Student Publication v1 #1

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1 vol. 1 no. 1 spring 1955

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spring 1955 ann arbor, michigan volume I number 1

patron subscription: $10.00 year regular subscription: $ 4.00 year

independent student publication issued twice a year

all material within this magazine is copyrighted by the student publication and may not be reproduced without written permission

cover:

Space-Frame Assembly of light gauge steel members (unistrut) for the Architectural Research Laboratory photograph by David Reider.

STUDENT

Wells Ira Bennett

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BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

Philip N. Youtz

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THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON ARCHITECTUt.E

R. Buckmin.ster Fuller

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ARCHITECTURE OUT OF THE LABORATORY

Ludwig Hilberseimer

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CHICAGO RE-PLANNED

Thomas McClure

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WITHIN AND BETWEEN MEN

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GORDON EUKER

PUBLICATION

box 2127 ann arbor, michigan

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BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

The printed page bound in a magazine remains a favored means of communication. In a sense outmoded by radio, sky-writing, the spectacular, and television, books and magazines penist on their relatively pedestrian way, expendable yet sufficiently durable. In an excited, distracted world the reader can absorb a message at a glance or he can at his leisure ingest a desired amount of information. A good periodical is appealing and will remain so for it can put on record a look-se~ as well as a progress report. Between the periodical and its readers there can be a kind of contract. The first issue of a magazine is a down payment on this agreement.

It is presumed by the sponsors of every new publication that the magazine will fill a vacuum - do something essential that is not now being done. All worthwhile sponson also believe that this vacuum is in. the realm of ideas and in virgin territory even there. They are second class sponsors who are content to share the field by admitting the vacuum they fill may be a geographical pocket unique in, say, the Southwest, or the Great Lakes area of the United States. However stout the backing, if the vacuum proves to be a plenum the first number will be the last. Such untoward weather does not threaten in our present care.

Initially, as note the history of periodicals concerned with political questions, magazines are born of a lively group enthusiasm for a cause; at different times this has been the right of assembly, or the Townsend plan.

Publications featuring the arts have featured existentialism, organic architecture, the artists' responsibility, and hlany another battle-cry. It is of course axiomatic that the enthusiasm which produces the first number has to find an audience and that there is a sponsonhip which stands ready to carry on. Otherwise the fint number will be the best one.

Student publications representing schools of architecture and art have appeared from time to time over the past half century closely paralleling the development of organized professional education in American colleges and universities. The earlier publications were often termed yearbooks. Some of the best were sponsored by semi-organized atelien or studios such as the T -Square Club, staffed by able and lively practitionen, featuring the work of art students and draftsmen. In retrospect the staff critics were dedicated men; the students enthusiastic and sometimes inspired. These high spirits

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the yearbooks reflected. Over the years there has come a marked change in these publications; on the whole indicating growth and maturity in American architecture. For the first decades each school, its staff and students, vied with other schools in the handsome pres路 entation of well-bound collections of plates displaying projects carried out in the school. Admitting the printed word only for titles there were exhibited on page after page the productions of the brilliant young creative 路 minds at work. It was the painter or sculptor exhibiting works of art, the architect suggesting by facile sketches the city halls, palaces, and, country clubs he would some day be designing and building.

Over the past fifteen years the pattern has notably changed. A majority of the schools have now abandoned the academic neo-classical emphasis in design. A number have even gone through and survived a second phase, that of the transferral of allegiance from the Frenchtrained senior critics to new leadership, sometimes equally doctrinaire. The concept of the chief critic tended to continue even when the new man protested his prima donna status. The student publications continued to reflect the critics' mannerisms. Architectural

education is now navigating more quiet waters, although the breezes of discussion are still brisk. The situation is wholesome, constructive, and the attitudes quite iconoclastic. We are still uncertain but less confused.

So there is much to be discussed as well as designed in architecture and the visual arts, and happily there has now arrived the time when students and faculties want not to copy, but to understand our environment and the positions taken by outstanding educators and practitioners. The Battle of Styles is won although, as after all wars, there remain some misgivings as to whether there was a victory.

The good student publications today provide a con路 siderable amount of analysis and philosophy as well as some illustrations of art and design as it is done in school and in practice. For a student publication in Architecture and Design at Michigan we can forecast a favorable climate, bracing yet sunny. There are many points to darify. There is plenty of room for new ideas, for questioning and proof.

Wells Ira Bennett

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THE

IMPACT OF

SCIENCE

ON

ARCHITECTURE

Philip N. Youtz

Contemporary society straddles a broad chasm between types of culture: a traditional aesthetic inheritance which has enriched men's lives from the dawn of history, and a progressive scientific revolution which is arousing the hope that we may increasingly control our environment and our social destiny. Under the old order, though ignorant of nature and helpless to defend himself against her caprice, man achieved great confidence and dignity. Today enlightened by science, man is applying the exact 路methods of technology to cope with nature; yet he feels unsure of himself and frightened at his newly acquired power.

The artist and the craftsman designed and shaped the old culture. They interposed between man and his harsh physical environment the amenities of great art and stately ritual and mystical religion. They introduced human values into living and thus compensated men for the cruel natural law of the survival of the fittest.

For evils which they could not understand and could not banish, they invented a delightful mythology such as the story of Pandora's box. They found satisfaction in creating a beautiful world because they could not make a more hospitable one.

Our new world of the present reflects the efforts of the scientist to understand nature and direct its forces.

The acquiescent, aesthetic relationship to nature has given way to an aggressive, technical attitude toward our physical environment. Instead of writing poetry about waterfalls, we are erecting dams to generate electricity so that our cities may have light. We depend less and less on muscle and more and more on mechanical power.

Precision instruments have surpassed the accurate judgments and patiently acquired skills of the craftsman.

This new scientifically oriented culture has demanded a new architecture. The high priests of the Museum of Modern Art have labeled this new product the International Style, because they perceived that it did not grow from regional roots as did all historical styles. But, if we had delayed the christening until we could make the acquaintance of the child, we would have chosen some such name as the scientific, technical, positivistic, industrial, or dynamic architecture. In our new architecture we are trying to express the attitudes and the methods of a scientific age.

With the stage thus set we are ready to usher in the

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architect and the engineer. The least known and certainly the least understood of these two professional men deserves a sympathetic and accurate introduction.

Though a man of many duties, we may describe an architect as primarily an artist. He labors in the realm of human values. For him, man provides the measure of all things. His job is to express the character of scientific culture through form and structure, light and shade, color and texture, and through the surprise and logic of fresh design.

The advent of science has destroyed most of the mythology with which art has so richly embroidered the patterns of history. Does this mean that science will replace art and relegate the architect to some social Siberia?

A cold fear that such a catastrophe impends has haunted all artists ever since the revolution in thought occurred.

Should the architect hand over his sensitive and creative designing to the engineer and resign his ancient and honorable sex:vice to society?

The human craving for art has not diminished through the ages. Actually this ancient need has grown more poignant during these transitional days when we are trying to purge emotion from thought and to scrutinize our world with wide-eyed objectivity. As we teach ourselves to think mathematically, our dependence on architecture and music increases. We rely on the artist not only to provide entertainment, but to safeguard the sanity of our race. Society looks to the artist to keep its emotion and imagination active and to guide it into productive and healthy channels. The architect gives design and distinction to society no less than to structures and materials.

