Isambard Brunel – British Engineering Genius

The greatest British engineer Marc Brunel had married Sophia Kingdom, and their only son was a chip of the old block. He was deeply involved with his father's engineering projects while still in his teens; he went on to achieve ever more ambitious engineering projects.

He was born in that great centre of naval engineering: Portsmouth, England, in 1806. At the age of 14 he was sent away to France to complete his education, and by the age of 20 he took the place of the resident engineer (by then in failing health) on his father's Thames Tunnel project.

While recuperating from the serious injuries he sustained on that project, Isambard started working on designs for a great suspension bridge over the Avon Gorge. One of his designs was eventually accepted, and the Clifton Suspension Bridge was built, though owing to financial constraints it was not completed until after his death.

Meanwhile he was working as a dock engineer, and designed a number of important docks, including those at Plymouth and Milford Haven.

The railways were coming! There were already a number of designs for static engines and locomotive engines, and in the famous Rainhill trials of 1829 the “Rocket” locomotive, designed by George Stephenson, triumphed. Young Isambard became fascinated by the possibilities of this new technology, and started producing various designs for locomotives - not very successfully, it must be said - and railway tracks.

Then in 1833 he became chief engineer to the Great Western Railway. In this capacity, he oversaw the laying of more than 1000 miles (1600km) of railway track in various parts of England, Wales and Ireland. He was also involved in the construction of railway lines in Italy, and had an advisory role in the construction of lines in Australia, and the Eastern Bengal Railway in India.

One of his innovations in the construction of railway bridges was his use of compressed-air techniques, particularly in underwater and underground projects.

Of all the bridges Isambard designed and built, his greatest achievement is considered to be the Tamar bridge, a railway bridge across the River Tamar near Plymouth, England. The Tamar bridge features a central pier built on a rock, some 80 feet (24m) above the high-water mark. The bridge opened in 1859, the year of his death.

Not content with transporting people and goods by railway from London to Bristol, he started designing vessels to take them from England to America. The three ships which he built (the “Great Western” in 1837, the “Great Britain” in 1843, and the “Great Eastern” in 1858) were each the largest in the world at the date of launching.

The “Great Western” was a paddle vessel built of wood, and was the first transatlantic steamship in regular service. She crossed from Bristol to New York in 15 days, and remained in service for 30 years, making 30 crossings in the first eight years alone.

The “Great Britain” was built of iron. She was the first large vessel to be driven by a screw propeller, and the first such vessel to cross the Atlantic. Designed to carry 250 passengers, 130 crew, and 1, 200 tonnes of cargo, she made her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York in 1845.

Like the “Great Western”, she remained in service for 30 years, voyaging as far afield as San Francisco, California, and making regular voyages to Australia.

In 1866, badly damaged off Cape Horn, the “Great Britain” managed to limp across to the Falkland Islands. There she lay for almost 100 years, refusing to rot, until salvaged by a group of enthusiasts who towed the ship to Montevideo, Uruguay.

From there she was towed all the way back to the Bristol dock where she had been made 127 years earlier. The “Great Britain” remains there to this day as a tourist attraction and a registered museum.

The “Great Eastern” was an enormous ship with both paddles and screw, and was the first ship with a double iron hull. She was built on the Thames, and was designed to carry 4000 passengers. But she had many problems, and on the 15 September, 1859, she was damaged by an explosion on board. Isambard Brunel, worn out and in failing health after years of worry and work, was told of the explosion. He died later the same day. The “Great Eastern” was, however, repaired, and went on to achieve fame as the ship which laid the first successful transatlantic cable.

Other projects Brunel worked on included improved designs for large guns, as well as a floating armoured barge used in 1854 during the Crimean War. He also designed a complete prefabricated hospital building that was shipped to the Crimea in sections, in 1855, and reassembled there for use by the celebrated nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale.

The late 18th Century and the 19th Century saw an era that bred many great innovative engineers. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was the last of that particular breed, and probably the greatest.

