How Upside-Down Models Revolutionized Architecture

__Special Thanks__
Evan Montgomery: co-production, editing

__Description__
Some of the world's most beautiful buildings were designed upside down. Literally. In this video, we explore how architects and engineers like Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Antonio Gaudi, and Heinz Isler used gravity-defying models to solve complex structural challenges. From St. Paul’s Cathedral to the Sagrada Familia, these innovative techniques have shaped architecture for centuries.

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__About the Channel__
Architecture with Stewart is a YouTube journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.

__About Me__
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.

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FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco

__Special Thanks__
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock.
Music provided by Epidemic Sound

#architecture #urbandesign

[fungt]

My tutor said that prior to the understanding of these curves as models for arches, domes etc.. architects and engineers were pretty much just guessing and using the trial and error of previous completed works that were still standing. Which makes all the ancient architecture even more impressive.

[KvaGram]

What I though this was about:
Flipping the model upside down, to give a better perspective on details you'd miss by seeing it right-side up.
What I got:
An important engineering lesson.

[lonesock]

I saw something very similar in the oil and gas industry once. Mooring an oil rig offshore can require dozens of anchor lines and risers (the pipes that bring the oil and gas up from the well), and ensuring those catenaries don't clash with each other is hard to visualize even on a computer screen. It gets even more complicated during installation, as lines are being laid down and picked up by boats on the surface. So this one older engineer's solution was to take a big room in his office building and make a model of the anchor layout with string. The boat models were placed on model railways mounted upside down on the ceiling and had remote-controlled winches. In this way, he designed every phase of installation and the final design intuitively. For fun he had a model-scale Eifel tower on the floor/seabed: it was 10 inches high, whereas the anchor lines went about 15ft to the ceiling.

[yokothespacewhale]

As much as I appreciate us “having the math” I still appreciate even more the fact that hook designed something he knew he couldn’t build and then solved the problem by not only using chains but building it upside down. What a madman

[jerrysstories]

Thing is, the top of a stone arch and the bottom of a hanging catenary chain are under a lot less compression/tension than the arch's base or the chain's anchor points. So if an architect wants to make the top of the arch lighter, as it should be, he has to model it with a chain that's proportionally lighter in the middle. So this design technique is far more complicated than people realize.

[motogoa]

The idea of icing a burlap rag is just ... well, genious!

[livablecity]

It's not often that I watch a video that really teaches me something I didn't know before, and does it with visual aids that make me feel that I really understood it. Thank you for teaching me something new and fundamental.

[hape]

The new Stuttgart train station follows a similar principle. Here, the architect looked for the smallest possible surface area with a film of soap water that forms on a wire frame. This in turn was used for supports and light eyes in the underground station.

[ttopero]

This might be the best explanation about how a structural architect thinks compared with a traditional architect. As architects, we still have to know what structural architects and engineers do, but not to the detail or complexity they should.

[EricRogstad]

0:28 "The architect Tristopher Wren"

[AbhishekBlessonManuelAlexSahay]

Great video, Stewart! Just a quick correction: at 5:20, you mention the model being made by Antoni Gaudí. However, the model you're referring to was actually done by Frei Otto, the German architect and structural engineer. Gaudí’s original model was unfortunately destroyed. Frei Otto's work in lightweight structures and tensile architecture was definitely inspired by Gaudí, though! Keep up the fantastic content!

[CopenhagenDreaming]

Siza's pavillion for the 1998 World Exhibition is kind of an extension of Gaudí's work; he made a seemingly impossible arch by suspending a sheet of concrete over a large plaza. Upside-down engineering that remained upside-down. A very different end result, but a very similar design process. (Just with a lot of much more advanced engineering; it takes a LOT to make such a thin sheet of concrete!)

[tonylarose]

I've heard similar things from early house rafters were based on upside down boat hulls. Woodworkers were really good at building boats and were able to do both in a similar way.

[jeremy]

Wren could have just used hyperbolic trig functions, but he would have had to wait a century for them to be invented.

[nevreiha]

so you're telling me that Robert Hook's favourite thing to do was to hang things from hooks?

[UnbeltedSundew]

I had no idea Gaudi's plans for the catherdral got destroyed, so glad that the young arcitect was able to figure out a way to rescue the work.

[Cerealbox]

I always love it when people are able to solve problems by taking the idea and flipping it on its head.

[rallen]

I used to work with a friend that designed rock crawler roll cages upside-down. It was eye opening. Calculating the triangulation for areas of high stress was much more obvious.

[migrantfamily]

The fact that Sir Cristopher Wren was too radical for his time sort of blows my mind. Also, a very nice fact to have to serve those who oppose anything that’s “new”. As Peter Gabriel puts it, all these old things “were once just a thought/in somebody’s mind.” Perhaps for something to become a “classic”, it has to started out as revolutionary. There’s no shortage of examples to support this hypothesis!

[edschultheis]

I have worked for over 35 years as a mechanical design engineer and manufacturing consultant. I design and build all sorts of machines, products, tools, etc. I don't work in architecture, civil engineering, or building construction. However, I am surprised, at 60 years old, that this is the first time I have heard of this technique of designing something upside down. It makes perfect sense to do this, but I just never thought of it that way. I have always been impressed by the complexity of architectural designs, especially for structures that were designed hundreds of years ago before any sort of modern computers were available.

This designing upside down method could also be accurately described as a sophisticated mechanical analog (not digital) computer. Such a concept of an analog computer is why a mechanical system can be accurately represented by an equivalent hydraulic system, pneumatic system, or electronic system. The problem solution in any one of these analogs will have an equivalent solution in any of the other three analogs. Basically, the correct solution just naturally flows from all of the inputs to the correctly modeled system. So, if a solution is found for one system, it is found for all systems.

Very interesting.

Ed Schultheis, PE
Mechanical design engineer and manufacturing consultant for 35 years
Schultek Engineering & Technology, Inc.