Contemporary society understands the engineer because his profession grew out of the new scientific direction of modern culture. The engineer applies the exact methods of science to the design of structures. He is a technical man trained to think in the quantitative logic of mathematics. For the engineer, nature and her laws, or more accurately, nature and the statistics of her somewhat whimsical behavior supply the measure of all things. Like the architect, the engineer is a man of imagination concerned with problems of design. But instead of the discipline of art, the engineer brings to bear a knowledge of stress analysis; and however daring his design, he seeks to create a structure that will carry the loads assigned to iL The vitality of modern architecture grows out of the union between architecture and engineering. That two sources so different as aesthetics and mathematics should combine so successfully to produce dynamic architecture, we may perhaps regard as a modern miracle. But in every building worthy of the name of architecture this marriage occurs. Now that we are oriental regarding the nature of modern architecture and the respective contributions of the architect and the engineer, we can look into this matter of miracles a little more closely.

Actually any critic could have told us fifty years ago that the steel frame offered a cure for claustrophobia.

But the exterior curtain wall and the movable partition did not make much headway toward eradicating this chronic disease of traditional architecture until recently.

Historically, the impact of engineering on architecture has produced a gradual evolution in new directions, not a violent revolution.

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I have always experienced a feeling of intense delight at the sight of a steel scaffolding soaring to the top of a high structure. Indeed in most cases 路 I would have preferred to see the building torn down and the space frame kept as a monument to the combination of utility and the conquest of engineering o.ver dead weight. I am pleased, therefore, that the space frame is beginning, after long probation, to win a permanent instead of a temporary place in architecture.

During the last war when I was in Washington as a director of technical research, I met a brilliant engineer, R. Buckminster Fuller. Whether his geodesic space frames are architecture or engineering, I don't know, but they impress me as touched with genius. To emphasize the merits of Buckminster Fuller's organization of tetrahedrons along great circles radiating in thtee directions tangent to his triangles, one has only to consider the weight of the dome in some conventional state capitols. Among the lightest of these is a metal one at Austin, Texas. It is cast iron, a not illogical material for expressing the outer semblance and even the technical progress of the Renaissance. Herr Krupp of Germany cast this mighty dome and shipped it across the Atlantic to the Lone Star State. It is hard to estimate the weight of different materials, but a dome of stone might weigh a hundred and fifty pounds per square foot, a cast iron dome seventy-five pounds per square foot, a modern laminated tile dome about thirty-five pounds, a reinforced concrete shell around twenty-five pounds, and a geodesic dome about one pound per square foot. I have used the example of the dome not because I think that a capitol building need necessarily wear a dome to be patriotic, but because I wanted to point out the

evolution of this architectural shape from a structure loaded with dead weight to one so light that it will float away if not anchored down.

Space frames can be erected very rapidly without centering. They distribute the load equally in all directions. They represent something very close to the ultimate in engineering efficincy. On the other hand their use raises certain problems. How can we fireproof such structures? Few engineers posses the mathematical tools to analyze a complex space frame, and those who do might hesitate to devote their time to such a lengthy undertaking.

A good many advances in concrete have occurred since the turn of the century. From a compressive strength of a bare 2,000 pounds per square inch it has improved until it can now resist as high as 12,000 psi.

Today, this plastice has gone a long way toward eliminating its dependence on forms. In precast concrete repetition has cut down the number of forms to a minimum. In monolithic concrete, the German development of the flat plate for floor slabs reduced forms to a simple platform. Finally, Lift Slab took the logical step of eliminating forms altogether. Reinforcing has similarly progressed to pretressing and high-strength steel. Light aggregates for concrete have cut dead weight drastically.

Another line of development abroad, where labor and form costs are lower than in our United States, is the thin concrete shell, the curved surfaces of which give it phenomenal strength.

To illustrate the interrelation of architecture and engineering, Pier Luigi Nervi's Gatti factory in Rome,

which has a concrete slab with ribs that follow the isostatic lines of the principal bending moments, most dramatically points to this synthesis. His great exhibition hall at Turin arches over a span of some three hundred feet with a combination of monolithic concrete and thin precast ribbed vaulting. This gargantuan hall stands out as one of the most dynamic buildings in the world.

It demonstrates a rare virtuosity in both artistic expression and technical design.

Two very simple engineering features create this long-span vault. The concrete is used to take compression. The repetitive members of the huge ceiling are all alike so can be cast in a minimum number of similar forms. The formula employed by Nervi is elemental. But architectural genius, in this case possessed by an engineer, is required to organize such beautiful boundaries for space. Both his natural and artificial

lighting serve to emphasize the strong structural ribs and the massive concrete arches which carry their stresses to the foundations.

To conclude this review of the impact of engineering on architecture, I want to affirm my faith in the theory that good architectural composition should refiect sound engineering design. The requirements for a modern J>uilding that will express the growing scientific spirit of our age are the partnership of an artist with aesthetic vision and experience, and a technical man with structural imagination and knowledge. The architect is needed to state and preserve human values in our mechanical world, and the engineer is depended upon to master the natural forces that compete in a complicated modern structure. Contemporary.. functional architecture is a fusion of art and science.

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ARCHITECTURE

OUT OF

THE

LABORATORY

R. Buckminster Fuller

During the summer of 1954 we sent on invitation two paper board domes to Italy for exhibition at the Triennale of Milano. Upon erection each dome enclosed one thousand square feet of floor space and twelve thousand cubic feet of clear span room. For shipment 路each dome folded into a packing case of 96 cubic feet, a packaging compression ratio of one hundred and twenty units of volume reduced to one unit. These domes surprised the Italian architects. They soon realized that the only way such paperboard domes could be designed and produced was through a set of laboratory techniques using our best knowledge of mathematics, materials, and industrial processes. They became especially aware of the significance and promise of full mass production that the domes represented due to: first, the customarily humble category occupied by the materials employed, namely, $280.00 worth of paper and plastic per dome; second, their speed of erection-they were both erected in two days by three unskilled Italian workmen led by two graduate American students-; and, third, the domes' mathematical accuracy that simplifies their production, tooling, and final erection. Thus, the trained skill of craftsmen is entirely invested in the micrometered layout . and finishing of the tools to be inserted in the mass

production "printing" presses to produce cleanly interchangeable parts logically coded for obvious assembly procedures. The Italian architects could not find any known design classification in which to place the domes and they spontaneously invented the designation, "Architecture out of the Laboratory". I thought it would be interesting to present in this article the comprehensive account of a series of experiments that have come actually out of the laboratory over a period of 27 years, and thus illustrate my .endeavor to treat architecture as a science.

The exploration of the fundamentals governing the most effective ways of enclosing and controlling space, and of controlling the energy that will serve such a space is bound to be a fruitful kind of investigation in its own right. It is the case of the generalized "Valve".

This kind of information will eventually apply to all of the knowledge we now have concerning the behavior of man and also to the chemistries and processes of his training, and the problem of design imposed thereby.

This would, for instance, include an increase in his mobility in terms of the frequency of coming and going and also a necessary decrease of the time invested in local physical efforts. By means of this relief we would

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give him more time to use his obvious perceptive faculties and his abilities to analyze and rearrange. In view of our present developments and of the enormous wealth of resources we have in regard to such matters it is certain that when we take the laboratory viewpoint of the scientist we are simply taking an attitude of our own right to start exploring the problem by looking for its adequate statement and taking into account functions to be served in respect to environment. In his approach the scientist is bound to have a very great advantage in avoiding preconceptions about the problem area he is exploring. He is also freer ~y virtue of his scientific criteria and his own energy efficiency. In due course he will tend to translate his findings toward a higher and higher objective facility performance per unit of invested resource. At the end he must arrive at results which will be found to have measurable advantage over any previous facility of like character.