 

Ответьте на вопросы по тексту:

1. What was Isambard Brunel’s father?

2. When was Brunel sent away to France to complete his education?

3. When did he become chief engineer to the Great Western Railway?

4. What techniques did Brunel use in the construction of railway bridge?

5. What railway bridge was Brunel’s great achievement?

6. What do you know about a large vessel “Great Britain”?

7. What do you know about an enormous ship “Great Eastern”?

Вариант 4

Текст 1

London Bridge

The first 'London Bridge' was built by the Romans in around 50AD when the River Thames was three times wider than it is today. They chose the first place along the River Thames that was suitable to bridge. A pair of gravel hills divided by a small stream and surrounded by streams and bogs must have appeared to be easily defensible on the north bank, with firm footing on the other side, and a natural narrowing of the river here. It was made of timber, and was slightly downstream from the current bridge.

Once the Romans left, the bridge fell into disrepair and was rebuilt many times over the next 1000 years. The next record of a bridge was in 984. In 1014 it was pulled down in the fight against the Danes who were occupying London. A storm in 1091 carried it away as the Thames rose with flood water, and it burned down in 1136.

A new stone bridge was begun in 1176 and was designed by the monk, Peter of Colechurch, to replace the old wooden bridges. It lasted over 600 years as the only crossing over the Thames in London. It spanned the river on 20 arches, and had a drawbridge about a third of the way across so that large ships could pass through. The bridge was home to houses (building started on the houses before the bridge was complete), shops, a chapel, and gatehouses at both ends. It even boasted one of the new 'public conveniences' when they arrived a century later. It was finished in 1209, and was said to be 900 feet long and 20 feet wide. Peter did not live to see his creation finished. Dwellings were up to four storeys high, and documents in 1358 show that there were 138 shops on the bridge at that time. The bridge was so crowded that there were only three places where visitors could gather to look over the edge of the bridge. It was funded by the rent from the properties, and Bridge House Estates, a charity to which 'pious gifts of land and money' were given to 'God and the Bridge.' The same trust also manages Tower Bridge.

The arches were 30 feet wide and 20 feet apart, and the elm piers stood on 19 small islands of stone and brushwood called starlings, which were there to protect the bridge from erosion and collision. As they were strengthened with more stone over time, the channels between them gradually narrowed, creating white water rapids at high tide. This caused the river upstream to slow down so much that it froze solidly enough to hold Frost Fairs on the river itself.

This power was tapped at both ends of the bridge in the 1580s, with large waterwheels built into the first arch on the north side. This provided water to the local area. By 1720 there were four, in the two arches nearest the bank at each side; grinding corn at the southern end. This increased the speed of the river flowing through the remaining arches. Most people travelling the river got off the boat at one side of the bridge, and caught another one on the other side. It was possible to 'shoot the bridge', but only if the tide was just right.

The bridge was so busy that in 1722 an order was made that all traffic should travel on the left. Although this didn't relieve the congestion much, it became the rule of the road that still exists today.

Between 1758 and 1762 the houses and shops were removed, and two arches were replaced by one central arch by the removal of one pier to allow larger ships to pass through. Westminster Bridge had been built by this time, and a new London Bridge was already being considered. A temporary wooden bridge was erected over the gap in the middle, but this burned down twice. The watermen increased the number of boats to prevent the city being entirely cut off from the south side, but fallen beams were causing an obstruction. 500 workmen worked on the replacement bridge, every day of the week, and finally the gap was bridged, with a distinct lack of buildings on it. The central arch still created rough waters, with eddies in the water causing danger to anyone trying to travel through. It also began to scour the river bottom, and the adjacent piers were in danger of being undermined.

In the 1820s a new bridge was built, opening in 1831. This was made of granite from Dartmoor, and was built 180 feet upstream of the old bridge. The bridge had five arches, and was 928 feet long and 49 feet wide. The centre arch had a 152 feetspan.

Once the bridge was opened, the old bridge was demolished in 1830. A cutler on the Strand bought all the steel traps that had strengthened the steelwork and made cutlery out of them. The elm timbers that were part of the bridge were turned into souvenirs such as snuffboxes. Two stone shelters that had been on the bridge are now at Victoria Park, Hackney, by St Augustine's Gate.

Sadly, as the chapel was dismantled, Peter of Colechurch's bones were discovered and tossed into the river. His bridge had passed the test of time, so maybe it is fitting that he now rests in the river that he helped to tame.

The bridge was widened in 1902, because the traffic had increased to serve the commuter. Stairs led down to the river on both sides - stairs which still exist today, although hidden in the new bridge.

