A French gardener, Jean Monier, is usually
credited with inventing reinforced concrete. However, some of his late 19th
century contemporaries including W.B. Wilkinson in England, François Coignet in
France and RB Stevenson in the United States received patents for embedding bendable
materials in concrete (either wood or steel). Concrete like stone is inherently
strong in compression and fragile in bending. The embedded tension material, typically
steel rods reinforce the concrete’s spanning ability. Moreover, if the concrete
covering is of an adequate thickness and quality it protects the steel rods
against their inherent limitation, which is corrosion. The reinforcing rods are
characteristically placed in a grid pattern where tension reaction is necessary
and then encased in the concrete.
Early 20th century experiments characterized by the work of Eugène Freyssinet further optimized reinforced
concrete by stressing the steel before encasing it. This process placed the
concrete in a compressed state as the concrete hardened and the rods were released
much like an elastic band that is placed in perpetual tension. This process,
allowed for longer spans as the concrete is permanently stressed in compression
and less material is needed, therefore producing lighter members.
Concrete and modern architecture’s
social housing experiments went hand in hand. Concrete’s strength, résistance
to fire, and its durability stimulated the industrialization of precast
panelized and component systems and helped produce modern social housing block.
Concrete systems also initiated the theorization of flexible plans and
adaptable system organisation as they clearly separated structure and non
load-bearing systems.
Componoform was a building block
system that proposed pre-stressed building components for beams, columns and
slabs. Each element could be bolted for ease of assembly and disassembly. The
longer spans of up to 10 m generated a free plan and allowed for spatial variability.
The main element of the original Componoform patented building system was a
cruciform column head that radiated in four directions developing a simple post
and beam dry assembly. The modular precast slabs integrated a linear void space
for lightness and transferred their loads to beams, which in turn transferred
the load to the columns. The frame (or skeleton according to the patent text)
could then be covered in modular precast panels or any other potential skins.
The cross-head column standardized the orthogonal nature of the system
but permitted multiple grids and spans.
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| Patent drawing of the Componoform system |
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