The most influential engineered wood products of the 20th cen-tury may be classified
quite simply as wood composites—recombinations of wood and wood fibers that
overcome many of wood’s natural limitations and extend its usefulness. Surpris-ingly,
however, in this century of rapid scientific progress, most of the notable new lumber
products have been rather modest steps forward—chemical improvements on essentially
mechani-cal 19th-century inventions.
Plywood, the trade name adopted by the Veneers Manufac-turers Association in 1919,
is a perfect example of a product that became truly viable only in the 20th century. The
industrial process of cutting thin layers of wood veneer by either peeling logs or slicing
them, along with the concept of adhering layers of veneer together, was first introduced
in France around 1830. Furniture makers such as Thomas Sheraton and the Steinway
company began using laminated wood veneers in the mid-19th century, and in 1884 a
factory in Reval, Estonia, began manufac-turing three-ply birch seats for bentwood
chairs. By 1870, a practical version of the rotary veneer lathe had been developed in the
United States. However, the development of a structural wood veneer panel that could be
used in everything from air-plane fuselages to wall sheathing depended on the discovery
of reliable, waterproof adhesives. That did not take place until after 1933, when German
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 768
companies began manufacturing a new type of synthetic, heat-activated resin glue.
Previous to the 1930s, plywood had been manufactured with a variety of other types of
adhesives, such as blood albumin glue, casein glue (made from milk curd), and soybean
glue, but its application was rather limited by its adhesives’ vulnerability to moisture and
light. Once these limitations were removed, plywood quickly replaced dimensional
lumber as the most efficient material for flooring, wall sheathing, roofing, and concrete
forms.
Like plywood, the origins of glue-laminated timber lie in the 19th century. First used
in 1893 in Basel, Switzerland, glu-lam timbers are composed of many small, dry boards,
laminated together with glue and/or metal fasteners, to form extremely deep, long, stable
timbers. At first, glu-lam timbers could be used only indoors, where they would not be
exposed to harmful moisture or radiation. After the 1930s, however, new adhesives made
it possible to use glu-lam timbers practically anywhere. Glu-lam timbers have several
advantages over long single timbers cut from old-growth logs. First, they can be made
from much smaller logs grown in rotation. Second, because they are made from smaller
selected planks, their composition is highly predict-able. Third, they can be manufactured
to practically any size or shape. Glu-lam timbers have many architectural applications,
but their one weakness is their reliance on the strength and longevity of the adhesive.
Numerous new products have been developed on the plywood and glu-lam themes
since the 1970s. One is a composite wood joist manufactured in an I-beam cross section.
The web-bing is usually made from long sheets of plywood or oriented strand board, and
the flanges are made either from a parallellaminated plywood product called micro-lam
or from a material called Para-lam. The joists are much stronger and more stable than
traditional wood joists and are perfectly uniform. Naturally, they rely completely on the
strength of their glue bonds. Paralam is a type of glu-lam timber, but rather than being
made up of 2-by lumber, it is made of thousands of long, thin strips of wood
approximately one-eighth by one-half inch in cross section and up to a few feet in length.
In the manufacture of a Para-lam timber, a long bundle of spaghetti-like strands is coated
in glue, compressed as it is squeezed through gigantic rollers, dried by microwave, and
chopped off to convenient lengths. It can be manufactured to virtually any length or cross
section. In the United States, Para-lam is superseding traditional glu-lam beams in many
applications.
Not all engineered lumber requires chemical adhesives for its manufacture. One
product in particular, which was an essential part of America’s war arsenal during World
War II, was a com-pressed particle or fiber panel, often called Masonite or Hardbord. It
was manufactured throughout the 20th century out of many types of agricultural and
lumber waste and by many differ-ent processes. Ordinarily, sawdust or wood chips were
finely ground, boiled into a slurry, and then strained, pressed, and dried into hard sheets.
Fiberboard relied on the natural bonds between the wood fibers themselves for its
strength. Because it could be manufactured in practically limitless quantities out of
extremely low cost materials, it became popular for housing projects of all types both
before and after World War II. Partly for this reason, fiberboard has come to be
synonymous with temporary, cheap construction. Its extremely limited insulating
properties have also been far exceeded by fiberglass and rigidfoam insulation, and as an
interior finish it has been superseded in both cost and simplicity by gypsum wallboard.
