SELF-FORMING MASONRY COMPRESSION VAULTS

A Simple Method of Prefabricating Thin-Shell Masonry Vaults Without Falsework

The Great Uruguayan engineer Eladio Diestes extraordinary brick architecture teaches us that masonry vaults are neither primitive, antique, nor obsolete1. Like Antoni Gaudi before him, he provides a stunning reminder that true innovation springs from the well of the past - that originality means going back to the origins. Diestes work demonstrates for us the essential and stunning efficiency of brick compression structures: a properly designed compression vault acts as a structural shell. As such, minimal materials are required to provide both structure and space enclosure, while at the same time providing high thermal mass and low embodied energy in a fireproof construction of great strength, longevity, and beauty. Properly shaped, loaded, and supported, a vaults load-carrying capacity is huge, limited only by the crushing strength of its material. Fired bricks are very powerful materials in compression. Bricks are stronger, lighter and more fire resistant than reinforced concrete, and they have a very long service life, actually growing more beautiful with age. The space created by such structures also reminds us how the play of light across the curved surface of a brick vault offers a famously satisfying form of architectural pleasure. The fundamental structural efficiencies and tremendous architectural potential shown by Diestes work offers the tantelizing prospect of a contemporary rebirth of this ancient structural form. Any such rebirth, however, must meet the economic realities of existing building culture and local economies. This challenge was compelling enough for us at the University of Manitobas Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology (C.A.S.T.) to think a bit further about the actual prospects for a new compressive masonry architecture. There are, after all, no technical impediments standing in the way of such a rebirth. The material and structural science is fundamental and well known, and existing software can provide structural analysis and three-dimensional modeling of shell structures (a well developed field in its own right). The difficulties are, instead, economic. The problem at hand is to overcome the financial penalty imposed by masonrys labor intensive nature and, perhaps more crucially, the difficulty and expense of constructing properly curved falseworks. If these impediments could be overcome then the exploration of a new masonry architecture might be very practical indeed. Following earlier work at C.A.S.T. in the simple generation and construction of efficiently curved structural members2, it appeared to us that a way forward might indeed be possible. This article describes the results of a recent research project done by Neil Prakash as part of his Masters of Architecture Thesis at the University of Manitobas Department of Architecture and the Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology (20042005). This work was done under the supervision of Mark West in collaboration with Mr. Fariborz Hashemian, PEng, MSc, and PhD Candidate U of M Civil Engineering and C.A.S.T., the Chilean architect Ronnie Araya (C.A.S.T. Visiting Researcher 04-05), Brian Gebhardt, Master Mason and teacher, with his students at Red River College (RRC) in Winnipeg, and with the advise of Gus Kotoulas of Alpha Masonry. This work received financial support from the Canadian Masonry Research Institute (CMRI) and in-kind support from RRC. This work has invented, developed, and proven a simple and practical method of pre-fabricating thin-shell masonry vaults without the need for rigid falsework. These are literally self-forming thin-shell structures that can be prefabricated on or off site. Because they are light, modular, and transportable, we believe that these masonry constructions are capable of being shipped and installed as economical structural and architectural components (not unlike the way pre-cast hollow-core concrete planks are currently sold and installed). Though the work shown here is certainly preliminary, it nevertheless directly answers the major impediments to the development and exploration of a new, efficient, and economical compression-based masonry architecture.

THE METHOD
After constructing several small-scale physical models and a 2 meter (7 ft) span test prototype at the University of Manitobas C.A.S.T. laboratory, a 6 meter (20 ft.) prototype vault was constructed at the Red River College Masonry facilities in Winnipeg MB, Canada 10 . This method, which follows earlier structural form research at C.A.S.T.1, uses a flexible hammock to support the masonry units. Because the supporting hammock can only offer resistance in pure tension, the bricks are suspended in a perfect funicular curve, thus forming what is essentially an upside-down thin-shell vault. By this method the vault literally forms itself in space by its own dead weight, completely eliminating the labor and skill of calculating, laying out, and constructing a supporting falsework. One needs only supply the flexible supporting hammock to hold the bricks. The hammock structure is suspended from a pair of steel bars supported between two low parallel walls 1 . The hammocks support bars are free to rotate at either end of these supporting walls, allowing the hammock to assume a pure tension geometry, free of any bending or torsion stresses 2 . After the bricks (held apart by spacers) have been placed on the supporting hammock and their natural funicular geometry arrived at, the bricks are mortared together, thus creating a unified funicular shell 3 4 . The mortaring process can be done so as to either leave the bricks free of the supporting hammock (thus making the hammock reusable), or to bind them to it (thus incorporating the hammock into the vault structure as a reinforcing mesh). Tension ties are then installed as required. At this stage the bricks can also be prestressed by post-tensioned steel cables running through hollow cores in the bricks

if additional stiffness is required. In the case of this first 20 ft. vault, pre-stressing was not done. The completed hanging vault is then rotated 180 degrees, inverting itself in space, allowing the pure tension geometry of a hammock to turn into the pure compression geometry of a vault. The trick, of course, was to find a simple method of rotating the tension-supported bricks. This crucial problem was solved by constructing the device shown in 5 6 . After the hanging bricks are mortared together, the finished masonry structure is squeezed (clamped) between the two low walls that were used to support the hammock formwork. This is done by means of simple threaded rods. By this clamping action a temporary composite box-beam or truss is formed. During rotation, the masonry, thus supported and contained, acts as the truss web, while the walls act as flanges. Simple rotation points located at the ends of this composite beam (and located at the centre of gravity of the system) allow this composite beam to be easily rotated 180 degrees into the arch position. The support walls also allow the vault to be lifted, shipped, and installed without damaging the masonry structure 7 8 9 . Alternately the vault, once flipped, can be removed from the containing walls and lifted naked, by itself, from its ends.

10

After rotation, the vault can be transported and installed The completed and installed 6 meter (20 ft. thin-shell (with or without the side-wall clamps. vault.

Neil Prakash load-tests his work.

8
The vault installed on its supports and awaiting removal of the side-wall clamps.

Footnotes:
1

9
The side-walls being removed: the re-usable weldedwire mesh hammock is visible along the top of the vault.

On Eladio Dieste see: Anderson, Stanford. 2004. Eladio Dieste, Innovation in Structural Art. Princeton Architectural Press, New York U.S.A. Dieste, Eladio 1996. Eladio Deieste 1943-1996. Direccion General de Architectura y Vivienda (orfanizador). Sevilla: Consejeria de Obras Publicas y Transportes, Sevilla Pedreschi, Remo. 2000. Eladio Dieste - The Engineers Contribution to Contemporary Architecture. Thomas Telford & RIBA Publications, London, England. 2 See C.A.S.T. wesbsite:www.umanitoba.ca/cast_building/ and: www.umanitoba.ca/cast_building/ West, Mark. Fabric-formed concrete members. Concrete International. Vol. 25, No. 10, Oct. 2003, pp. 55-60. West, Mark. Fabric-Formed Concrete Columns for Casa Dent in Culebra, Puerto Rico. Concrete International, Vol. 26, Issue 6, June 2004. West, Mark. Prestressed Fabric Formworks for Precast Concrete Panels. Concrete International, Vol. 26 No. 4, April 2004, pp. 60 62. West, Mark. Building a Way to Build. In press: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) 2005 National Conference Proceedings, Chicago IL, March 3-6 2005. West, Mark. True To Form. Canadian Architect Magazine. Nov. 2003, pp.54-56.