UNIT 2 : BEGINING OF A NEW ERA

Industrial Revolution

 Began in Britain in the 18th century

 Replacement of manual labor by machines
 Transformed agricultural economies into industrial ones.
 Goods that had traditionally been made in the home or in small workshops began
to be manufactured in the factory
 Growth of cities as people moved from rural areas into urban communities in
search of work.

Social and Economic changes and Industrialization:

 The Industrial Revolution brought a shift from the agricultural societies created
during the Neolithic Revolution to modern industrial societies.
 Large portions of the population relocated from the countryside to the towns and
cities where manufacturing centers were found.
 Economic changes caused far-reaching social changes, including the movement of
people to cities, the availability of a greater variety of material goods, and new
ways of doing business.
 In the long run the Industrial Revolution has brought economic improvement for
most people in industrialized societies

 Many enjoy greater prosperity and improved health, especially those in the middle
and the upper classes of society.

 Drastic population growth following industrialization has contributed to the

decline of natural habitats and resources. These factors, in turn, have caused many
species to become extinct or endangered.

Growth of Cities
 Many of the agricultural laborers who left villages were forced to move.
 New manufacturing towns and cities grew dramatically.

 In pre-industrial England, more than three-quarters of the population lived in

small villages.

 By the mid-19th century, however, the country had made history by becoming the
first nation with half its population in cities.

 The accommodation of such volatile growth led to the transformations of old

neighborhoods into slums.

 These settlements were congested developments and had inadequate standards of

light, ventilation and open space with poor sanitary facilities.

 These conditions naturally provoked a high incidence of disease and eventually

the Public health act was enacted.

 This act in addition to others, made local authorities legally responsible for
sewerage, refuse collection water supply, roads and the burial of the dead.

 Edwin Chadwick inspired the society for improving the conditions of the laboring
classes and he sponsored the erection of the first working class flats in London in
1844.

 Industrial revolution and architecture

 The growth of heavy industry brought a flood of new building materials.

 cast iron, steel, and glass—with which architects and engineers devised structures
hitherto undreamt of in function, size, and form.

 The Crystal Palace (1850-1851; reconstructed 1852-1854) in London, a vast but

ephemeral exhibition hall,
  the work of Sir Joseph Paxton, a man who had learned how to put iron and glass
together in the design of large greenhouses

 Its spatial beauty, prefabricated standard parts, it foreshadowed industrialized

building and the widespread use of cast iron and steel.

Invention of new materials and technology:

 Iron and steel manufacture, the production of steam engines, and textiles were all
powerful influences.
 A major breakthrough in the use of coal occurred in 1709 at Coalbrookedale in
the valley of the Severn River.

 There English industrialist Abraham Darby successfully used coke—a high-

carbon, converted form of coal—to produce iron from iron ore.

 Using coke eliminated the need for charcoal, a more expensive, less efficient fuel.

 Metal makers thereafter discovered ways of using coal and coke to speed the
production of raw iron, bar iron, and other metals

 Iron was also vital to the development of railroads, which improved

transportation.

 The Bessemer process, developed by British inventor Henry Bessemer, enabled

steel to be produced more efficiently by using blasts of air to convert crude iron
into steel.

Iron and steel in architecture

  The development of construction methods in iron and steel was the most
important innovation in architecture since ancient times.
 These methods provide for stronger and taller structures with less expenditure of
material than stone, brick, or wood and can produce greater unsupported spans
over openings and interior or exterior spaces.

 The evolution of steel frame construction in the 20th century entirely changed the
concept of the wall and the support.

History of metals and their usage:

 In architecture before 1800, metals played an auxiliary role.

 They were used for bonding masonry (dowels and clamps), for tension members
(chains strengthening domes, tie rods across arches to reinforce the vaults)

 And for roofing, doors, windows, and decoration.

Use of Cast Iron:

 Cast iron, the first metal that could be substituted for traditional structural
materials, was used in bridge building as early as 1779.
 In 1779 English architect Thomas Pritchard designed the first structure built
entirely of cast iron:

 Iron bridge, a bridge over the River Severn in England. Designed by Abraham
Darby III and Thomas Pritchard

 The arched structure spans about 30 m (about 100 ft).

 Its ability to bear loads and to be produced in an endless variety of forms, in

addition to its resistance to fire and corrosion, quickly encouraged architectural
adaptations

 It was used as columns and arches and afterward in skeletal structures.