Entries A–F 769
Oriented strand board (OSB) is a recent variation on the fiberboard-panel theme and
has been on the market since the 1980s. In OSB, small, flat chips of softwood
approximately one to four inches in size are gouged out of waste scraps from saw-mills
and low-quality logs. The chips are mixed into a gooey resin and then are laid and
pressed flat in a hard matrix of resin and wood chips. Sheets of OSB are ordinarily cut to
four- by eight-foot panels and come in a variety of thicknesses. Particle-board is
manufactured in a very similar way out of sawdust. Both of these products are finding
wider use. Oriented strand board is an extremely inexpensive sheathing material,
although it is weaker and more moisture sensitive than plywood, and painted
particleboard takes an extremely hard, smooth finish for interior detailing and exterior
siding.
The engineered lumber products described here have been designed to decrease the
cost of housing and the use of scarce timber resources while increasing the reliability of
structural designs and the palette of architectural options. Unfortunately, many
“innovative” products, such as finger-jointed studs, cobble together pieces of poor-quality
lumber to create flimsy replacements for an already cheap existing product. Many
engineered wood products also require careful handling and can maximize their strength
and efficiency only if they are installed perfectly. Because the engineered timbers of the
20th century are composites designed to combine small, cheap, plentiful strips, scraps,
and planks into larger units, nearly all of them also rely on chemical adhesives, which can
release toxic gases and deteriorate under certain conditions. Despite these drawbacks,
there is no doubt that engineered lumber is the rational, ingenious, and optimal solution to
many of the environmental, economic, and political dilemmas that Western nations faced
throughout the 20th century and will certainly face in the 21st.
ENERGY-EFFICIENT DESIGN
In the popular imagination, energy-efficient design has been understood to be a byproduct
of the oil embargo initiated by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) on 19 October 1973. On that date, Western consumers of fossil fuels
became painfully aware of the energy-intensive nature of their built environment and
their fragile dependence on foreign energy sources. The practice of energy-efficient
design gained public recognition only after the related conditions of overconsumption
and scarcity became so dramatically apparent. The political drama of the mid-1970s,
however, only documents the prior suppression of long-emergent scientific doctrines.
The German physical chemist Rudolf Clausius (1822–88) was one of the first to
articulate the second law of thermodynam-ics, which he expressed in 1865 as the concept
of ent ropy. On the basis of his observation of thermal transfer, Clausius argued that one could
not finish any real physical process with the same amount of energy as that with which
one started. Once energy is expended, changing it from a usable form to an unusable one,
it cannot be replaced. In any closed system—such as our solar system—entropy measures
the amount of energy not available to do work. By the 1920s, this modern understanding
of basic physics prompted natural scientists to develop the doctrines of energy economics . These doctrines
express various ethical and economic imperatives to expend energy as efficiently as
possible, thus delaying the inevitable chaos associated with advanced states of entropy.
Despite the proliferation of neo-Malthusian predictions in the scientific community,
energy economics found little support among architects or in the realm of public policy
until the effects of World War II were realized by energy-poor nations such as Germany.
In the postwar era, concerns for the national security of energy-importing nations
stimulated numerous government-sponsored research programs intent on rationalizing
energy production and consumption. These pragmatic proposals for rationalization were
bolstered by the ideological proposals of the political Left. Marxists in general sought to
transform architectural production into a science capable of completing the modern
project.
In the United States during the 1950s, Victor (1910–) and Aladar (1910–) Olgyay
published research that reintroduced the concerns of biology, meteorology, and
engineering into architecture. This research culminated in the appearance in 1963 of the
influential Des ign with Climate: A Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism. In 1968, the founding of EDRA (the Environmental Design Research
Association) documented the academic acceptance of the Olgyays’s scientific approach
to architectural design. This approach is clearly expressed by Buckminster Fuller’s
(1895–) Dymaxion Principle, which promotes maximum gain for minimum energy input.
In minds less energetic than Fuller’s, however, the principles of energy-efficient design
produced many projects distinguished only by low rates of energy consumption. The
relentlessly quantitative nature of the scientific approach to architecture eventually came
into conflict not only with traditional formalists but also with those intent on conserving
nature in other than instrumental terms.
The term ecology was first used by the German zoologist Ernst Haekel (1834–1919) in his Generelle Morphologie
of 1866. Although Haekel did not fully develop the scientific concept as it is understood
today, he did help popularize the notion that biological entities cannot be understood
outside their natural environment. He argued from a philosophically monist position that
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 766
is opposed to the Cartesian dualist assumptions of Western science. It is not surprising,
then, that the latter-day supporters of ecology, awakened by the 1962 publication of
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, would reject a purely quantitative approach to the conservation of
nature. In their holistic view, the reductive assumptions of modern science are understood
to be the source of resource depletion and environmental degradation—not their cure.
