The construction of building has been observed a long long time ago. It already exist before the time of Confucius, before the time of Dalai Lama, before the time of John Calvin, before the time of Nicholas Flamel, before the time of Martin Luther, before the time of Jesus, before the time of Isaiah, and even before the time of Moses. So how did it started? In the Genesis, God created the whole world for six consecutive days as well as human beings. There we can see that God is the greatest constructor because He constructed the world and all that is with it. When the fall of man happens, when Adam and Eve sinned, they were deposed from the garden of Eden. Since they had sinned, God said to them that they will toil for their food, and as well for their basic needs in order to live. Since man were created from the image and likeness of God, we also inherited His ability of construction, especially the construction of buildings. Things written in the Pentateuch, we can see that even the earliest believers already created buildings, their place of worship, their houses, bridges, dams, roads, and canals. This only means that building construction already started since prehistoric time. The development of building construction is a complex topic which comprises the history of materials used, their engineering style, their techniques on building, their machinery used, their works, and etc. Now, the earliest observed construction was during the Neolithic Era or New Stone Age. The very first bridges made by human were probably logs that were place across the stream. The very first buildings were huts which protects the dweller from direct heat of sunlight, rain, animals, and insects. Some of this has no trace, due to this, most of the explanations were conclusions formed from the present building construction from remote areas today. During that time, metals haven't yet discovered which was the reason for limited style on building construction. Humans during neolithic era were using stones on their structures. They also used it for walling as what we can see in Skara Brae at Scotland. The first bricks that were made by using muds were all hand-made instead of using wooden moulders which appears on later years of the neolithic era and were found in the city of Jericho. Neolithic Long Houses was one of the largest building created on neolithic era. In this early culture, timber structures, on its very lowest parts of the walls and postholes were excavated by archeologist. The most remarkable neolithic structure was the Stonehenge in Western Europe which displays the methods of timber construction (even though from wood) to stone. Now the remains were just post and lintel construction including massive sandstones lintels which were located on parts by means of mortise and tenon joints. The symmetrical geometric arrays of stones reveals that the early builders had already mastered advanced surveying methods. Next, during the ancient-Mesopotamia, early large scale buildings were found. Some of those were palaces, temples, and zigurrats which last long until now where parts are still intact. The Ziggurat of Ur is one of the famous long live zigurrats here on earth. The buildings were made from mud bricks form from wooden moulders. This bricks were either rectangular or square. Building plannings were written on clay tablet from later periods. Later on, Babylon and Susa developed glazed bricks to a very high degree which were used to decorate the interior and exterior of the building. Next was the construction in ancient-Egypt. We all know that bricks were used on the construction of buildings in the Egypt as the request of pharaoh, but later on, it was found that their buildings were made from stone as opposed to bricks. This was also the reason on why early pyramids are present until now. However, slaves by the egyptians didn't used wheels, or pulleys in transporting massive stones, instead they use rollers, ropes, and of course a great number of slaves. But this remains questionable on how they built a very high buildings, this came out the idea of ramps. Construction in ancient-Greece is similar to the construction in ancient-Mesopotamia and ancient-Egypt. Ancient-Greece used fired bricks, woods, and stones were used on their construction of building. They developed strong mortars which were used by romans soon. Now, the building construction in Rome, the pantheons, ruins in Pompeii and Herculanum continued to exceed until now since it was strong and remained intact. During this period, the hydraulic lime mortar was invented. "Previous cultures had used lime mortars but by adding volcanic ash the
Romans managed to make a mortar that would harden under water. This
provided them with a cheap material for bulk walling. They used brick or
stone to build the outer skins of the wall and then filled the cavity
with massive amounts of concrete,
effectively using the brickwork as permanent shuttering. The concrete,
being formed of nothing more than rubble and mortar was cheap and very
easy to produce, requiring relatively unskilled labour, enabling the
Romans to build on an unprecedented scale. They not only used it for
walls but also to form arches, barrel vaults and domes,
which they built over huge spans. The Romans developed systems of
hollow pots for making their domes and sophisticated heating and
ventilation systems for their thermal baths. Glass was commonly used in
windows. The Romans had trade guilds. Most construction was done by slaves or
freed men. The use of slave labour undoubtedly cut costs and was one of
the reasons for the scale of some of the structures. The Romans placed a
considerable emphasis in building their buildings extremely fast,
usually within two years. For very large structures the only way this
could be achieved was by the application of vast numbers of workers to
the task. The Romans developed sophisticated timber cranes allowing them to lift
considerable weights to great heights. The upper limit of lifting
appears to have been about 100 tonnes. Trajan's column in Rome contains
some of the largest stones ever lifted in a Roman building, and
engineers are still uncertain exactly how it was achieved. Roman building ingenuity extended over bridges, aqueducts, and covered amphitheatres.