  Because cast iron has much more compressive than tensile strength (for example,
it works better as a small column than as a beam), it was largely replaced in the
late 19th century by steel.

 Cast and wrought iron products had been used extensively in building, especially
in the 19th century, but were largely superseded by the beginning of the 20th
century by hot-rolled steel members.
 The ultimate victory of steel over earlier forms of iron was due to steel's superior
structural properties along with an increasingly efficient manufacturing process—
based on the innovations of Bessemer, Siemens, Thomas, and others—that
dramatically reduced its cost while increasing its output.

Use of steel:

 The major disadvantage of iron, low tensile strength, was overcome in the mid-
1850s, when the Bessemer process of making steel (an alloy of iron and carbon)
 The first major structure built entirely of steel was the cantilevered Forth Bridge
in Scotland, completed in 1890.

 Its two record-setting spans of 521 m (1,710 ft) were the longest in existence until
1917.

 The arched Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri,
designed by James Eads and completed in 1874, was the first steel bridge in the
United States.

 The Eads Bridge has three main spans. The center span is 160 m (520 ft) long,
and the spans on either side are each 153 m (502 ft) in length.

 At the time the Eads Bridge was built, it was the longest structure in the United
States.
 By 1890 the strength and lightness of steel had made it the material of choice for
bridge building.

 John and Washington Roebling also designed and built the Brooklyn Bridge,
which was the world’s longest suspension bridge at the time of its completion in
1883, having a main span of 486 m 31 cm (1,595 ft 6 in).

 The completion of the Brooklyn Bridge marked the beginning of an 80-year

period of large-scale suspension-bridge design in the United States.

 The Chicago architect Louis Sullivan, in his Wainwright Building (1890-1891) in

St. Louis, Missouri, his Guaranty Building (1895) in Buffalo, New York, and his
Carson Pirie Scott Department Store (1899-1904) in Chicago, gave new
expressive form to urban commercial buildings.

 His career converges with the so-called Chicago School of architects, whose
challenge was to invent the skyscraper or high-rise building, facilitated by the
introduction of the electric elevator and the sudden abundance of steel.

 They made a successful transition from the masonry bearing wall to the steel
frame, which assumed all the load-bearing functions.

 The building’s skeleton could be erected quickly and the remaining components
hung on it to complete it, an immense advantage for high-rise buildings on busy
city streets.
Forth Bridge Scotland

Eads Bridge
 Brooklyn Bridge New York

Steel structural members are rolled in a variety of shapes, the commonest of which are
plates, angles, I beams, and U-shaped channels. These members may be joined by steel
bolts or rivets, and the development of welding in the 20th century made it possible to
produce fused joints with less labour and materials. The result is a rigid, continuous
structure in which the joint is as firm as the member and which distributes stresses
between beams and columns. This is a fundamental change in architectural technique, the
effect of which cannot yet be estimated.

 Chicago architect Louis Sullivan found a kind of spiritual poetry in the steel
frame's aspiration for verticality;
 Italian Futurist Sant'Elia proclaimed in 1914 that the steel bridges, railway
stations, cars, and planes of the modern epoch already signaled a radical
discontinuity with the traditional forms of the past;
 Russian Constuctivist Vladimir Tatlin's proposal for a spiraling steel monument to
the Third International in 1920 provided a dynamic and optimistic visual image
for the new technology.
 Examples of modern structures of steel

The Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building

The Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building is a landmark department store
building at State Street and Madison, Chicago, Illinois. It was designed by Louis
Sullivan, built in 1899 for the retail firm Schlesinger & Meyer, and expanded and sold to
Carson Pirie Scott in 1904.

The building is remarkable for its steel structure, which allowed a dramatic increase in
window area, which in turn allowed far more daylight into the building interiors, and far
more display of merchandise to outside pedestrian traffic. The lavish cast-iron ornamental
work above the rounded tower was also meant to be functional. Sullivan designed the
corner entry to be seen from both State and Madison, and that the ornamentation, situated
above the main entrance, would be literally attractive. The building is one of the classic
structures of the Chicago school.

Wainwright Building

The Wainwright Building is a 10-story red-brick landmark office building in

downtown St. Louis, Missouri. Built in 1891 and designed by Dankmar Adler and
 Louis Sullivan, it is among the first skyscrapers in the world. Sullivan used a steel
frame and applied his intricate terra cotta ornament in vertical bands to emphasize the
height of the building.

