDING TO STRUCTURE CONSTRUCTION IN THIN-SHELL MASONRY British fan vaulting, Catalan thin-tile vaulting, and Mexican ‘leaning brick’ vault- ing: These three enduring methods of construction in thin-shell masonry – each with their associated structural theory and constructional praxis – represent the three primary methods of spanning space in unreinforced masonry. Masonry experts from ETH Zurich (Dr. Philippe Block and Lara Davis), Universi- ty of Cambridge (Michael Ramage and Dr. Matthew DeJong), and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) (Alfonso Ramírez Ponce) led seminars in vault construction, in which structural principles were tested through hands- on practice with materials and methods. Based in Cambridge, UK, our excur- sions included locations closed to the public. On the roof of King’s College Chapel, at Ely Cathedral, Peterborough Cathedral, and the Wren Library, the theoretical engineering themes were translated from “scaffolding to structure”. Northern European Vaults Pitched Brick Vaults Thin-Tile Vaults Prof. Dr. Philippe Block ENGLAND MEXICO SPAIN Lara Davis Collaboration with: Prof. Michael Ramage Prof. Dr. Matthew DeJong Distinguished guest: UNAM Prof. Alfonso Ramírez Ponce 2 3 SCAFFOLDING TO STRUCTURE CONSTRUCTION IN THIN-SHELL MASONRY CAMBRIDGE, UK SATURDAY SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY OCTOBER 23 OCTOBER 24 OCTOBER 25 OCTOBER 26 OCTOBER 27 OCTOBER 28 OCTOBER 29 OCTOBER 30 Service Introduction Bus Excursion Skills/materials Workshop: Workshop cont... Bus to London at Kings College 9:00 – 12:00 Departure: Charette Mexican vaults 9:00 7:00 10:30 9:00 9:00 & Tile vaults 9:00 Peterborough Cathedral Arrival 10:30 Flight to Zürich 11:30 MEET: Exploring Excursion: Ely Cathedral EasyJet Check-In in Cambridge King’s College 2:30 12:45 Chapel Excursion: Wren's library Flight to London 14:30 14:45 Lecture Lecture Bus to Cambridge Return A. Ramírez Ponce Prof. P. Block Wrap up Departure 17:25 18:00 17:00 17:00 Dinner in a college Evening dinner 19:00 20:15 4 Photo by Demjan Haller 5 Assistant Chair of Building Structure | Prof. Dr. Philippe Block Institute of Technology in Architecture www.block.arch.ethz.ch Cambridge. Eine Woche. Sieben Tage. Hundertachtundsechzig Stunden. Zehntausendachtzig Minuten. Sechshundertviertausend- achthundert Sekunden. Ja so lange haben elf Männer und drei Frauen zusammen in einer Stadt wie im Film verbracht. Hat einer von euch Harry Potter auf seinem Besen vorbeifliegen sehen? Staunen, sich wundern, zweifeln, bewundern, glauben, nicht glauben. Dinge wie diese haben die ersten paar Tage unserer Reise geprägt. Kann es wirklich sein? Wie ist es möglich? Unter den Dächern einiger Kathedralen wurden unsere Horizonte erweitert. Faszinierende Konstruktionen, stimmungsvolle Gottesdienste, lehrreiche Ge- spräche. All dies war Teil unserer kleinen Reise. – Isabelle Schulz 6 7 KING’S COLLEGE CHAPEL The fan vaults at King’s College are the largest in the world, spanning 12.66 meters, with an extraordi- Inside of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge narily thin shell (between 10 and 15 centimeters). Completed by 1515, the Chapel at King’s College BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was built in sporadic periods, with the credit of the fan vaulting to the master mason John Wastell. Each vaulting bay, compartmentalized by transverse arches, is composed of four quarter fans and a central Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense, With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned— spandrel panel with a boss. Since the bays are rectangular, the fans intersect at a transverse ridge. A Albeit labouring for a scanty band longitudinal ridge runs the 88.5 meter length of the chapel. The Seminarweek group’s visit included a Of white-robed Scholars only—this immense Sunday morning service with choral music, closer inspections of the chapel, and exclusive structural And glorious Work of fine intelligence! and constructional tours under the roof, over the vaulting, along the entire length of the longitudinal Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore ridge, and down the north and south eave walks on the chapel roof. Of nicely-calculated less or more; So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells, Where light and shade repose, where music dwells Lingering—and wandering on as loth to die; Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality. 