Redefining the Design Team, 1995

Synthetic Thinking between Engineers, Architects & Designers

A short historical preamble
The profession of civil engineering and its offspring – structural engineering, has its roots in the discipline and hierarchical nature of imperial armies acting on behalf of certain western countries. Here were born the tenets of economy and efficiency.

Economy and efficiency are the historic buzz words of engineering design for the traditional engineer. When used by visually illiterate engineers as the only design criteria, they have led to a great number of ‘aesthetically’ unsatisfactory structures. However, it is the attitude and lack of design skills rather than these tenets themselves which have produced these results. There is no reason to suppose that we cannot make economy and efficiency subservient, without denying their crucial importance in the design process and eventual artefact.

During this “colonial” period the architect became the engineering decorator, with a rôle to camouflage – arguably carried out in the interest of urbanity, architecture or simply making the engineering publicly acceptable (e.g. Tower Bridge). This division has existed for nearly two centuries. There have been enlightened engineers (Brunel, Telford, Eiffel, Nervi) who have produced exceptional engineering works which are not only structurally inventive, but go beyond the material domain to create notable public space. These engineers clearly had an awareness of the civic importance of some their works.

Masonry, as the main engineering material, marked most of mankind’s achievements up to the 19th century. Then, with the advent of wrought iron (1799, the 30m span Coalbrookedale Bridge by Abraham Derby), wrought + cast iron (1820 Thomas Telford’s 177m Menai Straights Suspension Bridge, Paxton’s1851 Crystal Palace), iron +steel (Gustaf Eiffel’s work, 1884, notably the 178m steel arch of the Garabit Viaduct) and then steel in cable form, structural engineering with steel has become more and more specialised.
In the context of light and architecture, Paxton’s extraordinary achievements and others in the mid-19th century – removing the entire solidity-opacity associated with buildings, has seen a renaissance in today’s architecture.
The Innovation of reinforced concrete led to many advances (Auguste Perret, Eugè ne Freysinnet in France and Robert Maillart in Switzerland who, 1901, designed the 38m span hollow box arch form Zuoz Bridge) and this material has seen tremendous advances since, through a better and better understanding of the nature and quality of the materials involved and how they behave together. The engineer can now bring to this knowledge, yet more powerful analytical models to test ever more complex solutions.

Now?
Architects, who have recently been in the vanguard of structural inventiveness in their architecture, have been so only because of the support of engineers, yet the public’s appreciation of the engineer has been severely limited by the media’s sole promotion of the architect. In the late 20th century, structural engineering inventiveness requires the support of rigorous analytical method(s). It has not always been so, but we have experienced an ever increasing tendency towards this position as a result of material research, technical development and application of new materials. Architecture is as much a witness to this as is engineering.

There have always been individuals who, either ignoring or defying professional boundaries were capable of pan-professional action (e.g. Eiffel, Nervi, Fuller etc). Of course this behaviour attracts envy and creates jealousy from traditional professionals. It is rare today for an individual “engineer-architect-designer” to be capable of thoroughly analysing inventive structural engineering proposals without the support of specialists. He may appear to have a broader perspective within which to design, but this can be less than the horizons imagined by a collaborative team of creative individuals who come from different disciplines (e.g. Rice Francis Ritchie), yet who can also continue to develop individually within their own field.

Imagination – creativity – intuition, material understanding – analysis – design – economics, and an understanding of the political and social role of the process through which we realise projects are all ingredients in the making of architecture, and the urgent need to dissolve the intellectual boundaries between professionals is a fundamental necessity if we are to realise more intelligent and responsive architecture.