This approach is essentially different from the general way of looking at the architecture of the past when the opinions of patrons governed the fundamental design

criteria regardless oÂŁ their measurable inadequacies. In this article I will present my ideas about developing these new attitudes toward architecture, and will give with the text and the illustrations a reasonably accurate report oÂŁ a scientific search regarding the question of whether the total intellectual and technical resources of history, the total physical resources of geography, and the total inventory 6f known human deeds might be composed into a formula which would form the basis of a prototyping operation for a large new service industry designed to provide man an increasing freedom of access to, and enjoyment of even more facets of his world.

In all of these experiments we were seeking ways in which it might be more profitable to employ our abilities toward earning for all a higher standard of living by mechanical and chemical advantages and proper design.

These particular experiments submitted to you will be just samples of the many items that you may now witness as industrially realizable, practicable, and entirely within our physical and rational powers of acquisition.

enerqetlc and aynerqetic qeometry

Some of my early experiments led me to the discovery of a hierarchy of principles which I named Synergetic ~nd Energetic Geometry.

I came upon this system of complementary principles while trying to see whether we might not be able to find a higher advantage for man in relation to his living by means of a scientific exploration of certain ~a颅 metrical phenomena. I though that instead of letting the consumer tells us what he thought he wanted us to design for him, we should take the initiative in scientific exploration and analysis, and proof by experiment with all matters that deserve a serious approach and involve investment and conservation of our resources in designable directions. Firstly, I was trying to find out whether nature has a fundamental mathematical system which she employs in the general formulation of all internal and external order. Up to this time we had been using the x-y-z coordinate system with three axes that intersect at ninety degrees. As you know, this was our fundamental and final frame of reference for all measurements, analysis, calculations, and translation of developed data into design and production.

We found that it was very easy to identify static relationships with the xyz modularly coordinated axii system. For example, it was possible to measure seven modules on the x axis and nine modules on the y axis. This was fine for radial observations but unsatis路

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factory for circumferential events because the hypotenuses of these right triangles would be inconmensurable in modules of the radial relationshiPs and could only be expressed by irrational proportions. But the unit rational module of the xyz axii was no longer available when we took the valid viewpoint of the external observer, thereby changing the orientation of events. Therefore, any activities observed by man that were only measurable outwardly from where he stood at center would have to be represented as zig-zag activities readable in identical modules, in a series of 90 degrees "hill" interactions as taken from modular points upon the limited six radials of the xyz axii. This seemed to me a fundamental kind of handicap for the frame of reference, and I wondered if there might not be a system in which all of the modules, circumferential and radial, were identical. As you know, the hexagon is made up of six equilateral triangles and gives us radial modules equal to the chords. This is a planar section of what we were looking for; a natural coordinate kinetical system made up of vectors of equal length inherently representing energy as heat, mass, velocity, direction etc. . . Futhermore, as we found by actual experiment, such vectors could interact as a structurable pattern in such a manner that from the terminal of any one of the vectors there would eminate a radial set of eleven vectors of identical length, each leading regeneratively to eleven other ends, etc.••• Thus the twelve identical vectors converging at any point in explored universe would ever be the same as long as man explores in energy values and freedom.

Such a spontaneously regenerative condition is essential to universal equilibrium, and this "isotropic vector matrix" could constitute a fundamental frame of reciprocal displacements and transformations.

In fact, it became increasingly probable in subsequent years that this is the actual frame of reference of all natural events of cristalography, hydraulics, pneumatics, thermodynamics, nucleonics, and of all cellular growth.

Another aspect of this system was that it became a

reasonable basis of logic for establishing the criteria of measurement in various problems concerning the energetic environment thus coming designably under the control of man.

It also became a good working assumption that we might be able to devise some kind of omnidirectional vector interaction which would act as a spherical zonal system subdividing universe into macro and micro extremes of experience. These zonal systems would be comprised of fundamental and similar components which we could employ as a frequency separating or differentiating sieve of inbound and outbound energy events. When we came to the simplest statements characterising this device, we seemed to be congruent with the original mathematical formulations of topology. We had a system comprised of certain minimum characteristics of systems, i.e., vertexes, edges, faces and poles. Also we begin to identify in them analogies with chemical structures, quanta and wave mechanics, and thermodynamics. In the first case we have what is known as a single bond. This bond is formed through one vertex of each of two adjoining systems. If, instead, we get the union of two vertexes, we form a hinge comparable to what we call in chemistry a double bond. If three vertexes are joined, this is called triple bond. However, we might also say that in the first case a single vertex provides a universal joint; in the second case an edge provides a hinge; al\d in the third a face provides total fixity. Here we have the three fundamental characteristics of topology. Thus, we arrive at the fundamental relationship between chemistry and topology which is in itself very useful. Furthermore, we begin to find these same kinds of identities in man's experience as an engineer. For example, in working with column formulas the engineer is trying to measure their behavior and their stresses in order to classify the different ways they can fail. He finds the relationships of those failures to the end fixity of the columns. He could have a pin end, hinged end, or a fixed end. He cannot have any more fixity than the three pointedness

itself.

I began to discover that engineers, chemists, and biologists dealt with these things in semantically different ways, but they were actually working with the same principles. Chemistry, for example, shows the relative foldability or flexibility of a system which is held together only by vertexes. Let us now see what are some of the properties of these bonds. In the first situation there is room for collapse because there can be rotation around each point, and such rotation produces the high compressibility which characterizes the structure of gases.

When we have a double bond the hinge is still a flexible system although it's very much more compact because the vertexes are somewhat closed up and not in the most remote condition. This no longer yields to compression, but it is nonetheless highly flexible, very much like a liquid. Then we get to the solid crystalline type of interaction that corresponds to the triple bond.

early experiments When in 1927 we considered buildings for human occupancy we knew that large assemblies such as apartment and office buildings had many components that were brought together - some from great distances at a very great expense. This is equally true today. These buildings are generally used near cities where many people live and work together. Their components have to be selected so that it is possible to transport them by land with severe dimensional limitations such as the size of bridgeways, width of streets, and capacity of freight cars. Because of these needles' eyes and staggering tonnages it was impossible then to think of transporting the buildings as whole units.

In 1927 while inaugurating my research I began to differentiate out compression and tension functions and to

solve each by independent components. I discovered that the structures could be made so light that it was worthwhile assembling them in jigs or cradles at industrial yards in the same manrier as with great ships. Due to their lightness they could be launched not into the water, but into the air which is available everywhere.

I saw that it was thus possible to bring building construction into logical participation with the air age technology. At that time I did not have available the necessary resources to make a full scale experiment, but by careful calculations I knew that a ten deck building could be made so light that it could be lifted by a large dirigible. In fact the dimensions of the Graf Zeppelin published in the same year, 1927, indicated that my ten deck building could be transported by it. With this in mind I went ahead to finish the calculations and to solve the problem of horizontal suspension of a ten deck building which was accomplished by means of a differentiated compression-tension vertebra structure that could be lifted horizontally. Once the building was lifted, the zeppelin would be maneuvered into position and anchored. Then it would drop a bomb to make a crater, and after lowering the structure vertically down into the crater and planting it like a tree, the zeppelin could go away. Even now this seems to be a very good and economical way to deliver a large building.

A Bathroom Unit In 1927 I designed a unitary bathroom entity in the form of a comprehensively-functioned, mono-surfaced stressed skin mechanism and incorporated it in the 4-D house - called two years later "The Dymaxion House."

Around 1930 I started experimenting with a full-scale industrial prototype of such a bathroom unit. The first one was made in Buffalo for the Pierce Foundation of American Radiator, Standard Sanitary Corporation.

This 5x7-ft. unit was designed with all fixtures built-in and included its own lights and plumbing manifold. It was also designed for installation in homes, back-to-hack with its companion piece, a unitary kitchen mechanism.