Tatlin's Constructivist tower

Tatlin's Constructivist tower was to be built from industrial materials: iron, glass and
steel. It would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The tower's main form was a twin
helix which spiraled up to 400 m in height, which visitors would be transported around
with the aid of various mechanical devices. The main framework would contain three
enormous rotating geometric structures. At the base of the structure was a cube which
was designed as a venue for lectures, conferences and congress meetings, and would
complete a rotation in the span of one year. In the centre of the structure was a cone,
housing executive activities and completing a rotation once a month. The topmost one, a
cylinder, was to house an information centre, issuing news bulletins and manifestoes via
telegraph, radio and loudspeaker, and would complete a rotation once a day. There were
also plans to install a gigantic open-air screen on the cylinder, and a further projector
which would cast messages across the clouds. (Gray 1986).Although there were plans to
build Tatlin’s Tower, the monument was never constructed. The Civil War came
between, and high costs and lack of time and material prevented Tatlin from executing
the plan

History of Concrete in Architecture:

Concrete was employed in ancient Egypt and was highly developed by the ancient
Romans, whose concrete made with volcanic-ash cement (pozzolana) permitted a great
expansion of architectural methods, particularly the development of domes and vaults
(often reinforced by brick ribbing) to cover large areas, of foundations, and of structures
such as bridges and sewerage systems where waterproofing was essential. The technique
of manufacture declined in the middle ages and was regained in the 18th century.

The introduction of concrete as a building material represented a major chapter in the

history of bridge building. Although the ancient Romans had used concrete, the
knowledge of this material virtually disappeared during the middle ages and was not
rediscovered until the late 18th century.

Concrete in Modern Architecture:

The first modern concrete bridge was a solid concrete bridge, 12 m (39 ft) long, built over
the Garonne Canal at Grisoles, France, in 1840. All early concrete bridges used arched
designs by necessity because concrete has great compressive strength but is very weak in
tension. Until the invention of metal reinforcement, which adds strength in tension, the
arch was the only feasible shape for structures made entirely of concrete. Reinforced
concrete emerged simultaneously in Germany, the United States, England, and France
between 1870 and 1900.

Reinforced Concrete:

Reinforced concrete was developed to add the tensile strength of steel to the compressive
strength of mass concrete. The metal is embedded by being set as a mesh into the forms
before pouring, and in the hardened material the two act uniformly. The combination is
much more versatile than either product; it serves not only for constructing rigid frames
but also for foundations, columns, walls, floors, and a limitless variety of coverings, and
it does not require the addition of other structural materials. Although the making of
forms is a slow and costly process, the technique competes economically with steel frame
construction because the mesh, composed of thin, bendable metal rods or metal fabric,
employs far less steel, and concrete is itself inexpensive.

The steel reinforcement is employed to take full advantage of the plastic, or sculptural,
character of concrete. It can be jointed or bent to unify supporting members with the
floors and the coverings they carry. Furthermore, stresses produced in floors, domes, and
vaults may be distributed within the slabs themselves to reduce load, and the diminished
load may be concentrated at desired points so that the number and size of supports is
greatly reduced.

In 1892 French engineer François Hennebique combined the strengths of both in a new
system of construction based on concrete reinforced with steel. His invention made
possible previously unimaginable effects: extremely thin walls with large areas of glass;
roofs that cantilever (project out from their supports) to previously impossible distances;
enormous spans without supporting columns or beam; and corners formed of glass rather
than stone, brick, or wood.
One of the earliest architects to experiment with these new effects was Belgian architect-
engineer Auguste Perret, whose 1903 apartment building on Rue Franklin in Paris,
France, exemplified basic principles of steel reinforcement. On the façade, Perret clearly
separated the structural elements of steel-reinforced concrete from the exterior walls,
which were simply decorative panels or windows rather than structural necessities. The
reinforced concrete structure also eliminated the need for interior walls to support any
weight, permitting a floor plan of unprecedented openness. Perret's building stood eight
stories high, with two additional stories set back from the front of the building, the typical
height of most Paris buildings at the time.

Three 20th-century developments in production are destined to have a radical effect on

architecture. The first, concrete-shell construction, permits the erection of vast vaults and
domes with a concrete and steel content so reduced that the thickness is comparatively
less than that of an eggshell. The second development, precast-concrete construction,
employs bricks, slabs, and supports made under optimal factory conditions to increase
waterproofing and solidity, to decrease time and cost in erection, and to reduce expansion
and contraction. Finally, prestressed concrete provides bearing members into which
reinforcement is set under tension to produce a live force to resist a particular load. Since
the member acts like a spring, it can carry a greater load than an unstressed member of
the same size.

