Pre-reading Discussion. MODERN ARCHITECTURE AND CONSTRUCTION

MODERN ARCHITECTURE AND CONSTRUCTION

TSTU Publishing House

Министерство образования и науки Российской Федерации

Тамбовский государственный технический университет

СОВРЕМЕННАЯ АРХИТЕКТУРА И

СТРОИТЕЛЬСТВО

CONTENTS

UNIT 1. CONCRETE CONSTRUCTIONS

 

Lesson 1. Concrete – a Yearning for the Monolithic

 

Lesson 2. High – Performance Concrete

 

Lesson 3. High – Strength Concrete

 

UNIT 2. BUSINESS DESIG

 

Lesson 1. Industrial Building Typology

 

Lesson 2. Industrial Building

 

Lesson 3. The Optimization of the Load-Bearing

 

Structure

 

UNIT 3. SCHOOL Design

 

Lesson 1 Diversity and Democracy of School Design

 

Lesson 2 Interview with an Achitect

 

Lesson 3 Education and Construction

 

UNIT 4. COLOUR AND ARCHITECTURE

 

Lesson 1. Rendered Facades, but with What Finish?

Coloured, Painted or Coated?

 

Lesson 2 Advertising agency in School

Building

 

Lesson 3 Colour and Architecture

 

Unit 5

Lesson 1 The employer and we.Hiring to work.Questionnair

.

Lesson 2 Training and experience.How to complete the application for employement.

 

Lesson 3 Inqiring about working conditions.Personal data.

 

GRAMMAR REFERENCE

 

FINAL GRAMMAR TEST

 

UNIT 1

CONCRETE CONSTRUCTIONS

Lesson 1

Concrete – a Yearning for the Monolithic

Pre-reading Discussion

1. What is a construction?

2. Concrete has become an important construction material,

hasn’t it?

3. What do you think about the construction architecture of the 20th century?

4. How can you explain the phrase “a monolithic construction”?

5. Does good knowledge of drawing help to create perfect buildings?

 

Monolithic buildings radiate a sense of strength. The pervasiveness of a single material, in conjunction with

only a few restrained details, creates an agreeable impression of archaic simplicity in our modern society. If

one seeks to achieve a unified design for the structure, facade, paving and other ancillary elements of a building

in temperate climatic zones, the versatility of concrete makes it the ideal material. Many different surface

treatments are possible for the design of facades. In the Swiss embassy in Berlin, the engineer sought to achieve a

monolithic effect by avoiding all trace of working joints. The walls were concreted in a continuous process over

a period of 26 hours.

Another method of circumventing the constraints of joints can be seen in an office building in Munich

where a series of U-shaped precast concrete elements were offset to each other from storey to storey

to create a series of projections and recesses. Sometimes the pattern of formwork ties may be exploited to lend

the surface of a certain structure. In the Scholler Bank in Vienna, however, used an elaborate

expanding shuttering technique to avoid precisely this effect. The monolithic outward appearance of a concrete

building often results in internal complexity, especially in the building physics. An adequate solution can normally

be achieved only through the creation of thermally separated inner and outer skins, in which case, care

must be taken to avoid cracking caused by extremes of temperature. In the 16-meter-high exposed concrete facade

in Munich, which was executed without joints, flexible anchors were inserted

between the two skins, and the external wall was prestressed. Monolithic structures may also be differentiated

and given an individual character through the use of color. In the housing group on the Zurich, mineral pigments were applied to the surface of the concrete to create a matt, "pollen-like" texture.

With its red-brown coloration, the guesthouse in Chile merges into the desert surroundings

to become a monolithic relief in the landscape.

Different surface qualities may also be desired internally and externally. The black memorial structure seems dematerialized externally by reflections of the surroundings in

the long shiny walls. The rays of light entering through the glazed roof strips, however, highlight the roughtextured

natural grey face of the internal skin, thereby augmenting the massive effect of the interior.

The various forms of surface treatment that are possible with concrete also allow the simulation of naturally

monolithic materials.

Some engineers used the texture of traditional Japanese fortifications as

a kind of collage in housing development in Fukuoka.

With its 50 cm external walls, the house is truly monolithic. To achieve the

necessary thermal insulation, a special type of expanded concrete was developed, foamed to form hollow pores

in the material. Steel reinforcement was replaced with polypropylene fibers. The use of sawn vertical boarded

formwork reduced the danger of pockets and defects. The outer surface was treated with a water-repellent coating.

The building is certainly experimental, but it also marks a step back to the original qualities of simple

monolithic forms of construction, which hold a promise for the future.