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Between the two there was incorporated a compact utility room which gave access to all plumbing of both units, and within this utility space there was installed a heating unit. This arrangement, taken from an origin in the 1927 Dymaxion House, has become popular in the intervening decades. The Buffalo unit was never shown to the public. In 1936 I developed a much-improved unit for Phelps Dodge Corporation which weighed less than a single bathtub of that time. We installed one of them in the Bureau of Standards hydraulic section, where it remained under testing for six years. They found that it satisfied all of their requirements and approximately those of every U.S. building code.

However, I have never felt that this project was really worth pursuing because there are other better ways of cleaning ourselves. The idea of a bath tub goes back to Roman times when they believed that to clean themselves they had to submerge in a pool. Today we have learned from industry that when we clean a watch or a gyroscope we do not have to dunk it in a bath tub.

There are ways of cleaning things besides those historic methods we apply to ourselves. For this reason I have tried for thirty years all kinds of experiments along new lines. In one of them we found that it was possible to get along without a piped-in water supply by using atomized water under air pressure. In this manner we can do a very successful personal cleaning job with a pint of water brought to our residence. Furthermore, with the development of atomic energy it is possible to obtain enough water from the atmosphere to take care of all of our cooking, heating, and cleaning devices so that they could all be placed together in a true mechanical package.

bombing of the great English cities. I developed a converted 20' diameter grain bin unit made out of corrugated steel strong enough to serve as temporary housing, and named it the "Dymaxion Deployment Unit".

The unit with various kinds of insulation could be partially buried in the earth. I then joined forces with the Butler Manufacturing Company of Kansas City and a group of young recruits in New York City, led by Walter Sanders, now of the University of Michigan faculty. We developed in some of them insulated walls with fiberglas batts in the form of pads . attached to the inside of the corrugated steel sheets. The floors were made of three cross-oriented layers of corrugated steel laid dry and topped with hard pressed insulated masonite boards that remained absolutely flat and had beautifully machined edges.

The interior space of the Deployment Units was flexibly divided with curtains operated by chain weights. A cylindrical bathroom unit was attached outside and approximately tangent with a connecting doorway. Inside the unit we installed a kerosene flame refrigerator and stove. The whole structure with screen openings, furniture, lanterns, and mechanics could be produced at the cost of $1,250.00. We installed some of these units for the Signal Corps and the Air Force, and they were very satisfactory in terms of efficiency and appearance.

The Butler Manufacturing Company went so far as to produce the class "A" hard tooling in order to tum out one thousand of these housing units daily at its Galesburg, Illinois, factory. But the British had to make the choice of steel for houses or armaments, and of course they chose armaments. There was a thought in Washington that a great number of them were going to be used for war housing when suddenly the President restricted the use of steel for such a project. Only a hundred or so were produced for radar shacks.

Deployment Unit In 1940 the British War Relief Organization asked me to develop an emergency housing unit for people who would be deprived of their homes due to the probable

Wichita House Subsequently I began further study of the internal and external thermal and aerodynamic actions inherent in

forms with compound curvature, and I began in 1943 experiments with a structure for fabrication in the aircraft plant of Beech Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas, under the general auspices of the Air Force, the War Manpower Commission, the Aircraft Labor Union of the AFL and the international association of machinists, who were mutually eager to discover whether it could be demonstrated that the airplane industries had the unique ability to produce a unique kind of a post-war house.

The experiment brought the research and development of a new structure for post-war production into the world of aircraft technology.

The 1000 sq. ft. floor structure of this 36-ft. diameter house was the beginning application of full living scale dimensioned discontinuous compression-continuous tension structuring in which a series of concentrically islanded rings in compression were held together by a web of tension cables weaving between inner and outer circles.

It was somewhat similar to, but also somewhat different than the principle of the wire wheel. The structure itself

was an enormous oriental lantern of horizontal compression rings suspended by steel rods and was hung from a central 22-ft. mast which went up as a set of stain路 less steel S-inch diam. tubes in a hexagonal cluster. The total weight of th;s 22-ft. mast was only 72 pounds and was designed not only to carry the house and the dead load, but also to carry 150 persons and the stresses calculated for a 150 m.p.h. wind. The weight of the container, when furnished with all parts of the structure, came out within a relatively few pounds of my original estimate of 1927 for the same diameter DymaX.ion House, i.e., it weighed 6,000 pounds. Also, all parts J.or that particular structure were designed and made in terms of nestability to one another. Thus it was not designed for air freight alone, but to go into trucks and freight cars as well. It was also designed so that each part did not exceed ten pounds and could be handled by one man with one hand while his other hand was free to fasten his piece into the general assembly work without waiting for assistance.

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Aluminum Pan Structure After the development of the Wichita structure I returned to the original concept of direct airline delivery.

It was now necessary to reduce the weight of structure to meet the increasingly preferred inventory of mechanics which I would like to carry along with it. So I looked back into the energetic geometry for the fundamental laws of something that I had learned in dealing with masts for I had found that I could make a mast's diameter grow outwardly until it reached and coincided with the inner surface of the dome itself. Thus the inner surface would be in compression and the outer surface in tension, and although they were in such proximity that the viewer had a tendency not to recognize the compression as separated from the tension, the tension would be comprehensive to the inwardly islanded discontinuous compression components while fulfilled the theory of universal comprehensive tension integrity. Thus I could produce a compound curvature barrel.

By employing a three way grid of great circles - Geodesics- I could work out the shortest possible lines of force, and every vertex would be a convex interaction of great circle chords emergent at maximum radius. The radial spokes of the convex hubs would be surrounded by tension rings of great circles, i.e., the shortest distance between points in space. Therefore no yielding within the limits of the material would occur. A force applied to a vertex would thrust outwardly through its legs which would engage a continuity of the tension circle itself and would not yield. By increasing the frequency of subdivision of my grid I gained shorter legs.

That is the Geodesic dome, and in it we have a number of very tiny radial arch domes. In each the outwardly thrusting legs are locally contained, and if forced to yield would locally poke in as a dent. Therefore each arch wheel operates in such short components as to be in very favorable slenderness ratio: for the strength of these structures is entirely in their surfaces, and the smaller the ratio the higher the proportion of surface

to volume. This is the key to Geodesic structures. The rule is to invest in many small local compressions and keep only tension as comprehensive.

The interior apexes of the tetrahedra that we have become familiar with through great circle studies would meet at the center of the spheres. Therefore triangular structural components at the surface of geodesics become truncated tetrahedral pans. The interior flanges converging toward a common focus theoretically at the center of the sphere would act as three-way key stones, and these key stone "corks" could not fall in on the surrounding system. If one stave of a barrel, which is a two way, or "parallel geodesic", is removed, the barrel will collapse. When one triangular cork of a Geodesic dome, or "three-way geodesic", is removed, it leaves a triangular hole. Such a triangular hole does not jeopardize the structure due to its being a complex of local tension integrities and finite balances, whereas a barrel is only one finite system; if one part goes, the whole fails. One or two of the aluminum pans in the structure could be removed without causing a collapse of the system.

