THE TRANSITION TO SYSTEMS BUILDING

Abstract

There has been a great amount of talk and discussion these days about the new concept of systems building and the many advantages associated with it. But if we stop for a moment, and go back to the beginning of architecture and engineering, we get an uneasy feeling that we've been along this route before. After some brief research we've come to the conclusion that when the design and construction of buildings was first coordinated into a disciplined form, there was, in truth, a crude form of what we are now calling systems building. It may be in order to examine early examples of system concepts, if for no other reason than to put the subject into perspective. One of the most interesting early books explaining architecture and building was written by Vitruvius. His book, Ten Books in Architecture, has become a true engineering classic. Vitruvius designed and built all types of buildings, but one of the most interesting was the Roman Bath. He described the construction like this: The floors of the hot bath rooms are to be constructed as follows: first the surface of the ground should be laid with tiles a foot and a half square sloping towards the furnace in such a way that if a ball is thrown in, it cannot stop inside but must return of itself to the furnace room; thus the heat of the fire will more readily spread under the hanging Upon them (the tile), pillars made of eight inch bricks are built and set at such a distance apart that two foot tiles may be used to cover them. These pillars should be two feet in height, laid with clay mixed with hair and covered on top with the two foot tiles which support the floor. Now this sounds very much like an attempt to use a floor system as both a structural element and as a part of the heating system of the hot bath rooms. And as can be seen from the sketch (Fig. 1), the system is similar to several modern systems now in