Reinforced concrete construction and the technical design of urban buildings in Belle Époque France and Belgium (1892-1914)

The principal outcome of this doctoral thesis is a historical mechanism which describes a flow process for technical design and its application to construction, as well as associated attributes of the key specialist professionals who were involved in the use of a novel materials-system more than a century ago. The mechanism is designed to help describe the influence of innovative reinforced concrete and cement systems on the design and construction of non-monumental, urban buildings during the final decades of the Belle Époque, in and near the major francophone cities of Paris, Lille and Brussels. The change in construction technology is interpreted as the second stage of a metallic building design revolution that took place between 1892 and 1914, derived from the increased use of iron and then steel in nineteenth-century urban construction in France, particularly its capital city. The first stage of this metallic building design revolution had culminated in the monumental 'temporary' works of the steel and glass Galerie des Machines built for the triumphant 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris . Then, in the early 1890s, a transition took place into the second stage of the revolution. The French inventor François Hennebique (1842-1921) was an adopted Belgian whose béton armé system of reinforced concrete was technically codified between 1892 and 1897 in a series of more sophisticated industrial patents - this was in parallel with other innovative approaches that together contributed to the creation of early industrial standards for the novel materials-system. Belle Époque architects, engineers and contractors became receptive to the use of new reinforced concrete and cement systems in their works, converting building commissioner needs into key structural requirements for the design and construction of non-monumental, urban buildings. The novel materials-system would be used to construct fire-resistant and structurally efficient manufacturing premises, warehouses, banks and apartment blocks. Many of these buildings allowed more natural daylight to penetrate inside by a more widespread and effective use of glazing, through large windows, skylights and, in one case, a cupola. A French form of the North American 'daylight factory' conventionally associated with Henry Ford's massive car plant near Detroit could be distinguished. A number of buildings also displayed new forms of highly decorative ceramic cladding on their street facades, both to protect and to hide the less aesthetically pleasing concrete structure behind them. Residential housing became cleaner and more affordable, moving away from the crowded, disease-ridden city slums of old. During the second stage of the metallic building design revolution, architects and engineers developed their confidence and abilities in envisioning the novel materials-system through the technical design aspects of their work. Together with contractors, they acquired the specialist skills needed to apply this to building projects, ensuring that the completed structures reflected the original design intentions, in an acceptable balance between technology and aesthetics. Specialist contractors managed the risks associated with using an innovative technical approach to urban construction. The creative design freedoms expressed in the Art Nouveau genre of the eclectic approach that dominated Belle Époque architecture came to an end with the outbreak of the First World War. Once peace had been reinstated after the extensive human and material devastation experienced in Northern France and Belgium, the postwar period saw an increasing dominance of a plainer industrial approach to urban architecture; this was evangelised by the Swiss architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier (1887-1965), the German architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969), and their International Modernist peers around the globe.