This bridge only lasted 140 years (despite surviving two world wars) because it had been sinking into the London clay since it was built due to its immense weight. The southern end had sunk 12 inches on completion, and had continued to sink at a rate of one inch every eight years. Increased traffic in the 1960s meant that some of the piers were lower by three to four inches on one side. The government decided to put it up for sale, and Robert McCulloch (McCulloch Oil Corporation), an American from Arizona, bought it in 1971 for Ј1, 025, 000 ($2.46 million) - a fair price for the 'world's largest antique.' Disassembled over three years, the bricks were coded so that they could be put back in exactly the same place (some of the bricks were discovered to have an older code on them - Rennie had used the same system when he brought the bricks from Dartmoor), and sent to Arizona to be reassembled over a specially-created river near Lake Havasu in 1967.

The story goes that as so many people associate the sight of Tower Bridge with London, they think it is London Bridge, and this American bought the wrong one. As urban legends go, it gives the English a great chance to mock the stupidity of another nation. The businessman knew exactly what he was buying however, and the previously tiny Lake Havasu City is now a major tourist resort, featuring the 'world-famous London Bridge.'

The 'new' bridge was opened on 16 March, 1973 by HM Queen Elizabeth II, and is made of concrete - probably one of the plainest of the incarnations, and of the bridges currently across the Thames. It was built section-by-section as the old bridge was dismantled so that traffic was not disrupted. The new outside lanes were built around the old bridge, and then the interior built as the old stones were removed - traffic moved to the outside lanes. Technology of the time meant that it only needed two supporting piers in the river, and the caissons (foundations) are hollow to allow essential services to cross the river. The sides are made of granite, and are topped with a stainless steel handrail. The pavements are heated in the winter.

 

Ответьте на вопросы по тексту:

1. Who built the first “London Bridge”?

2. What happened to London Bridge when Romans left England?

3. Who designed a new stone bridge in 1176?

4. How many shops were there on the bridge in 1358?

5. When were the houses and shops removed from the bridge?

6. What part of the bridge was turned into souvenirs?

7. What is Lake Havasu City famous for?

Текст 2

United States Capitol

Copied dozens of times in smaller state capitols across the country, the U.S. Capitol is the real thing. Inside this 19th century neoclassical complex the Senate and the House of Representatives create the laws that govern the nation. Like many other buildings in Washington, DC – and in capitals around the world – the U.S. Capitol is based on ancient Greek and Roman designs.

The south wing of the building contains the chambers of the House of Representatives. The north wing is home to the Senate. They meet at the Rotunda, under a grand dome, famed for its odd acoustics and less so for its 108 windows. The dome is 180 feet three inches tall and 96 feet wide on the inside. On the outside, it is topped by the Statue of Freedom. Beneath the dome is the National Statuary Hall, which contains some of the nation's most important paintings and sculptures of significant historic figures. Above, the dome is decorated with a fresco called " The Apotheosis of Washington" by Constantino Brumidi.

Before this was an open area for public gathering and formal ceremonies, it once served as the chamber of the House. Before then, it was just a wooden passageway. Construction of the capitol was perpetually behind schedule, and no part of the building was completed before it was occupied by various government offices. By 1813 there was a north wing and a south wing, but not much else except the aforementioned wooden passageway. The architect at the time left town proclaiming the capitol " a most magnificent ruin."

The British thought it needed to be ruined a little more, and tried to burn the place down in 1814. Damage was sufficient that congress had to relocate to a hotel, and then a temporary building now known as the " Old Brick Capitol." This wasn't the first catastrophe to befall the building. In 1898 a gas explosion and fire ripped through the north wing.

The Capitol sits 88 feet above the Potomac River level on 120.2 acres of land formerly part of the state of Maryland. Daniel Carroll of Duddington was paid £ 25 an acre for the land. Before it was Maryland, the District of Columbia was part of the territory of the Manahoacs and Monacans sub tribes of the Algonquin Indians.

The Capitol building has been through a number of architects for a number of reasons. Politics, money, and the simple passage of time caused many men's great ambitions and dreams to come into vogue then fade as political fortunes changed. The first major expansion of the capitol was planned in 1850 because the addition of new states meant new senators, representatives, and their staffs.

