Design Thinking from the 16th Century: The De l'Orme Solution
#Philibert-de-l’Orme
#structure
#Friction
#Pitched-Roof
#sustainability
#thinktank
#Future
#Japan
#Japanese-Earthquakes
When designing a pitched roof, we have a number of choices, stick built, or truss, are the most common, but both need at some point quite large timber sections, and often long lengths.
I started to write this article as a section for my Future page, and it will remain as that, but I realised that it was more than a future item, it was sustainability, Structure, and a classic alternative thinking process, or an article I could so easily add to my ThinkTank website.
When facing the high cost and scarcity of massive structural timber in 16th-century France, architect Philibert de l'Orme didn't seek a bigger budget; he sought a smarter way forward. His masterpiece, the Bois Cintrée system, detailed in his 1561 treatise, “New Inventions for Building Well at Low Cost” is the ultimate challenge to think like an innovative designer. A copy is available on the Internet, in both the original French and as a translated text. a search in Gooogle Scholar will find many different copies, perhaps the best, is an English book, available on Google Books, describing his work, and the discovery of his method, roughly around 1800 not surprising realy as Holland was under French rule at that time and many architects were trained in France.
The Challenge: Resourcefulness Over Raw Power
If you cannot procure large, expensive, old-growth timber beams (Pannes or Cheurons) for a wide-span roof. You are limited to thin, short, common planks (often as short as four feet).
His Goal: Engineer these small, seemingly weak pieces into a single, cohesive, large-span arch capable of bearing the full weight of a roof.. De l'Orme's Solution was the Engineering Fixation from Scratch looking at the forces he would encounter and relying on first-principles physics and geometry to solve a structural problem:
Instead of relying on the tensile strength of one large beam, De l'Orme realized that a gentle curve offers an immense contact area. His short planks are stacked as a dry laminate, with each laminate offset to its nabour, but adding laminate layers all offset to each other multiplying the surface available for connection.
Next, instead of gluing or bonding the laminates together or clamping the laminated together with iron bolts he utilised the Power of the Wedge: and used timber connectors replacing the expensive iron fasteners with simple wooden keys (clefz). These keys, when "strongly driven in with large hammer blows" (chaffees à grands coups de marteau) into the connecting ties (Liernes), generate a massive Normal Force (N). The use of continous small purlins as the connectors, with wedges either side of the laminate truss, together with individual conectors, made the errection a simple matter of connection the planks into simple trusses read to be connects together and clamped by the use of wedges hammered into place.
The laminates were now utilising friction to increase the length of available span from one plank length to several, add the shape to the equasion and sudenly you have a curved roof, clamped together with wedges to lock the hundreds of small pieces into a single, monolithic, load-bearing arch. This results in an "incredible force" within the structure, a non-adhesive, reversible mechanical bond.
De l'Orme: Designed the joint not to resist a force, but to generate the necessary fixing force internally through the application of a simple, reversible mechanical principle, Friction. This approach—utilizing ubiquitous, inexpensive materials and maximizing strength through geometric intelligence and physics—is precisely the spirit driving contemporary modular and digital fabrication projects like WikiHouse.
The fact this simple principle was later copied on many French projects, and later spreading into negbouring Belgium and Holland, many of which are still in existinace, and recoreded in a number of Chataeu repairs, shows the unique and versatile construction method, and sustainability of this design method.
Below I have included two original drawings by Philibert de l’Orme, which I think show the method very clearly.
You might also want to watch the nice little video in Google YouTube showing the repair of the magnificent roof at Chateau Purnon France, which also shows the construction clearly.
included in my hashtags, but a part of my Apple Notes is a link to some Japanese Carpentry methods, and systemic test showing how their timber structures remained in place when concrete and other ridged structuures did not, it was the carpentry that I saw as the link, again do your own research. make your own links
Design Thinking from the 16th Century: The De l'Orme Solution
#Philibert-de-l’Orme
#structure
#Friction
#Pitched-Roof
#sustainability
#thinktank
#Future
#Japan
#Japanese-Earthquakes
When designing a pitched roof, we have a number of choices, stick built, or truss, are the most common, but both need at some point quite large timber sections, and often long lengths.
I started to write this article as a section for my Future page, and it will remain as that, but I realised that it was more than a future item, it was sustainability, Structure, and a classic alternative thinking process, or an article I could so easily add to my ThinkTank website.
When facing the high cost and scarcity of massive structural timber in 16th-century France, architect Philibert de l'Orme didn't seek a bigger budget; he sought a smarter way forward. His masterpiece, the Bois Cintrée system, detailed in his 1561 treatise, “New Inventions for Building Well at Low Cost” is the ultimate challenge to think like an innovative designer. A copy is available on the Internet, in both the original French and as a translated text. a search in Gooogle Scholar will find many different copies, perhaps the best, is an English book, available on Google Books, describing his work, and the discovery of his method, roughly around 1800 not surprising realy as Holland was under French rule at that time and many architects were trained in France.
The Challenge: Resourcefulness Over Raw Power
If you cannot procure large, expensive, old-growth timber beams (Pannes or Cheurons) for a wide-span roof. You are limited to thin, short, common planks (often as short as four feet).
His Goal: Engineer these small, seemingly weak pieces into a single, cohesive, large-span arch capable of bearing the full weight of a roof.. De l'Orme's Solution was the Engineering Fixation from Scratch looking at the forces he would encounter and relying on first-principles physics and geometry to solve a structural problem:
Instead of relying on the tensile strength of one large beam, De l'Orme realized that a gentle curve offers an immense contact area. His short planks are stacked as a dry laminate, with each laminate offset to its nabour, but adding laminate layers all offset to each other multiplying the surface available for connection.
Next, instead of gluing or bonding the laminates together or clamping the laminated together with iron bolts he utilised the Power of the Wedge: and used timber connectors replacing the expensive iron fasteners with simple wooden keys (clefz). These keys, when "strongly driven in with large hammer blows" (chaffees à grands coups de marteau) into the connecting ties (Liernes), generate a massive Normal Force (N). The use of continous small purlins as the connectors, with wedges either side of the laminate truss, together with individual conectors, made the errection a simple matter of connection the planks into simple trusses read to be connects together and clamped by the use of wedges hammered into place.
The laminates were now utilising friction to increase the length of available span from one plank length to several, add the shape to the equasion and sudenly you have a curved roof, clamped together with wedges to lock the hundreds of small pieces into a single, monolithic, load-bearing arch. This results in an "incredible force" within the structure, a non-adhesive, reversible mechanical bond.
De l'Orme: Designed the joint not to resist a force, but to generate the necessary fixing force internally through the application of a simple, reversible mechanical principle, Friction. This approach—utilizing ubiquitous, inexpensive materials and maximizing strength through geometric intelligence and physics—is precisely the spirit driving contemporary modular and digital fabrication projects like WikiHouse.
The fact this simple principle was later copied on many French projects, and later spreading into negbouring Belgium and Holland, many of which are still in existinace, and recoreded in a number of Chatue repairs, shows the unique and versatile construction method, and sustainability of this design method.
Below I have included two original drawings by Philibert de l’Orme, which I think show the method very clearly.
You might also want to watch the nice little video in Google YouTube showing the repair of the magnificent roof at Chateau Purnon France, which also shows the construction clearly.
included in my hashtags, but a part of my Apple Notes is a link to some Japanese Carpentry methods, and systemic test showing how their timber structures remained in place when concrete and other ridged structuures did not, it was the carpentry that I saw as the link, again do your own research. make your own links
