I can.

Anne.

Slideshow view slideshow.

Can you see that OK?

Yes.

You can hear me OK, yeah great. OK thanks everyone for for logging on and joining us today.

I should start with a few. Thank you, so I'll try and keep it brief first to Maryann. I'm not sure if she's here, but this book came out of my PhD research, which I started 10 years ago now, and Marianne was my supervisor so I wouldn't be here talking about it today if it wasn't for her, and also to call in who I can see Colin Porteous and James Campbell, who were my examiners for the PhD.

And also Dean Hawkes.

In earlier I think his ideas about the relationship between architecture and the environment and his book the environmental Imagination where he talks about the Glasgow School of Art as well.

Really influenced my approach to the subject and continue to influence my research to this day.

Supposed to say thank you to the pole Mellen Center for studies in British art. Who paid for all the pictures in the book, and I'll stop the list there. Otherwise, I'll go on forever. But thank you to everyone else who has helped me. We need to get this finished.

So I want to start if I can.

I'm not going to cover the whole book, I'm just going to talk about the three buildings I discussed, most really, which are Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow School of Art. But I want to start with the Royal Academy here in 1773. Founded in 1768, really the first serious art school in Britain.

I'll be a school explicitly about teaching fine art rather than what would later be termed practical art.

And then at the beginning at the end of the 18th century, beginning of the 19th century, really, unless you were well to do art classes required you to have quite a well paid job during the during the day. So classes were often held in the evening time or at night time and the cost of models and the fuel for the lamps and heating would be shared amongst groups of artists who would come together.

And study a particular situation.

As that kind of studio practice became more and more formalized, the issue of what would be the most appropriate environment for an art school really came to the fore. the Royal Academy moved into the Great exhibition room in Somerset House.

In 1779, this established the precedent of top light from a Lantern for viewing art. In 1834 the Royal Academy moved into the GNU Gassler National Gallery, which freed up this space for the Department of Practical Art or the first True Government School of Design, and this is really about. If you like the origins of.

The Polytechnic, compared to the University, the School of Design was to be about drawing things to be made and sold, serving Commerce and Industry, and it's the first time that the government really subsidized further education in this country. But there was a lot of disputes about exactly what it was that these schools should be teaching.

After the Great Exhibition of 1851, the profits were spent on purchasing the Kensington Gore Estate and the construction of the Museum of Manufacturers. What we now know today is the VNA, and this was managed by the new Department of Science and Art, who will also tasked with expanding or not education across the country, responding to concerns about the quality of British industry in products. Compared with French and German goods. And what you're looking at here is the new School of Design.

At the back of the Viennet in London and the studios were constructors on the second and third stories of this extension of you like this new wing of the museum, between behind the North and South Courts, completed by Frances Folk in 1863, and those windows are already starting to look quite familiar.

The expansion at the art school system opens up the possibility of art training as a vocation really, for the first time. So teachings extended into the day and studio spaces were required to meet or some kind of minimum standards in terms of daylight. This was sort of technical requirement assessed by measuring floor and window areas. They weren't too bothered about orientation. These spaces actually facing service, but the most detailed instructions related to life drawing.

The boom should be left from the North side by a single large window of the guidance said the top of which should be at a height above the floor equal to 3/4 of the depth of the room.

Or if the pitch of the roof is steeper than 60 degrees, a skylight can be made in conjunction with the window to give the same effect and the windows should be large and free from millions or small panes, so these studios in South Kensington really served as an example from art schools that would be built in in other cities.

In the country. But of course we have to remember, the skies could be a lot darker back then. This is the ringelmann smoke chart and the black lines represent twenty 4060 and 80% blackness. And what you do is you hold this up to the smoke or to the Sky.

To to calculate what percentage black the Sky was that day. And there's two things really to bear in mind here, one the suit and at the suit in the atmosphere. Actually blocking the light from even arriving at the window. But then also the effects of the suit fall on the on the windows themselves on the glass, and how that would affect the transmission of light through the windows. This problem is much more pronounced in northern cities. One study measured the annual suit fall in the centre of Glasgow.