Thomas U. Walter was charged with the project, and he undertook the task of expanding the north and south wings and replacing the original 1824 wood and copper dome with one made of cast iron. This dome had the advantage of being fireproof, but the disadvantage of weighing 8, 909, 200 pounds. It is supported by 5, 214, 000 pounds of masonry on top of the Rotunda walls. The wood from the old dome was burned to power steam derricks to lift the new dome. The new dome had to be redesigned when the Statue of Freedom arrived from Rome. Instead of being 16 feet nine inches tall, it was 19 feet six inches tall. The platform it sits on had to be widened and the overall dome height reduced from 300 feet to 287 feet.

Walter's workload increased further in 1851 when a fire gutted the portion of the building housing the Library of Congress. Other difficulties also stood in his way. The building's original sandstone had deteriorated significantly. So for his restoration, he went with marble from Maryland and Massachusetts.

The ghost of a worker killed when he fell from the dome while building the Capitol has been reported floating around the rotunda carrying a tray of tools.

The ghost of a worker sealed alive into the walls of the Capitol has been reported in the Senate chamber.

On one occasion, a guard reported that the statues in the rotunda came to life and moved around the room. The sighting of the spirit of a black cat in the basement has been known to precede national tragedies like assassinations and stock market crashes. The same thing is said of a spirit cat in the basement of the White House. It is unknown if this is the same phantom, or a confusion of the tales. The ghost of a soldier has been seen in the rotunda. He salutes, then vanishes.

• The cornerstone of the Capitol was laid 18 September 1793 by President George Washington.

• Running water was installed in 1832.

• Gaslights were installed in the 1840s.

• Electric lights were installed in the 1880s.

• The first elevator was installed in 1874.

• The ceilings of the House and Senate chambers are stainless steel covered with plaster.

• Before there was a capitol in Washington, DC, congress met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; York, Pennsylvania; Princeton, New Jersey; Annapolis, Maryland; Trenton, New Jersey; and New York.

• During the Civil War, the Capitol building was used as a military barracks, hospital, and a bakery.

• The capitol is 751 feet high, four inches long and 350 feet wide.

• It is 288 feet tall.

• There are 540 rooms with 658 windows and 850 doorways.

• During renovation in the 1980s more than 30 layers of paint had to be removed.

• Flags have flown over the eastern and western fronts of the building 24 hours a day since World War I.

• The Capitol grounds were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed New York's Central Park.

• There are more than one hundred types of plants on the Capitol grounds.

• More than 30 states have sent ceremonial trees to be planted there.

 

Ответьте на вопросы по тексту:

1. Where is the U. S. Capitol situated?

2. What chambers does the south wing of the building contain?

3. What is home to the Senate?

4. What is a grand dome famous for?

5. What is dome decorated with?

6. When was the first major expansion of the Capitol?

7. What ghosts are there in the Capitol?

Текст 3

The British Library

For many years the British Library has been among the world's leading resources for scholarship and general research. Karl Marx is just one of a number of celebrated, and not-so-celebrated, thinkers and heretics who, over the years, have availed themselves of this unique facility. Now comfortably ensconced - at long last - in its new home at St Pancras in central London, the library is comparable with other great national institutions such as the American Library of Congress and the Bibliothè que Nationale de Paris.

Since the library opened in 1997 the response to the design from readers has been very favourable. The Reading Rooms are comfortable, well lit and beautifully spacious - and, of course, almost completely silent: there is a ban on mobile phones and the insulation shuts out the noise of the traffic from Euston Road. In fact, the library has been an aesthetic as well as a practical success from the point of view of the average reader, although of course some will always pine for the lovely old North Reading Room at Bloomsbury. There's no pleasing everyone...

Although most of the various component parts of the library have existed in one form or another for more than a century, the idea of bringing them together to form a single unit is a relatively recent one. In fact, it is only since a 1972 Act of Parliament that they have officially been considered as a single entity at all - before then the various libraries were simply separate institutions in their own right, dispersed in various areas around London. In 1951 the County of London first considered the possibility of moving the old humanities resources out of their home in the British Museum at Bloomsbury and into a building of their own.

Originally, there was a plan to construct a new building near the British Museum. However, the lack of space for future expansion and a growing desire to see the various sections of the library united in a single collection led to the selection of a new site a few miles up the road at St Pancras. The inevitable problem of future expansion has been resolved by the fact that the library also owns the patch of wasteland to the rear of the building, and this has been earmarked for storage and other purposes in the future.