A fourteen foot aluminum structure of this type was constructed at the Institute of Design in 1948 with an equator to equator tension strap to hold the pans in place. This strap acted in circumferential tension, thrusting the pans towards one another. By contracting the circumference, the whole system was made smaller. Thus the tension developed a ninety degree resultant focused toward the center. No compression unit could fall in on the others. Therefore we have a complex of many littlehex-pent wheels in compound curvature and a three-way strapping holding each one of the corks in toward the center.

qeodeslc structures In the fall of 1947 I assembled a four foot diameter three-way grid geodesic structure at my Forest Hills New York, apartment, and that winter and spring I made two more four footers. In the summer of 1948 the first generalized prototype model of a 50-ft. Geodesic structure was assembled at Black Mountain, North Carolina. In December 1949 a 14-ft. necklace Geodesic was assembled at 6 Kinzie St., Chicago, at the request of the Air Force and in February, 1950 it was installed in the Pentagon Building garden at Washington, D.C. In December of 1950 the prototype of a specialized geodesic structure 49 feet in diameter was built in Montreal.

I designed it to be an Arctic installation. The compon~nts of the structure were tubular aluminum struts weighing about one pound each. The structure was so light that we did not need a mast to lift it. Instead it was lifted locally in order to add more struts to the

bottom.

When the structure was completed we looked up at the blue sky through this thing and began to realize that something very pleasantly exciting was happening to us. We knew that it was light, knew that it was strong, but we did not know that it was going to do just that to a blue sky. Those are the very typical sensations we get when we tend to solve only the scientific side of the problem. The qualities of economy that are synergetically resultant in the end do something to us in the way of challenging our sensibility to new sensorial limits. Looking over against the birch trees, the slenderness ratios of these very high strength trees and of the Geodesic struts seemed to be very much akin.

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18

19

Ford Rotunda Dome At the time the Minnesota and the Oregon domes were going up in February and March ,1958 I was flying back and forth to Detroit working on the Ford Rotunda in Dearborn. I made the preliminary design of the dome with a crew from Yale and M. I. T. The testing of the Octet trussing for the Dome was done at the aeronautical engineering laboratory at the University of Michigan.

We put electric strain gauges on the truss members during static load testing of the central tetrahedron of the whole group. The Ford structure was designed using only six different lengths of members and all the holes were pre-punched to a tolerance of 1/1000 of an inch.

There were 72 different orientations of end holes. When the structure was erected the holes lined up perfectly for a very tight riveting job.

The first step was making up the triangles and then combining them into octahedrons. The octahedrons were fastened together with aluminum shear plates form路 ing the trusses. The aluminum spines of the primary structure were fastened together with four different types of hubcastings. Three spines put together made one large triangle. Inside this triangle we had ten octahedra

which were placed on a flat plane and then lifted up.

The octahedrons cluster together in an octahedra-tetrahedra system, a system that is self-centering and selfaligning in such a way that you can lift up the whole group without putting a single fastening in. No triangle will fall out. However they were firmly fastened together to reinforce the spines.

The second sequence of operations consisted of putting the gusset and shear plates into the Octet truss. The workmen installed them very rapidly. It was estimated that the total work on each truss would take two hours, but they were riveted together at the surprising rate of one every 20 minutes.

After the dome was designed we put up scaffolding which consisted of a 80 by 100 foot deck with a turntable on ball bearings and hydraulic lift so that the dome could be sent aloft and by doing so use my system of working from top to bottom. The Ford Dome workers never had to leave the deck to assemble the Dome. When it was finished they were able to climb safely on the feather-weight parts. As the structure went up, looking

at it from the court, it took on very interesting patterns.

We saw a larger and larger dome turning and rising away.

20

The dome was to be covered with polyester fiberglas that was supposed to be prefabricated in a shop, but the manufacturer could not get the material in time.

For this reason, all cementing work w~ done outdoors and proved to be unsatisfactory. When the dome was finished we put a vinyl skin over the whole thing and it seems to be doing all right.

It is significant that in this dome we obtained very reliable data on the structural performance of domes.

Our engineers installed strain gauges at all critical points so that as the dome went up we were able to take readings of the cantilevering performance. When the dome was finished and set down and the scaffolding was taken away, all the stresses reversed. The strain gauges were left in place to read the structure under wind and snow loads, and it is the first instrumentally readable operating dome structure. The individual struts of which the dome is made weigh about one third of a pound each. The dome was finished in 5 weeks, and as soon as the electricians put on the lights, we took some pictures, and it really looked exciting. The effect under the yellow lights was extraordinary.

Woods Hole Dome We spent four weeks designing and fabricating the parts of this dome at Cambridge, two weeks subassembling the diamonds at the Woods Hole site, and one week fitting them together to form the dome. Most of the time for assembly was spent in shifting the little jack mast that we used to hoist the individual diamonds aloft.

We will never do it that way again. We learned from then on to use a boom universally jointed at the center to carry up the members. The members were wood sections, 2" x 3" and I" x 8", all very light and delicate.

The structure was skinned in during the following spring and used as a restaurant seating 150 people. The completed dome was 54' in diameter and weighed 3~ tons.

The night pictures give us a sense of isolation of the

light weight structure from the surrounding environment. We tried several skins on this dome, one of them being a three mil Mylar. The structure was painted white so that the whole effect was very unified, ephemeral and pleasing.

When the hurricane came this. fall, heterogeneous missiles pierced nine of the forty-five diamonds with three mil Mylar skins. They burst with quite an explosive sound, but only the skin and not the structure was hurt. The balance of the Mylar skin remained undamaged, and the duPont Company tells us that they are very pleased at the test because the skin which was simply glued in place, did not tear off entirely. It dilated in and out like a lung, but did not pull away.

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Marine Corps Dome With vertical take-offs of helicopters and jets made possible, the Marine Corps began to realize that it was unnecessary to build landing strips with massive buildings for airports. They realized that the great advantage of spot landing anywhere was offset by the slowness of installing buildings to maintain the advanced bases. They came to me with their problem because they had heard that I was working on a lightweight flyable structure. I finally developed a lightweight magnesium dome which could be assem-

~

Minnesota Dome

bled in practically no time under more favorable weather conditions, and then lifted and flown to its site. The first hangar airlift was carried out with helicopters from Cherry Point, North Carolina. During the trip a speed of fifty knots per hour was developed in a fifty mile trip. The dome set down without a scratch right where they had picked it up. All this was done despite take-off and set-down in winds of up to thirtyfive miles per hour.

Cotton Mill In a cotton mill problem at North Carolina State we found ways in which a mill could be expanded by having the machinery placed radially instead of in the linear concept of production where all the machinery is put into one room. The enclosure would be mounted independently, suspended from the mast, with the floor structure cantilevered out from the same mast. To make the mill bigger, a larger dome would be erected over it and the smaller dome removed. The machinery would not be thought of as on solid floors, but placed on trusses. They would be supported like an engine on an airplane wing which is carried on the shortest possible

trussing from the main spar. The trusses could be extended outwardly to support new machinery. We could add another ring and by doing so it would grow just like a tree or any other kind of cluster growth. The machinery would be positioned at appropriate points so that we could feed the top machine and have gravitational flow from one to the next through the open spaces. The textile engineers at North Carolina State found nothing wrong with this idea and felt it was quite possible to design the machines so they could increase the flow in synchronous manner.

Planetarium In 1952 the architectural students at Cornell made a 20 foot Geodesic sphere with amazing speed.

..

...

The basic subcomponents were made up of diamond lattices with long ends. They were put together so that the entire assembly would have a three-way grid system.