Their sewerage and water-supply works were remarkable and some systems
are still in operation today. The only aspect of Roman construction for
which very little evidence survives is the form of timber roof
structures, none of which seem to have survived intact. In the Middle Ages of Europe fortifications, castles, and cathedrals
were the greatest construction projects. The Roman building techniques
were lost. (But Roman techniques, including the use of iron ring-beams,
would appear to have been used in the Palatine Chapel at Aachen, c. 800
AD, where it is believed builders from the Langobard Kingdom in northern
Italy contributed to the work. Most buildings in Northern Europe were constructed of timber until c.
1000 AD. In Southern Europe adobe remained predominant. Brick continued
to be manufactured in Italy throughout the period 600–1000 AD but
elsewhere the craft of brickmaking had largely disappeared and with it
the methods for burning tiles. Roofs were largely thatched. Houses were
small and gathered around a large communal hall. Monasticism spread more
sophisticated building techniques. Brick remained the most popular prestige material in these areas
throughout the period. Elsewhere buildings were typically in timber or
where it could be afforded, stone. Medieval stone walls were constructed
using cut blocks on the outside of the walls and rubble infill, with
weak lime mortars. The poor hardening properties of these mortars were a continual problem, and the settlement of the rubble filling of Romanesque and Gothic walls and piers is still a major cause for concern. Romanesque buildings of the period 600–1100 AD were entirely roofed
in timber or had stone barrel vaults covered by timber roofs. The Gothic
style of architecture with its vaults, flying butresses and pointed gothic arches
developed in the twelfth century and in the centuries that followed
ever more incredible feats of constructional daring were achieved in
stone. Thin stone vaults and towering buildings were constructed using
rules derived by trial and error. Failures were frequent, particularly
in difficult areas such as crossing towers. The pile driver was invented around 1500. Then the construction in Renaissance.the invention of moveable type and the Reformation
changed the character of building. The rediscovery of Vitruvius had a
strong influence. During the Middle Ages buildings were designed by the
people that built them. The master mason and master carpenters learnt
their trades by word of mouth and relied on experience, models and rules
of thumb to determine the sizes of building elements. The major breakthroughs in this period were to do with the technology of
conversion. Water mills in most of western Europe were used to saw
timber and convert trees into planks. Bricks were used in ever
increasing quantities. In Italy the brickmakers were organised into
guilds although the kilns were mostly in rural areas because of the risk
of fire and easy availability of firewood and brickearth. Brickmakers
were typically paid by the brick, which gave them an incentive to make
them too small. As a result, legislation was laid down regulating the
minimum sizes and each town kept measures against which bricks had to be
compared. An increasing amount of ironwork was used in roof carpentry
for straps and tension members. The iron was fixed using forelock bolts.
The screw-threaded bolt (and nut) could be made and are found in
clockmaking in this period, but they were labour intensive and thus not
used on large structures. Roofing was typically of terracotta roof
tiles. In Italy they followed Roman precedents. In northern Europe plain
tiles were used. Stone, where available, remained the material of
choice for prestige buildings. The wish to return to classical architecture created problems for the
Renaissance buildings. The builders did not use concrete and thus
comparable vaults and domes had to be replicated in brick or stone. The
greatest technical feats were undoubtedly in these areas. The first
major breakthrough was Brunelleschi's project for the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.