After more than 30 years of political, economic and other assorted wrangling, the project finally reached its completion. The new library opened its doors to readers in 1997, to the general public in 1998, and finally completed all its moving around a year later in 1999. Currently, all the diverse collections (that were previously known collectively as the British Library in name only) are housed on this one single site. The British Library at St Pancras consists of resources drawn from all over London, including the material from the British Museum and the science resources from the old Patent Office in Chancery Lane.

The building was designed by the architect Colin St John Wilson. It is characterised by an asymmetrical shape that reflects the varying needs of different kinds of readers in the different parts of the building. The building has a red-brick facade that was designed to complement other well-established features in the surrounding environment. For example, the bricks were specially chosen and came from the same quarry that provided the bricks for the adjacent St Pancras station, a rather ostentatious Gothic structure built in the mid-Victorian period when such things were still in fashion.

The Piazza to the front of the building provides a welcome break from the busy Euston Road outside. It also serves as a public space in its own right, being openly accessible to the public and providing a place for activities such as occasional poetry readings and other small-scale performances in the small amphitheatre to the front of the Piazza.

There are a number of free exhibitions at the British Library permanently on view to the public. There is a gallery with national and world treasures on view such as Magna Carta, Shakespeare's First Folio and the Lindisfarne Gospels. Another area has been set aside for temporary exhibitions. There is also a kind of 'workshop' which enables visitors to have a go at some of the more practical elements involved in putting a book together.

The King's Library is an interesting curiosity. Its contents, the library of King George III, were given to the British Museum in the 19th Century by his son, King George IV, on the condition that they should remain on view to the public (not just to privileged readers) at all times. Bearing in mind that some of the material is very valuable, this prerequisite was a complication that the architect Wilson had to solve. He overcame the problem by putting the collection in a large, tinted (locked! ) glass case rising up to the central part of the library from the ground floor to the upper levels. It thus symbolises the immense collection underground, and also serves a working part of the library itself. The books themselves, of course, however, can only be studied in the Rare Books Reading Room, by those with a special pass.

With the exception of the open access science material and some humanities reference books (see below), almost all of the library's resources are stored underground in basement areas that are kept at a constant temperature and humidity. There are four levels to the underground basement area, each of which, according to the architect Wilson, takes up a space approximately equivalent to the size of Wembley football pitch.

The vast storage space available means that almost all of the collection can be stored onsite, whereas previously much of the material had to be ordered from storage areas elsewhere. Naturally, as a reader, one sees the benefit of this, having previously had to wait for up to a couple of days for a book, but now receiving most material within an hour of ordering it.

The Reading Rooms themselves are the only parts of the library (apart from the basements, of course) that are not open to the general public - one needs to apply for a special pass to get in. They are divided into two broad areas, namely the Humanities Reading Room in the central area of the building and the Science Reading Room on the east wing, with each room being on three levels.

The rooms have been designed to reflect the varying needs of different kinds of researcher. The basic assumption underpinning their design is that researchers in the sciences tend to need quick reference materials which are often consulted briefly and are not held on to for very long, whereas humanities researchers tend to stay longer and read more deeply into their material.

Therefore, the Science Reading Room comprises a long central stack of open access material which can be quickly and easily consulted 'on the spot', as it were, with the reader's desk areas flanking this central area to either side and lit mainly by natural light coming in from side windows. The Humanities Reading Room, by contrast, contains a limited amount of reference material on open access shelves to the outer contours of the rooms - most books have to be ordered from the basements below - with the main reading areas in the centre. Once again the reading areas are lit primarily by natural light, which in this case comes from large skylights in the roof of the building.

 

Ответьте на вопросы по тексту:

1. Where is the British Library situated?

2. Why did the plan to construct a new building near the British Museum fail?

3. When did a new library open its doors?

4. What resources does the British Library consist of?

5. Who designed the building of a new library?

6. What is the building of the British Library characterized by?

7. What do you know about the library of King George III?

Вариант 5

Текст 1

The Forth Road Bridge

Travel between Scotland's capital city, Edinburgh, and the major cities of East Scotland has always been complicated by the difficulties imposed by the necessity of negotiating the estuary of the River Forth.