The sphere was painted blue and covered with chicken mesh. Strips of bronze screen were carefully woven into the mesh and mathematically positioned as coordinates parallel to the world's polar coordinates in order to give a true picture of the earth. The sphere was installed on a roof in Itthaca, New York, and Ithaca was put at the top center in such a way that thru the transparent sphere we could see true relationships of points far away from the earth surface. The situation is similar to that of a small boat mounted rigidly on the davits of the Queen Mary. The small boat takes that same relative angles to the sea as the great ship does. The center of the little earth is only a few thousand miles from that of the big earth, compared to the nearest star's 92 million miles. Parallax sets in the sphere so that when we stand in the center we can see exactly the same things that we would see if we stood at the center of the earth and lookd out through more or less transparent continents. If we saw a star over Paris, France in our sphere, that would actually be over real Paris, France. In other words, we had a true planetarium in which we no longer saw sunsets or sunrises, but only the sun, always in zenith to some part of the miniature earth which turned in relation to the sun.

Lincoln Project The Lincoln Project at M.I.T. asked us whether we could design a rigid dome for them which would be invisible to radar microwaves. We developed one made of a stressed skin of polyester fibreglass triangular pans.

It was bolted together with nylon bolts produced by a high-speed injection molder.

Michigan Revolving Dome Two years ago we had a problem of controlling space dynamically by revolving a dome. The dome was to have trailing edges of plastic which would overlap and yet disappear when it was moving fast enough to intercept falling rain. If the system seemed favorable, we could have a central core with slits revolving with the dome. There would be a frequency modulated energy release source inside the slitted core, aimed at the exterior slats so that a flash of high radiation heat and light could be reflected from the slats back to the center.

We could reflect both heat and light radiation, and it would simply reconcentrate iteslÂŁ to us without loosing itself through the revolving skin. The revolving skin could have rotors as on a propellor. It could be adjustable so we could increase or decrease the pressure.

The principle had demonstrated advantages. It could be developed in the form of a coiled set of cables which relealied a weighted line with trailing film edges as it revolved. In this manner very large areas could be covered just by dynamic shaping.

Michigan Folding Dome The purpose of the experimental project conducted by Alpha Rho Chi in the Spring of 1954 was to produce a geodesic sphere which would collapse inwardly without actually disconnecting any of the members from their joints.

A sphere 20 feet in diameter was planned, which would collapse to ~ its diameter, or 5 feet.

The surface of the sphere was broken down into "fat" and "thin" diamonds-actually hyperbolic paraboloidsmade up of equal length struts. This same breakdown was used in the dome at Woods Hole, Mass., and in the discontinuous compression-continuous tension sphere at Princeton.

The struts were made of wood lath, fastened at the center with two bolts. Removal of one bolt caused the other to act as a hinge, thus collapsing the sphere.

The vertices, consisting of three, five, and six way joints, were cut from 2" x 6" lumber into triangles, pentagons, and hexagons, and the struts secured to their edges with lag screws, thus providing for rotation when the sphere was collapsed.

Paper Domes Last spring we studied and produced a polyester paperboard dome which was assembled without a mast. It was so light that it could be lifted by one person. This dome was made out of flat pieces of corrugated cardboard cut in triangles, coated with poyester and stapled together. This process simplified erection considerably.

A second dome was made for 1 the Marine Corps, and although at the beginning they were rather astonished by it, they ended up liking it very much. One of them is now being used in Quantico as a children's playhouse.

On July 1, 1954, the Container Corporation of America told me that they were willing to manufacture two paper domes of my design which I had been invited to do for exhibition at the Triennale of Milan. I deve~oped 路 . them so that they could fit into a small packing case.

The case had six types of components which could be folded to form diamond boxes with a six inch interior dead space. The diamonds' edges turbined around each other so that nine of them could make a bigger sized diamond. Triangles printed in the diamonds' faces could be cut open on three radial lines so that they made a triangular set of windows. The outer diamonds fold inwardly, and the inner ones fold outwardly making it possible to have windows wherever one needs them. In the Triennale domes every triangle window was open and translucent bathing cap skins fabricated at our Geodesic shops were very tightly stretched over them.

These domes were erected without a mast, starting at their equators and then building them up. When the domes were lighted from the inside they gave a jewelllike effect.

I am quite happy the two domes went out of the country and also that they were produced in relatively few days.

The process of manufacturing them included moving from one place to the other, and calculating their exact dimensions on calculating machines. Later it may be possible to produce such domes at the rate of 3000 a day, and with the new developments it will be possible to have a strong, waterproof structure which would be very light and very cheap.

The domes produced a critical effect in Italy. At the Triennale there were people from all over the world,

including representatives from the Iron Curtain countries. They were aware of this mute message that excited them and caused them to realize that somehow that kind of low cost package which produced a high standard of living and environment control, and living was coming out of American initiative and industry. It also indicated to them a new departure in the overall attitude toward Architecture. The Italians gave it that new name which I mentioned at the beginning: "Architecture out of the Laboratory".

31

clisc:ontinous compression. c:ontinous tension

In my early days of experimentation, I began to think of the differentiation between compression and tension. I began to perceive that there were certain qualities of tension and compression members that were not in common. Compression members were obviously limited in length relative to their cross sections by the well known concept of the slenderness ratio. These compression members worked well with loads applied to the terminals of the members as close as possible to the neutral axis. IÂŁ the member was too long it tended to yield into an arc and finally deform. Tension members, conversely, tended to straighten out under stresses. They could also receive the load at any point without respect to the neutral axis.

Then I began to discover something more about tension members. I found that there was no critical ratio of length to section. This means that more cohesive alloys can make possible longer and thinner members. With the stronger metals we are approaching the point where there will be infinitely long pieces of absolutely no cross section. Although this sounds like nonsense, actually it is not.

This is exactly the way the universe is held together. Tension members tend to arcs and greater systems, while compression members tend toward lesser arcs and smaller systems. The tension ever grows to be comprehensive to compression.

Tehsion approaches the infinite. Compression tends always towards finite masses.

The macrocosm and microcosm alike have millions of islands of compression floating in a great ocean of tension. The next question was, "Can man participate in this kind of technical advantage?" Probably the oriental lantern or the spirited fish net, and later the wire spoke wheel are man's first applications of the laws of discontinous compression and continous tension. The hub and rims are islands of compression, and the spokes are the comprehensive tension integrity. The first break-through model in my third-of-a-century exploration in discontinuous compression and continous tension structures was discovered by Kenneth Snelson.

Then from Energetic Geometry the generalized principles governing their sucsuccessful behaviors emerged, and I found tpat in a tetrahedron the six edges could be represented by tension while the central angle at each of the vertexes was a short compression assembly. The whole tetrahedron could be made of six tension and four compression members, arranged so that at every exterior vertex there would be three tension members and one compression member intersecting.

34

A stack of these tetrahedrons would make a mast by simply connecting the unit above to the unit below with tension members. This mast would provide all the strength of a solid one with a great reduction in mass.

This happens because a solid mast has two coexistent discontinous compression, continous tension systems, one positive, and one negative, working redundantly against each other. This causes oscillation, fatigue and final collapse.

Another example of the discontinous compression and continous tension principle is the icosa-vector equilibrium system. In this system there are twelve vertexes connected by six compression and twelve tension members. The compression members are entirely islanded from one another, but occur in three parallel sets of two each. If any pair of parallel compression members is pushed, one towards the other, the rest of the system reacts with an equal and symmetrical contraction. Once they are released, the entire system springs back to its original shape. By means of substitution it is possible to reach the same continuity we have in atomic structures.

Discontinous Spheres During a ten day session at Princeton in 1953, and with

the help of ten students to produce it, I developed a 90 strut discontinous sphere, 40 feet in diameter, weighing a little over 600 pounds. Later on at the. University of Minnesota, with the aid of 20 students, I developed and they produced a 40 foot diameter, 270 strut discontinous sphere using members of one length only. We found that the whole structure laced together yery well and that it took a short time to assemble all of its parts.