Many historians argue that ecologism emerged as a somewhat romantic idea at the beginning of
the 20th century in Germany, England, and North America. Ecologism, however, did not
mature as a political idea until it merged with the concept of energy economics in the era
of the OPEC-induced energy crisis and the Vietnam War (1961–75). In that politically
divisive climate, the proponents of ecologism and those of economic development
clashed with increasing intensity. A significant contribution to the tentative resolution of
that conflict has been the concept of sus tainability, first used in “World Conservation Strategy,” a
1980 publication by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources (IUCN). In that document, the seeming opposition of nature conservation and
economic development is subsumed in the synthesis of sus tainable development, meaning “those paths of
social, economic, and political progress that meet the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” More developed
definitions, such as that proposed by the planner Scott Campbell in 1996, understand the
concept of sustainability to be a set of related but competing discourses in which the
economic interests evident in the socially constructed concept of energy efficiency are
balanced with the interests of environmental protection and social equity.
In Europe, the scientific—as opposed to the romantic—interpretation of sustainability
has been appropriated by the practitioners of the high-tech aesthetic, such as Sir Norman
Foster (1935–), Nicholas Grimshaw (1939–), Thomas Herzog (1941–), Renzo Piano
(1937–), and the engineering firm of Ove Arup. In the 1970s, these designers were
concerned principally with the expressive potential of structure. At the end of the century,
however, their interests turned equally to the energy engineering problems inherent in the
environmental control of large buildings. Foster’s Commerzbank project (1994) in
Frankfurt, Grimshaw’s British Pavilion (1992) at the Seville World Fair, Thomas
Herzog’s exhibition hall (1995) for the Deutsche Messe in Hanover, and Piano’s office
building (1998) for Daimler-Benz at Potsdammerplatz in Berlin are significant works that
demonstrate the formal incorporation of energy engineering into architecture.
In North America, the concepts of energy efficiency and sustainability have been
associated more with the environmental impact of material selection and the reduction of
embodied energy in buildings than with expressive technology. The Croxton
Collaborative’s design for adaptive reuse of the National Audubon Society office
building (1992) in New York; the Advanced Green Builder Home (1997) by the Center
for Maximum Potential Building Systems of Austin, Texas; and William McDonough’s
proposal for the Environmental Studies Center (1999) at Oberlin College are equally
significant examples of how the concept of energy efficiency has evolved into a more
complex approach to the conservation of both natural and social systems.
In its most rigid form, energy-efficient design has been characterized as an attempt to
reconstitute the practice of architecture as a purely instrumental applied science. In its
most expansive form, however, energy-efficient design challenges society to understand
buildings not as static objects of aesthetic value but rather as dynamic entities that
participate in a complex system of natural energy flows and political consequences.
of the oil embargo initiated by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) on 19 October 1973. On that date, Western consumers of fossil fuels
became painfully aware of the energy-intensive nature of their built environment and
their fragile dependence on foreign energy sources. The practice of energy-efficient
design gained public recognition only after the related conditions of overconsumption
and scarcity became so dramatically apparent. The political drama of the mid-1970s,
however, only documents the prior suppression of long-emergent scientific doctrines.
The German physical chemist Rudolf Clausius (1822–88) was one of the first to
articulate the second law of thermodynam-ics, which he expressed in 1865 as the concept
of ent ropy. On the basis of his observation of thermal transfer, Clausius argued that one could
not finish any real physical process with the same amount of energy as that with which
one started. Once energy is expended, changing it from a usable form to an unusable one,
it cannot be replaced. In any closed system—such as our solar system—entropy measures
the amount of energy not available to do work. By the 1920s, this modern understanding
of basic physics prompted natural scientists to develop the doctrines of energy economics . These doctrines
express various ethical and economic imperatives to expend energy as efficiently as
possible, thus delaying the inevitable chaos associated with advanced states of entropy.
Despite the proliferation of neo-Malthusian predictions in the scientific community,
energy economics found little support among architects or in the realm of public policy
until the effects of World War II were realized by energy-poor nations such as Germany.
