Throughout the XX century until now, the relationship between architecture and construction has had a significant invariant in \u201cdry construction\u201d1, characterised by at least three paradigms that have gradually changed the way of producing and constructing, but even before that, the way of conceiving and designing buildings.
\nThese paradigms form the taxonomical terms of the phylogeny of the architecture\/construction synthesis, from the first experiments by the great Masters until current day, guided by coercive legislation regarding environmental respect and energy saving.
\nThe first paradigm of dry construction is found in the work of Jean Prouv\u00e92 , and involves the (de)composition\/industrialised construction of an architectural structure.
\nBefore the Second World War and immediately after (between the 1930s until the 1950s) Prouv\u00e8 combined his research into steel and aluminium
\nprefabrication and low cost housing, inventing a sort of modular composition founded on \u201cconstructive ideas\u201d3 , to create light structural metal buildings with prefabricated components, then assembled dry, like a large Meccano, on site. A representation of the techniques, of the materials and the production and assembly methods (pressure bending machines, welders, bolted and slotted connections, nodes and joints) between the building components, which totally changed the design method creating new relations between the project and building (between architect and builder), and between the building product (component) and industry.
\nResearch, technological transfer, architectural expression are all blended in an ethical concept of the form, applied to mass housing, where terms like mass production (each building is designed as a repeatable prototype), flexibility in use, transformability (without demolition), can be dismantled \/ reversed, that is associated to architecture for the first time.
\nThe second paradigm in dry construction is the development of the assembly as a composition and component of the design item.
\nThis appeared between the 1970s and 1980s with the architects Foster, Rogers, Grimshaw and Piano, and mainly focused on \u201csingular items\u201d4 , also
\nthanks to the exceptional collaboration with engineers like Peter Rice 5 . Architecture of glass and steel, founded on an analytical conception of the form, where the static structure is seemingly totally everted. An important feature is the visual and functional division of the parts, which is expressed and communicated: the primary, secondary and tertiary structure: the supporting and the supported elements, the tense and the compressed elements; the joint6 ; all the building components play a formal role.<\/p>\n
A paradigm that gradually began making use of the computer, not only to design and generate the projects, but to define new relationships between
\narchitectural form and its production7 (mass customisation, CNC, f2f, etc.) and between architectural form and the integrated calculation of its performance (structural, energy, technical lighting, etc.).
\nIn today\u2019s world, awareness of energy saving and environmental respect, which are obligatory further to the new European technical legislation (Directive 2010\/31\/UE for almost zero energy buildings), together with the global economic crisis, have led to a new paradigm for dry construction, given by inverting the static and construction components (figures), together with an architectural epiphany about energy production means.
\nThe new project (not only for \u201csingular items\u201d) requires \u201cpassive\u201d or \u201calmost zero energy\u201d constructions: forms that the S\/C system (structure\/cladding)
\nresolves by using articulated building equipment in the structure, external and internal shells; shells which in turn are formed of \u201clayers\u201d of materials,
\nmechanically assembled (dry), of natural or synthetic origin, with increasingly higher performances and relatively low costs, that are currently available on the market and which can be totally articulated according to the performance features required from the building. This new paradigm uses steel and wood owing to their specific qualities (recyclable, reversible, etc.), awarded by the environmental sustainment protocols (e.g. the ITACA Protocol).<\/p>\n
To conclude. Between Myth and (new) Need, architects have to promote a cultural and technical line, which is able to transform the overwhelming number of limitations, imposed by current needs, into a resource for new architecture. Lead even the ordinary buildings to a contemporary widespread representation, a model for an epochal passage: adopting an architectural mediocritas that takes the production and energy saving devices as \u201cobjects\u201d of figurative reaction (solar energy units, photovoltaic units, solar chimneys, etc.) or the solar controlling devices (brise – soleil, etc.), even when they appear as readymade objects in the manufacturers\u2019 catalogues. The awareness of the building performances (the S\/V compactness indicator, the transmittance, acoustic conductivity, etc.) and even of the most outer layers, those that interact (energetically and figuratively) with the surrounding environment, should be guided back into the project as one of the variables that architecture has to give per forma.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Diego De Nardi<\/p>\n
[Acciaio Arte Architettura 57\/2014]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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