The hollow booms were nine feet long and were路 made of polyester fibreglas. The students made them on special molded forms. Each boom weighed 路 only six pounds and could carry one ton of load as a column.

The ends were saddled to receive the cables which had two positioned cleats to prevent the impinging compression ends from sliding. The sphere was completely discontinous, but very strong. It acted like a pneumatic sphere or a large basket-ball. Nuclear physicists say that these 270 struts of identical length form a discontinous compression, tension integrity which appears to satisfy the behavior characteristics of the theoretically ascertained behaviors of the atomic nucleus to such an extent as to trend toward the possible statement that this is the structural principle of the atomic nucleus.

CONCLUSION In our latest experiments we have discovered that the designers have been accredited to the highest priority today. The fact that we have access to the very best tools and the very best things is expressive of an anxiety to find all kinds of new things as it happens for example in the relations between the architect and the National Defense.

In the generation of the dome it was a very exc1tmg moment when the Armed Forces came to our technical aid and gave us priority of access to their best available knowledge of all resources in history. All it now implies is that we must set our initiative to explore the new with the tools that are available in this age of Science.

CHICAGO RE-PLANNED

35

Ludwig Hilberseimer

The city of today differs from all ot1es in the past because of the introduction of industry and mechanical means of transportation. Both of these innovations and the misunderstanding of their effects led to the abnormal growth and expansion of cities and as a consequence a chaos of traffic hazards, noise, air pollution, blight and slums has resulted, endangering human health and life.

If we think of the extraordinary advancement of technology we have to admit that it has had a very destructive influence on our cities. However technology is not to be blamed for this result. It is rather the city itself whose development did not keep pace with the development of technology. In fact the city is still backward. It was built for pedestrians as in ancient times and is therefore not adapted to the requirements of mechanized transportation. The shortcomings of our cities are shown up by the numerous surveys and statistics that have been made of traffic accidents, overcrowding, slums, housing, disease and crime.

Traffic and parking restrictions, smoke, abatement, slum clearance and other palliatives do not solve the problem we are facing. This problem is concerned with 路 the city as a whole including its environs, the re-

arrangement of the different parts which constitute the city and their proper relation to each other, and their integration.

I

The question arises whether it would be possible to reconstruct the city by using the existing buildings, streets and utilities in such a way as to achieve these aims and to bring such changes about which would make the city a well functioning organism. The studies presented demonstrate that this is possible. All that is needed is a comprehensive plan. Every change and everything built including highways could then be executed according to this plan. Gradually the city could be transformed and each step taken would be an accomplishment in itself and eventually lead to the desired end.

A method by which such a change in the city could be accomplished is demonstrated in the studies made for the north side of Chicago, Ill. 2. The area studied is from Madison Street to Lawrence Avenue and west of Western Avenue. To differentiate traffic arteries according to their function streets such as Madison Street, Fullerton Avenue, and Lawrence Avenue running eastwest and Central Park Avenue and Western Avenue

running north-south have been designated as part of a future highway system. In the first stage of redevelopment some streets are removed and others closed to reduce through traffic. In the next stage blocks have been removed to establish a park area containing schools and playgrounds closely related to the residential area.

36 In the following stage the new highway system is established. Along the highways working areas and parking space is located. Consequently the remaining through

streets other than the highways have been dosed and residential units established with additional park area separating the rows of units. Then the residential area is limited in size to make it possible to have all housing related to working area within walking distance which consequently reduces traffic. The parks between rows of units are then widened to form firebreaks. Illustration 3 shows the development of communities in a square shape surrounded by firebreaks which form natural recreational areas.

1

Two details, Ill. 4-5 demonstrate how such a transformation could be accomplished gradually. They also show how slums could be rebuilt. The area beyond the residential area becomes a park which stretches along Lake Michigan. In it are placed tall apartment buildings.

The plan of Chicago, Illustration 6, includes the area between Lake Michigan and west of the Fox River and could extend to the north as well as around the lake to the south. The transportation system grid has been developed with major north-south lines which connect the east-west lines. The major long distance railroads are located to serve the entire city without interfering with any particular area. A central station is located in the vicinity of Madison Street_and Central Park Avenue and other stations could be at the mail connecting points of the different lines. Also at the main intersections of the railroads, major yards and switching facilities are located in connection with warehouses.

The existing airports have been enlarged and are connected with the transportation system.

A central commercial area remains in its old location and can be extended towards the north and south. Air polluting industries are located east and west of the Fox River and along the Illinois River. The communities connected with them are contained within triangular areas because of local wind conditions. The heavy industry in South Chicago and Gary remains in its present location. The residential areas for the people working there are removed and placed so that they are free from air-borne pollution and are connected with the work area by mechanical means of transportation. The lake front is developed as a park in which freestanding tall apartments, educational institutions, hospitals, museums, libraries, and various other public buildings are located.

The city is divided into communities two miles square which are separated by firebreaks one mile wide. Each community provides for 70,000 people or 17,500 per .square mile which is approximately the same as the

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2

3

38

4

present average density in Chicago. In the center of each community is a working area running parallel to the highway with residential areas adjacent to it. Each com路 munity may present particular problems and its working area may vary in size. The working area includes industrial and commercial buildings and necessary parking space. The working, residential and recreational areas are so related that they are in walking distance of each other. Residential units are surrounded by parks in which schools and other community buildings are located. The schools are planned to serve as community

5

centers. The auditorium, library and hall could be used for community activities. All through traffic in the residential area is eliminated; however, each house can be reached by automobile. This permits children to go to school without encountering traffic hazards.

The communities are relatively independent and limited in area which makes it possible for the people to realize their common interests and have a community life of their own which the big city now discourages. However, since the communities are connected with each other

6

7

by an integrated transportation system they can still enjoy the advantages of the big city.

If Chicago would be reconstructed after our suggestion,

disorder would be replaced by order. No slums would grow any more, no wild suburbanization would take place, no traffic hazards occur, no unsolvable parking problems exist. All those changes we proposed could be made gradually and each step taken would be an accomplishment in itself. As much as possible would be preserved of the existing city. The resulting stabilization

would prevent deterioration and make real conservation possible. Chicago would become a city healthy and desirable. Through its parks and gardens maybe Chicago would become what it supposedly was: Urbs in Hortoa City in a Garden.

The plan of Chicago is an application of the planning principles developed in my books, "The New City" and "The New Regional Pattern", and forms a part of a new book, "The Nature of Cities" which is now in state of publication.

WITHIN AND

BETWEEN MEN

Thomas McClure

To young sculptors the points of issue at the beginning of the century seem academic in retrospect. The rebels are now masters. The fruits of the revolt are now part of history. Space-time, the void, the extension of subject matter, the subconscious, the cosmos, the microcosmos are as important to training of sculptors now as anatomy was at the beginning of the 20th Century.

The revitalization of sculpture was first achieved by introducing new concepts of form and subject. The ideas were generated by sculptors working in the atmosphere created by first the impressionist and then the cubist and surrealist painters. A second separate element was significant in the recreation of sculpture. This was the revolution in the materials of sculpture which was undertaken by the constructivists and has continued in force today. The impetus for this revolt must be credited to industrial and architectural precedents. Acceptance of new materials and new techniques is so widespread among young sculptors today that there is no longer an issue involved in their use.

It is important to realize that we as young sculptors did not participate in the actions taken against older

42

art forms and techniques. As a result we have no prejudices concerning traditional forms and materials of sculpture. We feel no sense of revenge since we have not yet been attacked. We are not compelled to shock; we are under no compulsion to be nihilistic. We draw freely on all heritage left us, and we refuse to make distinctions between modern and traditional art since it is all a part of the past to us. Consequently, we are free to explore with great freedom those aspects of reality (it is faceted on many sides) which our time now presents us.

