The Archaeological approach

Assumptions

Forms exist as the realization of ideas.

Objects are created embodying both technic and social values.

Technological and social values (fashion?) change over time.

Stratigraphy (vertical superimpostition).Evidence is layered on buildings.

This is true both as a process statement of construction and a sequence of temporally separate building campaigns.

Red Hill, Accomack County

Examine the sequence of building

The walls and then the plaster as a stratigraphic sequence.

The erection of a frame also has a stratigraphic component

Ghost Evidence. The rehabilitation or finish of a building will only be undertaken where it can be seen.

Horizon

The chronologically rapid and geographically broad distribution of complex cultural traits.

A product that is purchased will rapidly respond to fashion and availability.

Tradition – The slow chronological change of formal features within a geographically bounded region. Take sheet metal

A product fabricated or designed locally will be slow to respond to fashion to the extent it requires new techniques or skills.

Terminus post quemThe 19th century factory system of mass production changed the role from a fabricator to an assembler of pre-

cast or shaped part

1. cast plaster in 18th century

2. nails in early 19th

3. iron beams & trusses 1835

4. windows, doors mid-19th

5. sheet metal roofing 1830s

6. facade in cast iron 1840s

7. concrete 1880s (block)

8. aluminum 1910

9. gypsum core wall board 1920s (CaSO4H2O)

10. pheno-formaldehyde resin 1909

11. oil-based plastics 1940s

Reading Buildings

The best place to understand the structure of a building is at the building.

Look for original fabric by seeking trim or form that does not match style prescriptions.

Occam’s razor is the way to bet, but be prepared for surprises.

Expect a hierarchy of room trims. Especially in buildings before the Civil War.

Add-ons and redos are often cosmetic. Look for places without makeup. Closets, Cupboards, attics, crawlspaces. In brick buildings observe closers.

Floor plans are the best way to see the relationships of disparate evidence.

Structural members are less likely to be changed than trim.

Buildings rot from the bottom up. Look for original framing higher in the walls.

The archaeological metaphor. The lower layers of a site must have been deposited first.

Don’t measure every piece of framing (but do look for marks of saws or adze) but always measure the sizes of the openings.

What to write?

Buildings are studied both within their historical context and comparatively across time.

Historical contexts yield descriptions of distinct buildings, comparative study yields types and styles.

Function is an abstraction of use.

Architecture is a special category of structure that has social function.

Buildings are structures that enclose space, whether they have social function or not.

HISP 305

Style, design, function, and construction.

The matters of style are form, proportion, scale, and ornamentation.

Form is restricted to the configuration of the object itself. Form–in theory infinite, but in actual use only a handful of commonly used forms.

a. Ground plans.

b. elevations. (bays)

William Pierson “style embraces the specific identifying characteristics of a building both as the building appears to the eye and as it is known to exist in design and structure. The study of style focuses on the conspicuous characteristics which related buildings.

Style creates a typology and is inevitably immutable.

Style is an architectural consideration, not a construction detail.

As a social function within a consumer society of changing values style is almost completely equivalent to fashion.

American architectural endeavorPractice of architecture as a design process

1. Design proceeds by concepts, proportions, and intended results

2. Yields a plan, not a building

3. craftsperson or owner is often the architect and builder.

Engineers also may participate in the building process. Engineers apply practical concepts physics reckoning forces, loads and stresses on the constituent building parts. Architects and engineers are increasingly differentiated in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Construction is the practice of builders

1. Construction proceeds by a set of linked but separate tasks to finish particular construction details

a. Each task–from layout of the foundation, or deciding what order the building parts should be erected is a construction problem usually with a customary solution.

2. “Construction is the domain of the independent artisan or the master artisan with a small shop of journeymen and apprentices.”

a. Whether the crafts person was a bricklayer, carpenter, stone mason, or later an electrician, concrete worker, steelworker, or plumber–crafts have special solutions to the requirements of a job.

3. Until the 1850s builders both fabricated and then assembled the building.