Examples of early Concrete constructions

Rue Franklin apartments – Aguste Perret

This apartment building with which Perret established his reputation is to be regarded as
one of the canonical works of 20th-century architecture, not only for its explicit and
brilliant use of the reinforced concrete frame (the Hennebique system) but also for the
way in which its internal organization was to anticipate Le Corbusier's later development
of the free plan. Perret deliberately made the apartment partition walls nonstructural
throughout and their partial removal would have yielded an open space, punctuated only
by a series of free-standing columns. As it is, each floor is organized with the main and
service stairs to the rear (each with its own elevator) the kitchen to one side and the
principal rooms to the front.

Einstein Tower

"Erich Mendelsohn's small, but powerfully modeled tower, built to symbolize the
greatness of the Einsteinian concepts, was also a quite functional house. It was designed
to hold Einstein's own astronomical laboratory... Mendelsohn was after a completely
plastic kind of building, moulded rather than built, without angles and with smooth,
rounded corners. He needed a malleable material like reinforced concrete, which could be
made to curve and create its own surface plasticity, but due to post-war shortages, some
parts had to be in brick and others in concrete. So the total external effect was obtained
by rendering the surface material.

Glass in architecture

Glass production flourished in Egypt and Mesopotamia until about 1200 bc, then
virtually ceased for several hundred years. In the 9th century bc, Syria and Mesopotamia
emerged as glassmaking centers, and the industry spread throughout the Mediterranean
region

The glory of Western glassmaking in the medieval period, through patronage of the
church, was mosaic glass in Mediterranean Europe and stained-glass windows in the
north (see Mosaics; see Stained Glass). Mosaics were made of small glass cubes, or
tesserae, embedded in cement. The tesserae, cut from solid cakes of glass, could be
extremely elaborate, with gold and silver lead inlaid. Little is known of the production of
mosaic glass before the 14th century.

Glass windows in churches are mentioned in documents as early as the 6th century, but
the earliest extant examples date from the 11th century. The finest windows are
considered those from the 13th and 14th centuries, primarily in France and England.
Glasshouses in Lorraine and Normandy (Normandie) may have provided much of the flat
glass for medieval cathedral windows. The glass was colored, or flashed with color, and
then cut into the shapes required by the design. Details were painted into the glass, often
with a brownish enamel. The pieces were fitted into lead strips and set in an iron
framework. The art declined in the late Renaissance but was revived in the 19th century.

Modern architecture as primarily driven by technological and engineering developments,

and it's plainly true that the availability of new materials such as iron, steel, concrete and
glass drove the invention of new building techniques as part of the Industrial Revolution.
The Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton at the Great Exhibition of 1851 is an early example;
possibly the best example is Louis Sullivan's development of the tall steel skyscraper in
Chicago around 1890.

Other historians regard modernism as a matter of taste, a reaction against eclecticism and
the lavish stylistic excesses of Victorian Era and Edwardian Art Nouveau.

Whatever the cause, around 1900 a number of architects around the world began
developing new architectural solutions to integrate traditional precedents (Gothic, for
instance) with new technological possibilities. The work of Louis Sullivan in Chicago,
Victor Horta in Brussels, Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona, Otto Wagner in Vienna and Charles
Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow, among many others, can be seen as a common struggle
between old and new.

Examples of Glass in architecture:

Crystal Palace

Wain wright Building of Louis Sullivan

Great Exhibitions:

During the 20th century international exhibitions, popularly called world's fairs, have
become elaborate showcases for technological and cultural developments as well as
manufactured products.
1.Crystal Palace

The Great Exhibition, also known

as the Crystal Palace Exhibition,
was a big international exhibition
held in Hyde Park London, from 1
May to 15 October 1851. Sir
Joseph Paxton, its architect, was
famous for his elegant
conservatories and greenhouses; in
essence, the Crystal Palace was the
largest greenhouse ever built.