As 820 tons of suit per square mile, compared with only 426 tons in London. So yeah, I'm sure you're all familiar with sort of Charles Dickens descriptions of of the Center of London pea Soupers. Or was it was a lot worse up North?

And I thought I'd throw this in here.

I'm sure you're all familiar with Monet's views of the of the Thames and the atmospheric quality of light. This is adolph. Let's painting with the Medlock in Manchester in 1912 and you can really see this sort of haunting beauty and the thick smog.

But it wasn't just artistic license, this is an early photograph of Ancoats in Manchester in the 1870s.

So it was really a challenge to provide enough light for art in this kind of context. The art school in Manchester was originally accommodated in the basement of the Loyal Manchester Institution, which is the art Gallery today by Charles Barry.

And there was one classroom in the basement lit by gas. I'm not sure if you can see clearly enough there, but the board up against the wall in the corner is an advert for the art school.

But the lack of light and in this accommodation was sort of a curving theme and the minutes and the annual reports of the school and at the same time the teachers and the governors of the school was sort of eager to match the quality of art education that we saw in London and on the continent in 1874. The BMP. Huber Lee suggested that the climate was the problem. He said our climate is against us. It is a cold and foggy and dark.

Climate and its disagreeable qualities are much heightened by excessive smoke or another. Good quote from George Dunlop, Leslie the painter, art in Manchester, must necessarily be rather an exotic plant. The stern Ingrim character of the buildings and occupations prevent it's bringing up as it does in Italy or the bright and sunny climes.

Or the Bishop of Salford. Doctor Herbert von.

Making a case for the new school building says the necessity for larger and more suitable premises was evidente and they should be built for the purpose because in such a climate, as Manchester students could not be expected to draw a very well by every light, the necessity for adequate provision for the School of Art is more evident in Manchester than in most other towns. Because we're not blessed with an atmosphere in the Sky which promotes art.

I'm in Manchester right now. It's one of those days today. It's very gloomy.

Yes.

This is the new school which opens in April 1881. Designed by George Tunstall redmain.

Brother in law and former pupil of Alfred Waterhouse.

And here's the context of that building.

Back in the day, this is a painting of All Saints gardens by Adolf Let who was the painting master at the school who went on to teach her less lonely and the schools just off the frame of this painting. If you like on the left hand side facing North over the square.

The building's probably easiest understood in section. You enter on the half.

Level taking you up to a corridor along the back of the building and eventually up to the main toplite Gallery space above, and the civic pretensions to keep in the facade so you don't.

You don't really perceive it as.

As being a very well lit building, but if you can see the skylights just behind the parapets on the roof there.

And there it is inside that space. Originally the Gallery of costs, but essentially the drawing studio.

This is a later photograph. The gas lamps were replaced by electric lights. Here, one lamp per each Bay, about 10 foot off the floor and they could. They could divide it up into individual studios with these big heavy curtains.

And here's that space today.

This is Birmingham School of Art designs by Chamberlian and Martin, completed in September 1885. So four or five years after Manchester, with the extension on the left hand side there in 1893.

And the orientation of this building to the Southwest means are sort of much more complex arrangement of lighting than Manchester to catch the North Lights. The studios in the wings that either end of the building. I've got these glazed lights at roof level. You can see my mouse on the northwest side.

Only and you can see in the extension in 1893 how the line between the facades and the move is dissolved even further. So you enter on the half level again through this quite dark and brooding entrance porch.



And to the heart of the building. The museum space animated by direct Sunlight from the South.

And this is the sequence of spaces you move through from the outside.

Into a more dark sorbus are protected interior away from all the noise in the dirt and the smoke of the city. It's an extension of the public, millman away, but one that can also be controlled and the relative lightness or darkness of the space is kind of critical to that. You can see the daylight flooding down the staircases either end of the building.

Taking you back up to the light in these glass gallery's at the back of the building, giving access to all the main studio spaces. And it says it's as if you're outside again.

Really sophisticated sort of use of in between spaces, mediating between those sort of more controlled environments of the art studios themselves and the world outside. And it doesn't really matter if it's too warm or too cold. In fact, it's that experience of the climate. If you like of the weather, is key to your whole experience of the building.