In the postwar era, concerns for the national security of energy-importing nations
stimulated numerous government-sponsored research programs intent on rationalizing
energy production and consumption. These pragmatic proposals for rationalization were
bolstered by the ideological proposals of the political Left. Marxists in general sought to
transform architectural production into a science capable of completing the modern
project.
In the United States during the 1950s, Victor (1910–) and Aladar (1910–) Olgyay
published research that reintroduced the concerns of biology, meteorology, and
engineering into architecture. This research culminated in the appearance in 1963 of the
influential Des ign with Climate: A Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism. In 1968, the founding of EDRA (the Environmental Design Research
Association) documented the academic acceptance of the Olgyays’s scientific approach
to architectural design. This approach is clearly expressed by Buckminster Fuller’s
(1895–) Dymaxion Principle, which promotes maximum gain for minimum energy input.
In minds less energetic than Fuller’s, however, the principles of energy-efficient design
produced many projects distinguished only by low rates of energy consumption. The
relentlessly quantitative nature of the scientific approach to architecture eventually came
into conflict not only with traditional formalists but also with those intent on conserving
nature in other than instrumental terms.
The term ecology was first used by the German zoologist Ernst Haekel (1834–1919) in his Generelle Morphologie
of 1866. Although Haekel did not fully develop the scientific concept as it is understood
today, he did help popularize the notion that biological entities cannot be understood
outside their natural environment. He argued from a philosophically monist position that
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 766
is opposed to the Cartesian dualist assumptions of Western science. It is not surprising,
then, that the latter-day supporters of ecology, awakened by the 1962 publication of
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, would reject a purely quantitative approach to the conservation of
nature. In their holistic view, the reductive assumptions of modern science are understood
to be the source of resource depletion and environmental degradation—not their cure.
Many historians argue that ecologism emerged as a somewhat romantic idea at the beginning of
the 20th century in Germany, England, and North America. Ecologism, however, did not
mature as a political idea until it merged with the concept of energy economics in the era
of the OPEC-induced energy crisis and the Vietnam War (1961–75). In that politically
divisive climate, the proponents of ecologism and those of economic development
clashed with increasing intensity. A significant contribution to the tentative resolution of
that conflict has been the concept of sus tainability, first used in “World Conservation Strategy,” a
1980 publication by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources (IUCN). In that document, the seeming opposition of nature conservation and
economic development is subsumed in the synthesis of sus tainable development, meaning “those paths of
social, economic, and political progress that meet the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” More developed
definitions, such as that proposed by the planner Scott Campbell in 1996, understand the
concept of sustainability to be a set of related but competing discourses in which the
economic interests evident in the socially constructed concept of energy efficiency are
balanced with the interests of environmental protection and social equity.
In Europe, the scientific—as opposed to the romantic—interpretation of sustainability
has been appropriated by the practitioners of the high-tech aesthetic, such as Sir Norman
Foster (1935–), Nicholas Grimshaw (1939–), Thomas Herzog (1941–), Renzo Piano
(1937–), and the engineering firm of Ove Arup. In the 1970s, these designers were
concerned principally with the expressive potential of structure. At the end of the century,
however, their interests turned equally to the energy engineering problems inherent in the
environmental control of large buildings. Foster’s Commerzbank project (1994) in
Frankfurt, Grimshaw’s British Pavilion (1992) at the Seville World Fair, Thomas
Herzog’s exhibition hall (1995) for the Deutsche Messe in Hanover, and Piano’s office
building (1998) for Daimler-Benz at Potsdammerplatz in Berlin are significant works that
demonstrate the formal incorporation of energy engineering into architecture.
In North America, the concepts of energy efficiency and sustainability have been
associated more with the environmental impact of material selection and the reduction of
embodied energy in buildings than with expressive technology. The Croxton
Collaborative’s design for adaptive reuse of the National Audubon Society office
building (1992) in New York; the Advanced Green Builder Home (1997) by the Center
for Maximum Potential Building Systems of Austin, Texas; and William McDonough’s
proposal for the Environmental Studies Center (1999) at Oberlin College are equally
significant examples of how the concept of energy efficiency has evolved into a more
complex approach to the conservation of both natural and social systems.
In its most rigid form, energy-efficient design has been characterized as an attempt to
reconstitute the practice of architecture as a purely instrumental applied science. In its
most expansive form, however, energy-efficient design challenges society to understand
buildings not as static objects of aesthetic value but rather as dynamic entities that
participate in a complex system of natural energy flows and political consequences.
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