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Buildings: first impressions
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What makes the look of British towns and cities distinctive? The most striking feature is the lack of blocks of flats. People prefer to live in individual houses — units with their own front doors and sometimes gardens. Perhaps this says something about the national character; a love of privacy and a lack of interest in the wider community. There is a proverb: "An Englishman's home is his castle". Whatever the deeper reasons for it, the result is that British towns and cities are full of two or three-storey houses. Only in the 1950s and -60s councils started building tall blocks of flats in the American style; but these have been very unpopular, and the cheaper ones are now being demolished.
Another distinctive feature of British buildings is the use of brick. Some of the oldest monuments, like Hampton Court Palace or Queens' College, Cambridge, are made of brick. It remains the favourite material for new houses today. While the rest of the world prefers concrete, for some reason the British taste is for brick, at least in smaller buildings.
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SOME TRENDS IN THE HISTORY OF BUILDING
Human shelters were at first very simple and perhaps lasted only a few days or months. Over time, however, even temporary structures evolved into such highly refined forms as the igloo. Gradually more durable structures began to appear, particularly after
the advent of agriculture, when people began to stay in one place for long periods. The first shelters were dwellings, but later other functions, such as food storage and ceremony, were housed in separate buildings. Some structures began to have symbolic as well as functional value, marking the beginning of the distinction between architecture and building.
The history of building is marked by a number of trends. One is the increasing durability of the materials used. Early building materials were perishable, such as leaves, and branches. Later, more durable natural materials — such as clay, stone, and timber — and, finally, synthetic materials — such as brick, concrete, metals, and plastics — were used. Another is a quest for buildings of ever greater height and span; this was made possible by the development of stronger materials and by knowledge of how materials behave and how to exploit them to greater advantage. A third major trend involves the degree of control exercised over the interior environment of buildings: increasingly precise regulation of air temperature, light and sound levels, humidity, odours, air speed, and other factors that affect human comfort has been possible. Yet another trend is the change in energy available to the construction process, starting with human muscle power and developing toward the powerful machinery used today.
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THE FATHER OF THE AMERICAN SKYSCRAPER
William Le Baron Jenney (1832-1907) was an American civil engineer and architect who became known as the Father of the American skyscraper. Jenney was born in Fairhaven, Massachusetts on September 25, 1832. Jenney first began his formal education at the Lawrence Scientific school at Harvard in 1853, but transferred to Paris to get an education in engineering and architecture. He graduated in 1856, one year after his classmate, Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower. In 1861, he returned to the US to join the Union Army as an engineer in the Civil War. After the war, in 1867, Jenney moved to Chicago, Illinois and began his
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I Английский язык для студентов строительных специальностей
TAPESCRIPTS 329
own architectural office, which specialized in commercial buildings and urban planning.
In 1998, Jenney was ranked number 89 in the book "1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ranking the Men and Women Who Shaped the Millennium". Jenney is best known for designing the ten-storey Home Insurance Building in Chicago. The building was the first fully metal-frame skyscraper, and is considered the first skyscraper. It was built from 1884 to 1885, enlarged in 1891, and demolished in 1931. In his designs, he used metal columns and beams, instead of stone and brick to support the building's upper levels. The steel needed to support the Home Insurance Building weighed only one-third as much as a ten-storey building made of heavy masonry. Using this method, the weight of the building was reduced, thus allowing the possibility to construct even taller structures.
Later, he solved the problem of fireproof construction for tall buildings by using masonry, iron, and terracotta flooring and partitions. He displayed his system in the Leiter Building, also built in Chicago between the years 1889 and 1891.
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NIKOLAI V. NIKITIN
Nikolai Vasilyevich Nikitin was a construction engineer and structural designer of the Soviet Union, best known for his monumental structures. Nikitin was born in Tobolsk, Siberia in 1907 to the family of a typographical engineer. In 1930, Nikitin graduated from the Tomsk Technological Institute with training in construction.
In 1932, he designed the train station of Novosibirsk. By 1937, he was living and working in Moscow. He turned his attention to calculations and design of foundations and supporting structures.
In 1957 he was appointed chief designer of Mosproekt Institute for the Planning of Housing and Civil Engineering Construction in the City of Moscow. Nikitin died on 3 March 1973.
His selected works are Moscow State University's 240 m high main building (at the time of its construction it was the tallest building
in Europe, built from 1949 to 1953); Luzhniki Stadium; colossal 85- meter statue on the Mamayev Kurgan heights overlooking Volgograd, "The Motherland Calls" and many others.
Among Nikitin's works — the Ostankino Tower — has got the most fame. Standing 540 metres tall, it is a television and radio tower in Moscow. It is named after the Ostankino district of Moscow in which it is located. Its construction began in 1963 and was completed in 1967. The tower was the first free-standing structure to exceed 500 m in height. It surpassed the Empire State Building to become the tallest free-standing structure in the world. The Ostankino Tower has remained the tallest free-standing structure in Europe for 42 years.
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CONSTRUCTION CAREERS
There are many routes to the different careers within the construction industry which vary by country. However, there are three main tiers of careers based on educational background which are common internationally:
unskilled and semi-skilled — general site labour with little or no construction qualifications;
skilled — on-site managers who possess extensive knowledge and experience in their craft or profession;
technical and management — personnel with the greatest educational qualifications, usually graduate degrees, trained to design, manage and instruct the construction process.
Skilled occupations in the UK require further education qualifications, often in vocational subject areas. These qualifications are either obtained directly after the completion of compulsory education or through "on the job" apprenticeship training. In the UK, 8500 construction-related apprenticeships were commenced in 2007.
Technical and specialised occupations require more training as a greater technical knowledge is required. The professions, like a civil engineer, a building services engineer, a project manager, a quantity surveyor structural engineer and others hold more legal responsibility.
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