The main crossing of the Firth of Forth for travellers heading north from Edinburgh was by the ferry, which was established between the villages of South and North Queensferry¹ sometime in the 11th or 12th Centuries. This ferry was, especially in early years, at the mercy of the elements, rendering timetables unreliable. In later years it was increasingly unable to cope with the volume of traffic occasioned by the appearance of the motor car. By the mid 1950s, the ferry was the busiest in Scotland, with four ferries carrying 1, 500, 000 people, 600, 000 cars and 200, 000 goods vehicles, making over 40, 000 crossings each year.

Individual travel between the major cities was well catered for by the opening of the Forth Rail Bridge in 1890, but the first major road link across the Forth did not appear until the completion of the Kincardine Bridge in 1936.

Serious proposals for a road bridge over the Forth near Queensferry had been put forward from as early as the beginning of the 19th Century, but it was not until 1958 that work began on the new bridge.

Before any construction could take place, the bridge had to be designed. This task was given to Freeman, Fox and partners, the chief designer for this project being Sir Gilbert Roberts.

Once the plans were complete, the first major task was to prepare the foundations for the main towers by sinking piles 35m through the clay of the riverbed, to reach bedrock which was levelled by underwater blasting. Upon these piles, two towers were erected in sections. A total of some 6000 tons of high-tensile steel was required for each tower.

Once the two towers were completed, the next stage was to spin the main suspension cables between them. This operation was achieved by hanging a cable supporting the cable spinning wheel between the towers and spinning the cables in situ. Each cable consists of 11, 618 parallel high-tensile steel wires, amounting to 610mm in diameter. Despite the machine's capability to spin up to 50 miles of cable in each day (in good weather conditions), it took almost nine months for this part of the operation to be completed.

Similar cables led from each main tower to side towers, one on each shore, and from these to massive anchorages tunnelled into bedrock and wedged into position. Suspender cables were then fitted to the main cables, and the trusses to support the main deck could begin to take shape.

The main deck is actually split into four separate carriageways: the outside pair for pedestrians and cyclists, the central pair for vehicles, with gaps between each carriageway. These gaps, and the open latticework design of the supporting trusses, were carefully designed to achieve aerodynamic stability and prevent a repeat of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster.

Some Statistics

· At the time of construction it was the largest suspension bridge in Europe, and together with the approach viaducts is over 2.5km long.

· The bridge has a central span of over 1km between its two main towers. The side-spans, which carry the deck to the side towers, are each 408m long.

· The main towers reach 156m above mean river level, and the sag of the cables between the towers is approximately 91m. The clearance for shipping below the deck of the main span ranges from 46m close to the towers to 50m at mid-river.

· Some 39, 000 tons of steel and 115, 000 cubic metres of concrete were used in the construction of the bridge.

· The total cost of the bridge including the approach roads was £ 19, 500, 000.

On 4 September, 1964, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II declared the bridge officially open. The combination of elegance and slenderness allied to a sense of fitness of purpose has resulted in a beautiful balance with its more massive neighbour, the Rail Bridge.

On 3 April, 2001 the Forth Road Bridge was listed as a category 'A' building. Since the bridge was opened, the permitted weight of commercial vehicles using the roads in Scotland has been increased from 24 tons to 44 tonnes.

In the first full year of operations (1965), the bridge carried 4, 600, 000 vehicles, but by 1996 (the last year of two-way tolls) this had jumped to 20, 300, 000 per year. One-way figures for 2001 indicate 11, 300, 000 northbound vehicles².

In order to accommodate both the heavier vehicles and the large increase in the number of vehicles using the bridge, certain parts of the structure have been strengthened in recent years. Extra protection has also been provided to the main tower piers at river-level, and all of the hanger ropes supporting the bridge deck have been renewed.

Suspender cables were then fitted to the main cables, and the trusses to support the main deck could begin to take shape.

Whatever is finally decided, one thing is certain - any designer of a future Forth bridge will have a very difficult task to live up to the standard established by the present examples.

 

Ответьте на вопросы по тексту:

1. Where is the Forth Road Bridge situated?

2. Why was the ferry unable to cope with the volume of traffic?

3. Who designed the Forth Road Bridge?

4. How many tons of high-tensile steel was required for each bridge tower?

5. How many cubic metres of concrete were used in the construction of the bridge?

6. What is the total cost of the bridge?

7. When was the Forth Road Bridge listed as a category “A” building?

Текст 2

The Kaufmann Desert House

The Kaufmann Desert House, situated in Palm Springs, Southern California, was designed by architect Richard Neutra and built between 1946 and 1947. The house was conceived as the perfect summer retreat, set amid a breathtaking desert landscape, and has come to be regarded as one of the finest examples of the mid-century Modernist house ever built in the United States.

