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The architecture of the iron.
The Industrial Revolution, which begins in England towards year 1760, carried
numerous changes in all the cultures of the world. The increase of the
productive capacity and the invention of new industrial processes brought with
himself the creation of new construction equipments, like the strained iron, the
laminated steel or the flat glass in great dimensions, and with them the
possibility of constructing new compositions until then not even dreamed.
Nevertheless, the architects continued using the traditional materials during
long time, while the academies of the Beautiful Arts "little" considered the
fantastic structures designed by engineers throughout century XIX artistic. The
first building constructed entirely with iron and S glass the Crystal Palace
(1850-1851; reconstructed between 1852 and 1854) in London, a great prepared
ship to welcome the first Universal Exhibition, that was projected by Joseph
Paxton, who had learned the use of these materials in the construction of
conservatories.
This building was the precursor of the prefabricated
architecture, and with him the possibility was demonstrated of making iron
buildings beautiful. Between the little examples of use of the iron in the
architecture of century XIX it emphasizes a building of Henry Labrouste, the
library of Santa Genoveva (1843-1850) in Paris, a building of Renaissance style
in his outside but that in its interior let see the metallic structure. Iron the
more impressive buildings of the century were constructed for the Universal
Exhibition of Paris of 1889: the ship of Machinery and the famous tower (1887)
of engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel.
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