Elements and Materials
Structural Steel
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Rolled steel shapes bolted, riveted or welded into building frames, made cheap by the Bessemer and open-hearth processes of the later nineteenth century. The steel skeleton, first fully exploited in the Chicago tall buildings of the 1880s, took the load out of the walls and made the skyscraper and the curtain wall possible.
Facts
Element Kind First Used EraLater nineteenth century 1 First Used EraThe Home Insurance Building in Chicago (William Le Baron Jenney, completed 1885) is often called the first skyscraper for its fireproof structural steel frame, though the claim is disputed: the Ditherington Flax Mill in England (1797) and Broad Street Station in Philadelphia (1881) used iron or steel framing earlier at a smaller scale, Chicago's own press did not call it the first skyscraper at the time, and the title was not formalized until the building's 1985 centennial. 2 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Calatrava's skeletal, bone-like forms are typically built from exposed structural steel, often paired with concrete.
Its metal frame mixed cast and wrought iron with early structural steel.
The Chicago School's rebuilding-era architects pioneered structural steel framing for tall commercial buildings.
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