Approached from a distance, the Desert House maintains a very low profile, rising only marginally above the desert in which it sits, and yet this is in fact a sizeable house, with pool, guest wing and servants' quarters. The house is a constructed as a series of horizontal planes appearing to float over transparent glass walls, and as a result the structure has a very light and transient presence. Furthermore, Neutra's choice of materials (dry-joint stone walls, stucco finish) and reluctance to stray from the desert colour palette allow the uncompromisingly Modern building to integrate entirely congruously with its surroundings.

The house is arranged over two levels, and the upper of these is little more than a sheltered roof terrace. Despite the resulting low-lying stance, the composition of the house is strongly three-dimensional, the vertical dynamics remaining just as vital as the horizontal - enhanced perhaps by the slight slope in the terrain and the siting of the pool at a somewhat lower level than the house.

In plan, the Desert House consists of four wings, pin-wheeling out from a central chimney, which provides a focus and an anchor for the house. The wings are bounded by little more than the sliding glass walls, allowing the interior space to flow continuously into the exterior patios. This movement, along with the roof terrace and the poolside, elegantly obviates the distinction between inside and out, and between house and landscape - an effect which seems entirely apposite in the context of a summer house, and indeed one amid a dramatic setting.

Neutra's client for the Desert House was Edgar J. Kaufmann. A department store owner, and clearly a man of considerable taste, it was Kaufmann who a decade earlier had commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build Fallingwater in Bear Run, Pennsylvania, perhaps the most famous private house in the world¹. In turn, the Desert House took on a similarly iconic status to its predecessor, becoming - not least through the highly evocative photography of Julius Shulman - a further symbol of the 'American Dream.'

Richard Neutra was born in Vienna in April, 1892 and studied architecture in Vienna and Zurich, before emigrating to the United States in 1929, subsequently working as an assistant to Frank Lloyd Wright himself. Having settled in Southern California, Neutra developed 'an especially appropriate regional architecture, adding a new dimension and direction to the several regional design systems in that area'.

Later in his career, Neutra completed commissions for office developments, churches and cultural centres - however, it is his houses for which he will continue to be best remembered: alongside the Desert House, major commissions included the Lovell Beach 'Health' House (Los Angeles, 1928) and the Tremaine House (Santa Barbara, 1948). It was through these houses that Neutra introduced the international style of Modernism to the United States from Europe, arguably paving the way for the acceptance by American clients of seminal building designs by fellow Modernist architects including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. The Kaufmann Desert House is held to represent something of a pinnacle in Neutra's career - it is the complete house, and a truly elegant response to context and surroundings.

Richard Neutra passed away in April 1970, and by the mid-1990s the Kaufmann Desert House had been extensively modified by works carried out by successive owners in the decades since it was built. Large extensions had been built on, almost doubling the size of the house and significantly compromising the spirit of Neutra's work.

Happily, the decision was finally made by rather more enlightened owners that the house should be returned to its original condition. The refurbishment was carried out between 1994 and 1998 in the more than capable hands of California architects Leonardo Marmol and Ronald Radziner, who took as their guide Julius Shulman's famous 1947 photographs. The later additions were removed and the garden was reverted to the indigenous desert planting which Neutra had intended. The addition of a largely concealed heating and air-conditioning system brought the house up to contemporary living standards while compromising none of the architect's vision. The refurbishment won numerous awards for Marmol Radziner - but more importantly, the Kaufman Desert House has finally been allowed to serve as a fitting legacy to the career of a Modern master.

 

Ответьте на вопросы по тексту:

1. Where is the Kaufmann Desert House situated?

2. When was it built?

3. Who designed the Kaufmann Desert House?

4. What does the Desert House consist of?

5. What was Edgar J. Kaufmann?

6. What architectural style did Neutra introduce to the United States from Europe?

7. Who refurbished the Kaufmann Desert House between 1994 and 1998?

Текст 3

The Story of Cement

It's more than likely that you don't think about cement very much at all, even though it sticks most of the urban environment together. It must surely be one of the most taken for granted man-made products around. It's a grey powder that is mixed with sand and water to make a mortar that's perfect for bonding bricks and stones together. It's also mixed with sand, water and aggregates to make concrete.