Paxton used prefabricated glass

units framed in wood and cast iron,
supporting them on a cast-iron
skeleton. The massive glass house
was 1848 feet (about 563 m) long
by 454 feet (about 138 m) wide,
and went from plans to grand
opening in just nine months

The Crystal Palace itself was

almost outshone by the park in
which it stood, which contained a
magnificent series of fountains,
comprising almost 12,000
individual jets. The park also
contained unrivaled collections of
statues, many of which were
copies of great works from around
the world
 After the Great Exhibition closed,
the Crystal Palace was moved to
Sydenham Hill in South London
and reconstructed in what was, in
effect, a 200 acre Victorian theme
park

2. Paris Exposition:

In Paris a series of international Expositions were held, they are

 The Paris Exposition of 1877, Exposition Universelle (1877)

 The Paris Exposition or Paris World's Fair of 1878, Exposition Universelle
(1878)
 The Paris Exposition of 1889, Exposition Universelle (1889)
 The Paris Exposition of 1900, Exposition Universelle (1900)
 The Paris Exposition'of 1925, Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et
Industriels Modernes

Paris Exposition 1855

 After London hosted the first international exposition in 1851, Napoleon III
realized that France needed to seize back the initiative.
 Palais de l'Industrie at the Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1855. Jean-
Marie Viel and Alexandre Barrault served respectively as architect and engineer
for the Palais.
 The Palace of Industry
measured 850 feet long and
350 feet wide. The principal
nave itself was 630 feet long,
158 feet wide and connected
on four sides by two story
high, ninety-eight foot wide
aisles. It contained semi-
circular trusses which bridged
an 80 foot span to create an
enormous exhibition room.
This giant structure was
located on a triangular plot of
land

This lithograph depicts the

distribution of recompenses to
the exhibitors at the close of
the Exposition Universelle at
the Palais de l'Industrie on
November 15, 1855

Paris Exposition 1867:

  Le Play proposed a temporary oval exhibition palace whose appearance would
recall the Roman Colosseum.
 The engineer Jean Baptiste Krantz was commissioned with the design and
construction of the 490 metres long and 390 metres wide building, which was
altogether to cover an area of 150,000 square metres. Léopold Hardy, Charles
Duval and the young Gustave Eiffel assisted in the realisation of the plans.

 Cast iron pillars and wrought iron piles on the foundation walls formed the
framework which supported the roof construction of glass and corrugated
sheeting, which ensured an even and natural light in the halls.

Paris Exposition Universelle de 1878

The Trocadero Palace constructed for the

1878 Exposition Universelle -
Demolished 1936
 The Champ de Mars 1878 Exposition
Universelle

Facade of the Palace on the Champ de Mars

General View of the

Exposition

Trocadero Palace on the

left and the Champ de Mars to the right

 The third Paris World's Fair, called an Exposition Universelle in French was held
in 1878 and celebrated the recovery of France after the crushing defeat of the
1870 Franco-Prussian War.
 The Paris Exhibition of 1878 was on a far larger scale in every respect than any
which had been previously held in any part of the world.
 The total area covered over 66 acres (267,000 m²), the main building in the
Champ de Mars occupying 54 acres (219,000 m²).

Paris Exposition Universelle de 1900

Interior of the Grand

Palace
 General View

Chateau de Eau and Palais de l'Électricitié

 View from Trocadero towards
Eiffel Tower

 The magnificent buildings from

preceding world expositions in
Paris - the Eiffel Tower, the
Trocadero and the Machine Hall
were succeeded by a diverse
architectural panorama in 1900.
 The strong increase in the number
of themes to be exhibited and
participating nations resulted in a
collaboration between a large
number of architects and
prevented the exposition from focussing on any one particular architectural style.

 The exhibition site could be entered via a main gate with 36 entrances. The "Porte
Monumentale" - also known as the "Porte Binet", after its architect, was an
example of richly ornamented scenic architecture which had a major influence in
shaping the exposition's overall appearance.

 The hall consisted of three arches connected in a triangle, covered by a dome roof
of 500 square metres in size.

 Two minarets of 35 metres in height flanked the main arch for lighting purposes.

 A tower emerged from the dome like a bud, and the host city of Paris was
represented at the top of this tower in the form of an allegorical female figure by
Paul Moreau-Vauthier.

 The Grand Palais des Arts - the venue for the international exhibition of
contemporary art - was the result of the collaboration of four architects, whose
 different approaches were expressed in the four different historicising façade
designs.

3.World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago

The World's Columbian Exposition,

held in Chicago in 1893, was the
first critically and economically
successful U.S. world's fair. It took
three years of preparation and hard
work to produce the Exposition.