8 One thing that seemed interesting to me during our time in such an old and well conserved city, is that most of all these old buildings, that were built hundreds of years ago, are still there and perfectly conserved. Of course there was restoration, but the structures, most of the time, didn’t need any repair. I believe that one of the reasons for their capacity to endure comes from the shape of these struc- tures. Even people that never studied something about them could easily, roughly understand how forces run in these amazing buildings. An element which is constantly repeated in most of the buildings is the arch. Most are english arches (pointed arches), but in some old Cathe- drals and other old buildings you can also see Norman arches (which are our Roman ones, so called because this art of arches arrived in England with the Norman conquer after the Battle of Hastings in 1066). Of course there are other variations of them. The thing that amazed me, was that even though the master builders of these old times couldn’t calculate the forces, they could imagine the right shape of structures to make forces elegantly flow through them, and maybe they understood these principles even better than we do today. Probably they tried and tried again until they found the right shape – the one that could hold for thousand of years against the forces of nature. – Pablo Valsangiacomo Photo by Raphael Fitz 10 11 Sonntagmorgen stehen wir alle (mehr oder weniger) ausgeschlafen auf, und machen uns auf den Weg zur Kings College Chapel, wo wir zum Gottesdi- enst erwartet werden. Sobald wir de Füsse über die Schwelle gesetzt haben, kommen wir uns vor wie im Film: ehrwürdige Gemäuer, dunkle Holzschnitzereien, Kerzenlicht, riesige ledergebundene Bibeln... Durch die Bunten Fenster des Kirchenschiffs tritt Dämmriges Licht in den Chor. Zusammen mit den Senior Mem- bers vom Kings College, kirchlichen Würdeträgern und Einheimischen dürfen wir das Ritual erleben. Vom Kirchenchor über den Gastprediger bis zum Schlussgebet ist alles dabei was dazugehört. Noch ahnen wir nicht, dass wir schon am nächsten Morgen auf dem Dach eben dieses eindrücklichen Sakralge- bäudes stehen werden... – Demjan Haller Until now cathedrals and other middle-aged buildings to me were more like memorials of social injustice from a time when perverted competitions took place to build higher and more expensive. I was stunned though, that King’s Collage Chapel made me think of a church of the Enlightment (Aufklärung) in which church music sounds like being written by Pink Floyd, and in which the priest’s reading could be used as a contemporary commentary in a cultural magazine. It was a great experience to see King’s College Chapel in action; to attend a service - without getting reli- gious. Browsing through the reader I began to realize that Fan-Vaults define their own category of vaults and that the British master builders demonstrate a per- fect equilibrium of thrust forces -even by filling up the vaults with heavy loads. I was thrilled. – Lucas Treyer Photo by Ozan Enginsal 14 15 CONOID VAULTING BAY SPANDREL PANEL BOSS TRANSVERSE ARCH TRANSVERSE RIDGE LONGITUDINAL RIDGE The “conoid” of a fan vault is a geometry of revolution, in which each radial section and rib geometry is equal. The vaults at King’s are an exception to this rule, however, since two of the primary ribs of each conoid are of a slightly different curvature to accommodate for the modified curvature of the transverse arches spanning the chapel. Though this is not visible to the eye, it is apparent from the masons’ marks on the upper surface of the stones that these voussoirs (or stone masonry units) had unique cutting patterns (see p.54). Along the cir- cular courses of the conoid with greatest ornamental detail is “jointed masonry”; the ribs and relief are carved directly from solid voussoirs. In all other locations, the ribs are “rebated”, or set back on the upper side to receive the thin panels of the vaulting conoids. In fan vaulting, the ribs are always per- pendicular to the vaulted surface, because the regular conical curvature is an easy reference geometry; in comparison, the ribs of quadripartite vaults are perpendicular to the ground plane and must be vertically projected to a complex surface. 16 18 19 After a sight-seeing tour on Sunday, the first days we con- centrated on developing knowledge of how brick vaults were applied, especially in medieval churches. King’s Col- lege Chapel (1446), Peterborough Cathedral (1118) and Ely Cathedral (1083) were amazing examples of such very ef- ficient and „sexy“-looking structures. The roof construction at King’s College Chapel impressed me most with its only 10 centimetre thickness in some parts.
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