My own part in this exploration has so far been confined to man as contrasted to nature. In the recent past and at present, ur;tder the impact of science, many sculptors have been primarily interested in nature, relegating man to a position of no special importance. However, my interests have led me to deal with man as a subject having very special importance. My method is to search for the truth by implying the universal from observation of the particular. The other method of searching for order itself operates in just the reverse.

My interest in man has very little to do with his appearance. I presents no ideals of beauty. I deal with certain relationships within and between men. These

relationships are as universal as man himself and so will be of universal interest. In exploring these relationships I present ideas in my sculpture which I, at least, cannot present in any other form.

The ideas I have tried to make permanent are ones of feeling. The sculptures are records of my imagining concerning those feelings which might be instilled and preserved as entities from the many feelings I and others have. These feelings may be described in terms of love, yearning, anguish, arrogance, or hate. However, one simple word cannot be used in any sense as the meaningword equivalent for a sculpture of mine. I have tried to present in the form of the sculpture the whole range, the shadings, the irrelevancies, the associations one feels in mind and body when an. idea is developed by the brain. The constant stream of ideas that pass through the brain is the original source for my sculptures. As has been demonstrated by science and expressed in literature Goyce) , ideas such as these are vague, unformed, seemingly random, but often curiously related in the pattern of their appearance. When one idea attaches to itself enough related material (like a sun) it becomes clear and coherent. At this point the idea can be set down in some form and preserved. Others then see this form as a symbol of that idea.

In my case these ideas of feeling are concerned with a state of being. They are not concerned with events, or persons or animals, or motion, or space, or time. The ideas grow of their own accord until I can inwardly recognize them. At this point any particular idea must be developed by means of drawing on paper or working in three dimensions. I rely on what knowledge I have about my (and others) reaction to form (thin and extended or full and undulating) . I consider the quality of texture (smooth and silky, rough and pitted, sharp and jagged) •. I observe position (balance, counterbalance) and weight (delicate or massive). The particular feeling I wish to express determines the materials, the sizes, the shapes, the textures that will be used in the ICUlpture. And I employ any means to heighten and intensify that feeling. I work as directly as I can, welding, carving, and casting by my own hand. The formal or atructural pattern emerges more as a result of past discipline and previous experience, than as conscious effort to order my work.

The forms or positions or textures that I may use to reveal this feeling may originate in an observed event, a recollection of some sensory response, a dream, another art form, or indeed from anything I may have experienced in reality or imagination (if there is a difference).

The form or parts of it may resemble plants, machines, armor, objects from other epochs, or symbols (cross, sword, heart) recognizable to many or few. And I may vary a form, giving it more than one meaning or leaving it purposely ambiguous. The sculpture may be quite human in form or quite unlike a human form. It is frequently animal, and sometimes it is both human and animal. The feeling which is the subject, however, is always human in origin.

As each sculpture becomes a symbol for the idea or feeling which I have developed, it becomes, I suppose, a personal social comment. Events occurring in my lifetime have shaped my viewpoint. I have never had to "take" a particular point of view and shape my work to conform to it for the simple reason that I have always "had" a point of view. As a consequence I have made no effort to look for hope because there is so much despair, nor have I exclusively concerned myself with destruction because it is so typical in our time. I have not tried to amuse, to divert, to offer directions which I think others ought to follow. I simply have attempted to delineate many of the feelings that exist in man.

I I

,, I

I

I /I/ J ,! •

,.

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Dr4U1ing in ink - Preliminary sketch for Procession.

Procession - The e;cperience of a dream, the dissolution of the figure, a sense of time, the image of a parade, a banner, a face, the 路 question of destination.

Giraffe - The fantasy of an animal. His nature and character expressed by thinness and trans路 parency. Instead of volume, pattern. Brightly colored enamel on steel and golden metal, an exotic creature.

Giraffe, detail- The IUiimal 11$ camouflage. The remiUints of this animal in a child'• memory of his excursion in an unfamiliar world, the zoo. Color, texture, pattern, clear and diffuse remain, their source, the object, forgotten.

Agony of a Martyr - Recollections from experiences of tension. Images of the Puritan stocluuk, the Spanish rack, the delivery table, the tautness of drawn neroes and vibrant notes of discord.

A machine for exquisite torture.

Mother and Child- A. sense of the precise balance of the mother-child relationship. The delicacy of play, the helplessness of 1uspension, the invitation to touch.

Blind Man - The figure as a prototype. The flesh eroded, the structure laid bare as the roclu of the earth are revealed during periods of upheaval. Bonds and figure merge.

Detail, Blind Man - The power of texture and color to intensity emotion, to dissolve form.

The expression of the whole idea in its separate parts.

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April 4, 1955 Today Gordon died. The shock hasn't worn off yet. I still can't believe it. What an intense soul he was. Kind, sensitive. The day of 24 hours was not made for him. He began when the feeling welled within him-literally exploded. He stopped when he had expressed what lay within him. He strove for perfection knowing it to be human to be imperfect. But he tried. He tried with all the energy and knowledge of which he was capable.

He had much to offer. He wished to become a teacher and he was learning the imperfection of human beings. He was an artist and constantly strove to express what his spirit commanded. He was a student of architecture and summoned his most critical faculties to determine the extent of his understanding. He never assumed knowledge. Only that which was true and pure sufficed.

What he believed he believed with his entire heart. That this belief could change upon application of reason and perception was his finest attribute. True sincerity is a great demand. An almost inhuman one. With him this was beginning to be consciously understood.

He was young. He was beginning to understand himself and his feelings. To one as intense as he was that is an extremely difficult procedure. He knew the expression of paint and can路 vas - he was now learning the effectiveness of words. Our spirit is not on.e of reason. Reason merely attempts an after explanation. It has its own being. Intellect must use the spirit as its driving force. It is not enough in itself. Gordon was beginning to consciously understand his motivation. He was young but he has accomplished much. He needed a long life to express himself but even then the final expression would only yet be a beginning.

As it is.

He is now 24 hours dead. The first second is timeless.

GORDON EUKER

1934 - 55

1

An approach to the design of a Nursery School

Excerpts from a cartoon 1trip.

54

Summer shelter for two.

Crucifixion

Drawing

PATRON SUBSCRIBERS

SPECIAL CONTRIBUTORS

CHARLES ATWOOD JOSEPH F. ALBANO J.D.ANNAND FRED E. ARNOLD C. L T. BABLER FRED A. BRINKMAN RALPH R. CALDER CHARLES E. COLEMAN FRANCESCO DELLA SALA EDWARD HAMMARSKJOLD JOSEPH HUDNUT IKTINOS OF ALPHA RHO CHI. ELWOOD IRISH KARL KRAUSS AARRE K. LAHTI CHET LAMORE EDWARD V. OLENCKI CHARLES PEARMAN WALTER B. SANDERS CHARLES M. SMITH EBERLE M. SMITH MALCOLM R. STIRTON Grosse JONATHAN A. TAYLOR EDWARD X. TUTTLE THOMAS McCLURE WELLS I. BENNETT WALTER V. MARSHALL WALTER J. GORES

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ARCH. 65, CLASS OF '57 STUDENT BRANCH, DETROIT CHAPTER A. I. A.

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Carolyn McKechnie ] ose F. Teran

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Robert T. Stevens

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Kenneth H. Kaji

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Dale A. Suomela Robert I. Wine Nielsen K. Dalley John M. Arms Francis Bartlett Gunnar Gruzdins Elton S. Robinson Stanley Aizinas

Francesco della Sala

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