... In Mesopotamia, the dressed stones used for buildings were sometimes stuck together with lime mortars. Lime is simply made by heating up limestone to drive out the water, then the stone is ground to a powder. Later sand is added for extra strength and is mixed with water to form a paste that slowly hardens. The ancient Greeks and Egyptians continued this practice (yes, The Pyramids are stuck together with a mortar that uses lime as a cement).

The Romans later found that adding clay to the lime mortar made it set quicker and it formed a strong material. They also found that adding volcanic ash (a silicate material) had the same effect. However, many of the Roman methods were lost through the ages, but all round the world lime continued to be used as a cement. Some of these small-scale producers will surely have included clay and other materials to add strength and to control the setting, much as the Romans had done.

In the mid-18th Century, an English engineer, Smeaton, was commissioned to build a lighthouse on the partially-submerged rocks 14 miles off the coast of Plymouth, England. In his effort to build a longer-lasting structure, he took great care in selecting his lime from the many varieties available and he re-introduced the Roman practise of adding a silicaceous material. His Eddystone Lighthouse was so successful that the progress of cement went ahead apace with many people experimenting by adding different materials and types of lime.

However, these lime-based silicate cements and the mortars that were used were not very strong and took a long time to set. As the Napoleonic era began, at the end of the 18th Century, there was a demand for the quick construction of strong buildings for the military, such as forts, harbours and barracks. The French, the British and engineers in many other countries were building furiously for their armies and navies and great rewards were in prospect for anyone finding a material that would enable faster building work and stronger structures.

As the 18th Century came to a close, a type of limestone was discovered that contained naturally the right amount of clay. When these special 'cement stones' were fired in the same way as traditional lime, they produced a cement that was strong and fast-setting. These 'natural cements' were first found as single, unattached rocks or 'nodules' on the Isle of Sheppey in the UK and near Bordeaux in France. Similar rocks were soon found elsewhere around the coasts of England, France, Russia and Germany and cements made from them were a great and immediate commercial success. Very soon other deposits of suitable limestones were found, and mines opened up to exploit the deposits, notably in New York State, where the mine owners were able to supply the construction of the fast-growing city of New York using the purpose-built Hudson and Delaware Canal system.

Deposits of suitable limestone were not always so conveniently located and the rush was on to manufacture an artificial material to compete with natural cements. Working in France for the military, Vicat was among the first to come up with a method of mixing clay and limestone to the right proportions and he also discovered the correct firing temperature for the mixture. He was instrumental in setting up the first cement factory near Paris in 1816. Very early in the 1820s English and German engineers and scientists developed similar methods and it was an Englishman, Aspdin, who first used the name 'Portland' Cement because of the similarity in colour of this latest version of cement to the Portland stone of Dorset in England, used for a lot of construction work at the time.

From the 1820s to the 1880s there existed thousands of small factories producing different types of natural cement, artificial portland cement and limes, each with its own characteristics of strength, setting time and colour.

In the 1860s there was another landmark change in the history of cement. Instead of using the traditional vertical kilns of the lime industry, manufacturers began using a new rotating horizontal kiln, which enabled higher burning temperatures and a consistent product. The cement produced using this method was much stronger and faster-setting than its predecessors, and could be produced to much tighter quality standards. It also required a much greater capital investment, a circumstance which mitigated against many small traditional family firms in favour of larger companies. By the 1920s this new Ordinary Portland Cement had by far the greater part of the market, and is the root of the modern family of materials that we blithely call cement, manufactured, almost exclusively, by giant multi-national corporations.

It truly is a family - there is the Ordinary Portland Cement, the common grey stuff; there are white cements; sulphate-resisting cements made to resist seawater; high strength cements; high alumina cements, that become very strong very quickly; and dense cements suitable for constructions such as nuclear reactors. Also, a few lime and natural cements are available, that are used for restoration work and are sometimes favoured in place of more highly engineered products of the fuel-hungry cement industry.

 

Ответьте на вопросы по тексту:

1. What is cement?

2. Why is sand added to the lime?

3. Where were “natural cement” found first?

4. Who set up the first cement factory in 1816?

5. How many cement factories did exist from the 1820s to the 1880s?

6. What landmark change was there in the history of cement in the 1860s?

7. What kinds of cement do you know?

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