The Exposition occupied 630 acres

in Jackson Park and the Midway.
The main site was bounded by Stony
Island Avenue on the west, 67th
Street on the south, Lake Michigan
on the east, and 56th Street on the
north. The Midway Plaisance, a
narrow strip of land between 59th
and 60th streets, extends west from
Stony Island to Cottage Grove
Avenue.
 The Woman's Building exhibited
over 400 years of progress made by
women. Displays included objects
made by nineteenth-century women
from Europe and the United States
as well as women's work by Native
Americans. Getting a building of
their own symbolized the importance
of women at the Exposition.

The dome of the Horticulture

Building under construction in 1892

The Court of Honor and the Statue

of the Republic. The statue
symbolized the strength of the
country, which had survived a civil
war and was taking in immigrants
from all over the word

3. Vienna Exposition

 This fair was the first exposition to use multiple buildings instead of one main
structure.
 The most prominent feature is the Rotunda, the enclosed circular building
 The rotunda was actually just one part of the Palace of Industry, which expanded
on either side to form a horizontal strip about 2,953 feet long, running from east
to west with shorter corridors intersecting it.

 This created a series of twenty-eight galleries that displayed an international array

of industrial products.

 The palace was designed to be a permanent structure, and was used after the
exposition to hold trade shows. When it burned down in 1937, new trade fair
exhibition halls were built that still remain in use today.

 The Machinery Hall ran parallel to, and was located north of, the main building,
towards the top of the map. It was 2060 feet long and 125 feet wide. It consisted
in a single room, 60 feet high, and was built with brick walls and an iron roof. The
building could accommodate two parallel railway tracks, and was reused as a
storage building for the Great Northern Railway after the fair was over.

 The Art Hall, directly to the east of the rotunda and main exposition buildings.. It
was 100 by 600 feet and made of brick, with stucco finish on the outside. It held
mostly paintings, with a few statues and statuettes dispersed throughout. Art
exhibits were divided into three categories: fine art, religious art, and amateur art.

This fair was the first

exposition to use multiple
buildings instead of one
main structure. Plan of the
Weltausstellung held in
Vienna in 1873. The
Vienna exposition was the
first to house the various
categories of production in
separate buildings, while
the national exhibits
remained in a single
structure.
 This illustration depicts the
Rotunda during opening
ceremonies at the
exposition held in Vienna
in 1873.

4. Eiffel Tower

 The Eiffel Tower was built for

the International Exhibition of
Paris of 1889 commemorating
the centenary of the French
Revolution. The Prince of Wales,
later King Edward VII of
England, opened the tower.
 Of the 700 proposals submitted
in a design competition, Gustavo
Eiffel's was unanimously chosen.
  At 300 metres (320.75m including antenna), and 7000 tons, it was the world's
tallest building until 1930. Other statistics include:

 2.5 million rivets.

 300 steel workers, and 2 years (1887-1889) to construct it.
 Sway of at most 12 cm in high winds.
 Height varies up to 15 cm depending on temperature.
 15,000 iron pieces (excluding rivets).
 40 tons of paint.
 1652 steps to the top.

 The lower section of the tower consists of four immense arched legs set on
masonry piers.

 The legs curve inward until they unite in a single tapered tower.

 There are three main platforms, each with an observation deck. The first deck is
57 m (187 ft) high, while the second is 116 m (381 ft) off the ground. Both are
accessible by stairs or elevator. The third deck, which is 276 m (906 ft) high, is
accessible to visitors only by elevator.

 It was almost torn down in 1909, but was saved because of its antenna - used for
telegraphy at that time. Beginning in 1910 it became part of the International
Time Service, France.

5. The Barcelona Pavilion

The Barcelona Pavilion, a work emblematic of the Modern Movement, has been
exhaustively studied and interpreted as well as having inspired the oeuvre of several
generations of architects. It was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969)
as the German national pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition.
Built from glass, travertine and different kinds of marble, the Pavilion was conceived
to accommodate the official reception presided over by King Alphonso XIII of Spain
along with the German authorities.
 It had a flat roof supported on chrome columns. the steel skeleton and the pavilion’s
walls, rectangular planes of marble, glass, onyx placed vertically or horizontally,
could be freely positioned and made it possible that space seems to flow through
them. this use of the open plan achieves extreme lightness and movement. The
pavilion was conceived as the setting in which the German authorities would receive
kingAlphonsoXIII. despite its initial disassembly after the close of the exhibition, the
pavilion has become a key reference point in both the career of mies van der rohe and
20th-century architecture as a whole. an emblematic work of odern-movement
architecture, the pavilion has not only been exhaustively studied and interpreted, but
it has also been a source of inspiration for the work of several generations of
architects all over the world.