Therefore:
Use only biodegradable, low energy consuming materials, which are easy to cut and modify on site. For bulk materials we suggest ultra-lightweight 40-60 lbs. concrete and earth-based materials like tamped earth, brick, and tile. For secondary materials, use wood planks, gypsum, plywood, cloth, chickenwire, paper, cardboard, particle board, corrugated iron, lime plasters, bamboo, rope, and tile.
| GOOD MATERIALS |
|---|
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| tile& adobo 1" plonks |
ultra-light weight concrete or organic or earth-based materials
In gradual stiffening (208), we shall work out the way of using these materials that goes with structure follows social spaces (205) and efficient structure (206). Try to use the materials in such a way as to allow their own texture to show themselves—lapped outside walls (234), soft inside walls (235). . . .
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| 208 gradual stiffening** |
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. . . in STRUCTURE FOLLOWS SOCIAL SPACES (2O5) and EFFICIENT structure (206) we have set down the beginnings of a philosophy, an approach, to construction, good materials (207) tells us something about the materials we ought to use in order to meet human and ecological demands. Now, before we start the practical task of making a structural layout for a building, it is necessary to consider one more philosophical pattern: one which defines the process of construction that will make it possible to use the right materials and get the overall conception of the structure right.
The fundamental philosophy behind the use of pattern languages is that buildings should be uniquely adapted to individual needs and sites; and that the plans of buildings should be rather loose and fluid, in order to accommodate these subtleties.
This requires an entirely new attitude toward the process of construction. We may define this attitude by saying that it is desirable to build a building in such a way that it starts out loose and flimsy while final adaptations in plan are made, and then gets stiffened gradually during the process of construction, so that each additional act of construction makes the structure sounder.
To understand this philosophy properly, it is helpful to imagine a building being made like a basket. A few strands are put in place. They are very flimsy. Other strands are woven in. Gradually the basket gets stiffer and stiffen Its final structural strength is only reached from the cooperation of all the members, and is not reached until the building is completely finished. In this sense, such a process produces a building in which all parts of it are working structurally—see efficient structure (206).
Why does the principle of gradual stiffening seem so sensible as a -process of building?
To begin with, such a structure allows the actual building process to be a creative act. It allows the building to be built up
CONSTRUCTION
gradually. Members can be moved around before they are firmly in place. All those detailed design decisions which can never be worked out in advance on paper, can be made during the building process. And it allows you to see the space in three dimensions as a whole, each step of the way, as more material is added.
This means that since each new material that is added in the process must adapt perfectly to the framework that is there, each new material must be more adaptable, more flexible, more capable of coping with variation, than the last. Thus, though the building as a whole goes from flimsy to strong, the actual materials that are added go from the strongest and stiffest, to the gradually less stiff, until finally fluid materials are added.
The essence of this process is very fundamental indeed. We may understand it best by comparing the work of a fifty-year-old carpenter with the work of a novice. The experienced carpenter keeps going. He doesn’t have to keep stopping, because every action he performs, is calculated in such a way that some later action can put it right to the extent that it is imperfect now. What is critical here, is the sequence of events. The carpenter never takes a step which he cannot correct later; so he can keep working, confidently, steadily.
The novice, by comparison, spends a great deal of his time trying to figure out what to do. He does this essentially because he knows that an action he takes now may cause unretractable problems a little further down the line; and if he is not careful, he will find himself with a joint that requires the shortening of some crucial member—at a stage when it is too late to shorten that member. The fear of these kinds of mistakes forces him to spend hours trying to figure ahead: and it forces him to work as far as possible to exact drawings because they will guarantee that he avoids these kinds of mistakes.
The difference between the novice and the master is simply that the novice has not learnt, yet, how to do things in such a way that he can afford to make small mistakes. The master knows that the sequence of his actions will always allow him to cover his mistakes a little further down the line. It is this simple but essential knowledge which gives the work of a master carpenter its wonderful, smooth, relaxed, and almost unconcerned simplicity.
In a building we have exactly the same problem, only greatly magnified. Essentially, most modern construction has the character of the novice’s work, not of the master’s. The builders do not know how to be relaxed, how to deal with earlier mistakes by later detailing; they do not know the proper sequence of events; and they do not, usually, have a building system, or a construction process, which allows them to develop this kind of relaxed and casual wisdom. Instead, like the novice, they work exactly to finely detailed drawings; the building is extremely uptight as it gets made; any departure from the exact drawings is liable to cause severe problems, may perhaps make it necessary to pull out whole sections of the work.
This novice-like and panic-stricken attention to detail has two very serious results. First, like the novice, the architects spend a great deal of time trying to w'ork things out ahead of time, not smoothly building. Obviously, this costs money; and helps create these machine-like “perfect” buildings. Second, a vastly more serious consequence: the details control the whole. The beauty and subtlety of the plan in which patterns have held free sway over the design suddenly becomes tightened and destroyed because, in fear that details won’t work out, the details of connections, and components, are allowed to control the plan. As a result, rooms get to be slightly the wrong shape, windows go out of position, spaces between doors and walls get altered just enough to make them useless. In a word, the whole character of modern architecture, namely the control of larger space by piddling details of construction, takes over.
What is needed is the opposite—a process in which details are fitted to the whole. This is the secret of the master carpenter; it is described in detail in The Timeless Way of Building as the foundation of all organic form and all successful building. The process of gradual stiffening, which we describe here, is the physical and procedural embodiment of this essential principle. We now ask how, in practice, it is possible to create a gradually stiffened structure within the context defined by the pattern GOOD MATERIALS (2O7).
Facts about materials give us the starting point we need.
1. Sheet materials are easy to produce and make the best connections.
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