architectureb2

Additions that are not in strict style can be an asset to a building. In the left picture, two arched windows relieve the effect of numerous rectangular ones. In the right hand picture, one circle and two arches over windows lift an otherwise rather large blank area. The directional lighting also shows up the surface treatment.

Here the arches are in the majority, and a few rectangles are included at the top, in the servants' quarters.

Just because they look like arches, it doesn't mean that they are. These are not connected to the buildings on either side, so they must be beams. Waterloo Bridge in London has curved spans, but they are haunched reinforced concrete beams, not arches, giving good headroom while transmitting the forces through the bridge.

Are these arches or not? When something looks as attractive as this, it doesn't really matter what it is called, or what it is.

The arch in the first picture is very flat, but suddenly, near the ends, takes a sharp downward curve. Do you think that the funicular really does that? Does this matter? Is this a satisfactory shape? How many people would care about it? Would the arch have been better if it had simply met the walls in sharp angles? Compare the arch in the first picture with the arches in the second picture. What do you think? The third picture has been edited to remove the sharp curves.

Here is a much more gentle variation in curvature.

Arches in Houses and Other Small Buildings

Arches in Toscana

With buildings like these, and the simple and beautiful landscapes, no wonder that people go to Toscana, and often forsake all other holiday areas once they have been.

The Musée d'Orsay in Paris

These pictures above are views of the Musée d'Orsay, an elegant building which was once a railway station. The spaces have been turned very creatively into display areas for pictures and sculptures.

The Brunel Centre in Swindon

Swindon was the manufacturing centre, and a main refuelling base, for the Great Western Railway. Now all that remains of railway glory is the station and an excellent museum, including a worker's house.

These pictures show the roof of the Brunel Centre, built in Swindon centre after the demolition of older buildings. It is a reminder of Paddington Station, perhaps not much to look at now, but in its day a great industrial building, with its great arch spans, far above the platforms.

School Buildings

The pictures above depict a beautifully simple building, l'Ecole Meyrin Vaudagne, using both arches and rectilinear designs in an asymmetrical but balanced composition. This building is unpretentious but lovely.

Here is a very different response to a similar requirement, also a simple and clean design, but without arches. In each school the buildings have play areas in front and behind. By allowing access under a part of the building, the play areas are connected together, giving the sense of a single area, but with the variety afforded by two distinct sections, partly hidden from one another.

Here are some English schools in styles of different periods -

Some of these pictures illustrate the dominance of the rectangle in the middle decades of the 20th century. Some of the pictures at the top of this page show that in the last two decades there was a return to the use of circles and arches, and more imaginative design in general, exemplified by the last picture. During the rectangular period, many school buildings took the form of prefabricated boxes, similar to those used for temporary buildings in building sites and industrial areas. A great many English children are still taught in these prefabricated boxes.

Because the Romans conquered a larger part of Europe than the Muslims did, their architectural influence spreads wider in that continent. But in Spain, for example, you can see many beautiful Islamic buildings. One great difference between the Islamic and Christian buildings is the much greater use of symmetric patterns in the former, covering in fact all possible plane symmetries. Some examples are shown in the next section.

Other important influences from the Arab world come from science, mathematics, medicine and philosophy. The use of the Arabic numbers and notation in the modern world is a symbol of this. That the choice of notation is not a trivial matter becomes obvious if you try to do without zero, or if you try to do arithmetic with Roman numbers. Notation and and abbreviation are important at all levels in mathematics, as we find if we try to achieve certain results without the notations of calculus or vectors, for example.

In music, too, we find Arabic influences in the west. As well as reaching Spain, Muslims travelled as far as Eastern Europe, and there we can still hear their influence in the complicated rhythms and harmonies of folk music. Some of these rhythms found their way into the music of composers such as Bartók and Kodaly (see Musical arches). The development of musical instruments such as the violin also owe much to Arabic instruments like the rebec.

The great weakness of stone and brick as structural materials is their inability to take much tension, and their availability in only small pieces. The arch, the dome, and the vault, are the brilliant responses of people who were not willing to be imprisoned by these limitations. Not all cultures made use of these structures.

The "ancient Greeks", though possessing considerable, in fact brilliant, mathematics, seem to have generally ignored the arch. Looking at temples and shrines much further east, in Japan, one sees mainly beams and cantilevers. Many "arched" bridges there have intermediate supports, so they are beams and not arches.

Where does the thrust go at the right hand side of this arch? Perhaps much of it is taken sideways above the windows. But if you notice the pile of bricks in the upper story, you may be reminded of the spires on medieval flying buttresses, designed to bend the thrust line downwards.

Architecture of the world - editor Henri Stierlin

publisher Benedikt - Taschen - about fourteen paperback books.

Developments in Structural Form R J Mainstone Allen Lane / Penguin

ISBN 0 14 00 6503 2 paperback 0 71 39 0333 3 hardback

The Guinness Book of Structures John H Stephens Guinness Superlatives Ltd

ISBN 0 900424 28 1 - much more than a list of data.

Structures: Or why things don't fall down J E Gordon

The New Science of Strong Materials: or why you don't fall through the floor J E Gordon

Building Structures Malcolm Millais E and FN Spon (Chapman and Hall) ISBN 0 419 21970 6

Fundamental Structural Analysis W J Spencer Macmillan Education ISBN 0 333 43467 6

The Builders National Geographic Society ISBN 0-87044-836-6 1992

Back to Arches back to Home Page Arches in Cathedrals and Mosques