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Architects and the reinforced concrete specialist in Britain 1905–08

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Patricia Cusack
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Extract

The reinforced concrete specialist in Britain in the early 1900s was of recent vintage and essentially foreign (French) origin and it was as something of a ‘parvenu’ that he was criticized by British architects from the time that he became properly established. Reinforced concrete then existed as a multitude of patented ‘systems’, or methods of disposing reinforcement, controlled by patentees. Among these, the most prolific was François Hennebique’s French-Belgian system. Hennebique’s success was due not only to the system itself; it depended largely on the specialist commercial-technical organization which he evolved, and extended worldwide, to control both the design and construction of his reinforced concrete works (and which was imitated by others). When Louis Gustave Mouchel became Hennebique’s agent in Britain, from 1897–98, his business organization followed Hennebique’s model with specially trained regional engineers to execute working drawings (after initial designs by an architect or engineer), contractors ‘licensed’ to execute them in return for royalties, and nationwide expansion. By 1905, most reinforced concrete works and all framed buildings in Britain were in Hennebique’s system. It was from about this date that growing criticism of the ‘system specialist’, and of Mouchel personally, was voiced there. Three institutions were initiated, which were intended both to curtail the ‘specialist monopoly’ of reinforced concrete in Britain and to promote the knowledge and use of the material among architects in particular. These were: the RIBA Committee on Reinforced Concrete (1905–07), a journal, Concrete and Constructional Engineering (1906) and the Concrete Institute (1908).

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 29 , 1986 , pp. 183 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1986

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References

Notes

Abbreviations

1 This article is based on a chapter from Cusack, Patricia, ‘Reinforced Concrete in Britain: 1897-1908’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1981), 351-94Google Scholar.

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6 Charles F. Marsh to CI, in C&CE, 3, no. 6 (January 1909), 474.

7 ‘Editorial Notes’, C&CE, 2, no. 1 (March 1907), 4.

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50 Burnet, J. J., ARSA, ‘Discussion on the Report of the Joint Reinforced Concrete Committee’, JRIBA, 14 (1 June 1907), 502 Google Scholar. F. T. Reade questioned the sanity of any engineer using reinforced concrete for girders or columns because of the heterogeneity of concrete and steel, ibid., 503.

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60 ‘Report of the Joint Committee’, JRIBA, 14(15 June 1907), 514.

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62 ‘Chronicle’, JRIBA, 14 (8 December 1906), 96-97; ‘Report of thejoint Committee’, JRIBA, 14 (15 June 1907), 513 ff.

63 ‘Chronicle’, JRIBA, 14 (8 December 1906), 97; Dunn, op. cit., 87; ‘Report of thejoint Committee’, JRIBA, 14 (15 June 1907), 513.

64 Tanner, , ‘Report of thejoint Committee’, JRIBA, 14 (15 June 1907), 514 Google Scholar. W. B. Wilkinson’s pioneering work (1854-55) was acknowledged.

65 ‘Editorial Notes’, C&CE, 6, no. 8 (August 1911), 563; see also: ‘Editorial Notes’, C&CE, 6, no. 9 (September 1911), 645; compare ‘The RIBA and Reinforced Concrete’, The Builders’ Journal, 25 (29 May 1907), 259.

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71 C&CE, 51, no. 1 (January 1956), 1. TheBuildennd The Builders’ Journal had already taken up the subject, for example, ‘The Student’s Column. Concrete-Steel’, The Builder, 85 (4 July 1903), 19; The Builders’ Journal, Concrete and Steel Supplement, 23 (January-June 1906).

72 Who’s Who in Architecture (Westminster, 1914), 193; see also Clarke, Max, JRIBA, 4 (26 August 1897), 444 Google Scholar; C&CE, 51, no. 1 (January 1956), 2.

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99 Tanner, H., C&CE, 6, no. 12, 933 Google Scholar.

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101 ‘Editorial Notes’, C&CE, 4, no. 1 (March 1909), 2; see also Sachs, E. O., C&CE, 6, no. 7 (July 1911), 494 Google Scholar; ‘Editorial Notes’, C&CE, 4, no. 2 (May 1909), 78;’The ICE and Reinforced Concrete’, C&CE, 5, no. 10 (October 1910), 707; Sachs, E. O., C&CE, 6, no. 12 (December 1911), 935 Google Scholar.

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104 ‘University of London: Mr. William Dunn’s Lectures’, JRIBA, 17 (22 October 1910), 798. The first detailed course of instruction on reinforced concrete in Britain was introduced in 1911, at the LCC School of Building, Brixton, ‘Editorial Notes’, C&CE, 6, no. 9 (September 1911), 651.

105 For example, ‘A Correspondent: The Choice of Reinforcement’, C&CE, 5, no. 8 (August 1910), 552. Contrast Collins, op. cit., 81.