Brunelleschi managed to devise a way of building a huge dome without
formwork, relying instead on the weight of the bricks and the way they
were laid to keep them in position and the shape of the dome to keep it
standing. The exact way the dome was built is still subject to debate
today as it is not possible to take the dome apart to study its
construction without destroying it. The dome is a double skin, linked by
ribs, with a series of wooden and stone chains around it at intervals
to attempt to deal with hoop stresses. Here's the construction in the 17th century. The seventeenth century saw the birth of modern science which would have
profound effects on building construction in the centuries to come. The
major breakthroughs were towards the end of the century when
architect-engineers began to use experimental science to inform the form
of their buildings. However it was not until the eighteenth century
that engineering theory developed sufficiently to allow sizes of members
to be calculated. Seventeenth-century structures relied strongly on
experience, rules of thumb and the use of scale models. The major breakthrough in this period was in the manufacture of glass, with the first cast plate glass being developed in France. Iron was increasingly employed in structures. Christopher Wren used iron hangers to suspend floor beams atHampton Court Palace, and iron rods to repair Salisbury Cahtedral and strengthen the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. Most buildings had stone Ashlar
surfaces covering rubble cores, held together with lime mortar.
Experiments were made mixing lime with other materials to provide a
hydraulic mortar, but there was still no equivalent of the Roman
concrete. In England, France and Holland, cut and gauged brickwork was
used to provide detailed and ornate facades. Despite the birth of experimental science, the methods of construction
in this period remained largely medieval. The same types of crane that
had been used in previous centuries were being still being employed.
Flying scaffolds were employed at St Paul's Cathedral, England and in
the dome of St Peters, Rome, but otherwise the same types of timber
scaffolding that had been in use centuries before were retained. Cranes
and scaffolding depended on timber. Complex systems of pulleys allowed
comparatively large loads to be lifted, and long ramps were used to haul
loads up to the upper parts of buildings. The 18th century had sawn the development of many the ideas that had
been born in the late seventeenth century. The architects and engineers
became increasingly professionalised. Experimental science and
mathematical methods became increasingly sophisticated and employed in
buildings. At the same time the birth of the industrial revolution saw
an increase in the size of cities and increase in the pace and quantity
of construction.
The major breakthroughs in this period were in the use of iron (both
cast and wrought). Iron columns had been used in Wren's designs for the
House of Commons and were used in several early eighteenth-century
churches in London, but these supported only galleries. In the second
half of the eighteenth century the decreasing costs of iron production
allowed the construction of major pieces of iron engineering. The Iron
Bridge at Coalbrookdale (1779) is a particularly notable example.
Large-scale mill construction required fire-proof buildings and cast
iron became increasingly used for columns and beams to carry brick
vaults for floors. The Louvre in Paris boasted an early example of a
wrought-iron roof. Steel was used in the manufacture of tools but could
not be made in sufficient quantities to be used for building.
Brick production increased markedly during this period. Many
buildings throughout Europe were built of brick, but they were often
coated in lime render, sometimes patterned to look like stone. Brick
production itself changed little. Bricks were molded by hand and fired
in kilns no different to those used for centuries before. Construction during the 19th century or the industrial revolution.
The industrial revolution was manifested in new kinds oft ransportation installations, such as railways, canals, and macadam roads. These required large amounts of investment. New construction devices included steam engines, machine tools, and explosives and optical surveying.
The steam engine combined with two other technologies which blossomed
in the nineteenth century, the circular saw and machine cut nails, lead
to the use of balloon framing and the decline of traditional timber framing.
As steel was mass-produced from the mid-19th century, it was used, in form of I-beams and reinforced concrete. Glass panes also went into mass production, and changed from luxury to every man's property.
Plumbing appeared, and gave common access to drinking water and sewage collection.
Building codes have been applied since the 19th century, with special respect to fire safety. And the last one, construction in the last century.
With the Second Industrial Revolution in the early 20th century, elevators and cranes and high rise made buildings and skyscrapers possible, while heavy equipment and power tools decreased the workforce needed. Other new technologies were prefabrication and computer-aided design.
Trade unions were formed to protect construction workers' interests. Personal protective equipment such as hard hats and earmuffs also came into use.
From the 20th century, governmental construction projects were used as a part of macroeconomic stimulation policies, especially during the Great depression. For economy of scale, whole suburbs, towns and cities, including infrastructure, are often planned and constructed within the same project, such as Brasilia in Brazil, and the Million Program in Sweden.
In the end of the 20th century, ecology, energy conservation and sustainable development have become more important issues of construction."
source is form www.wikipedia.com
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From the students of BSCE_1B-B2 of Mindanao University of Science and Technology
This students were: Rex Homer C. Cablinda, Simeon B. Panchacala, and Paula Len Pensahan.
GOD BLESS US ALWAYS +++
TO GOD BE ALL THE GLORY ...