This is the antique room.

Or drawing from the antique at the end of the corridor and you enter in the middle of the room.

And there's this glass window wall folding into the picture of the roof, filling the space with.

Great, even daylight, that ratio of glass 3/4 the height of the depth of the room.

You can see that this is a figure composition class. In 1901, mostly women, and it doesn't assume those facing towards the camera and this is kind of typical really of the pattern of classes at the time. Daytime classes would be mostly female and then the male classes would be in the evening.

And you can see the light from the windows dispersed quite evenly across the room there without any shadows, and the gas lamps above supported from the ceiling by these flues. These are Bauer gas lamps which also connects the ventilation system of the school.

And this is an art labaratory class and the extension.

And again, you can see the effects of those.

It was Windows diffusing light right across the working plane of the space.

And here's a section through that studio in the top right hand side and this also shows the ventilation system installed and installed in the extension of the school, supplying warmer via the external wall. See external facades, which is then drawn up and out through the roof by the big chimney at the back. And if you know Birmingham at all, Chamberlain and Martin who did most of the most of the board schools at this period, they all have these very characteristic large chimneys, which is part of the ventilation system.

I'm off these buildings.

And it's not too difficult. I don't think if we flip back a couple of slides to see the influence between.

These spaces in this building.

And the art school in Glasgow. This is the composition room above the library at the West End of the art school in Glasgow, when the contrast between the plate glass skylights you have up above and the sort of typical McIntosh Bay window with the small rolled glass panes underneath. And is the difference really between openings? For light for function and light for view, McIntosh really understands that.

A sophisticated way Transis Newbury, who was the head master of the school in Glasgow, visited Birmingham and London in 1893, just before he drew up the plan for the school in Glasgow.

And Mackintosh himself actually visited the art schools in Birmingham and London as he was working on the second phase of the school in 1909.

So the school in Glasgow was constructed in two phases.

This is this is very rare. I think this is the only view we have of the school half built. If you like the first phase between 1897 and 1899 and then it was extended between 1907 and 1910.

And this is a drawing of the second phase of that library tower under construction. The view taken from Sockey Hall Street at the bottom of Garnet Hill. And there's something about this view that it's almost this ruin of a Scottish tower house that is.

Slightly reminiscent of the school today. After the fire I think.

This is Sockey Hall Street in about 1900 with the Willow Tearooms by McIntosh on the right hand side there. And you can see the stark contrast between the white of Macintoshes, architecture and the suits covering the sandstone with the rest of the street. You can imagine that building will stay that way for very long.

The North facade of the art school to mentor St. Few years ago.

So English Arts and crafts you think of these elegance or picturesque country houses? Bailey, Scott Charles voicey.

And this is much more urban, much more sort of industrial language using new materials, steel and concrete, and plate glass. But there's a bit of a mystery here as well. How do you keep these enormous spaces? These enormous volumes in these studios, all facing North with these huge windows? How do you keep them warm enough in winter?

Here's that elevation again. The studios that you can see on the roof.

Here were added in the second phase of the building, but you might think looking at this that it was designed in one go.

I think the South facade is far more revealing in a way about Mcintosh's evolution as an architect.

And you can see the western portion of the building is far more punctured than the eastern.

And plan, there's a lot more potential for Mrs. Facing South for the sun to penetrate into the building with smaller spaces benefiting from the.

And the solar game, the window candles and the corridors as you walk along to the library or the drawing desks. Desks up above in the luje looking out over the Clyde. It's really Macintoshes, evolution, if you like from a very talented you're out student. When he did the first phase.

So fully trained architect.

1015 years later.

And the fantastic thing about this building?

Build up the unfortunate fire was the fact that it always was an art school. It was always used as intended and you can see how the stone in the way into the building would get scuffed by people carrying things backwards and forwards over the year. And this little porch moving from black to white or about moving from this smoky, dirty world outside into this much cleaner, idealized version of a sort of perfectly designed future.

So you enter through that porch into the entrance Hall.

What you can't see here, but you can feel, is that you're above the boiler room in the basement, so you've got this warmth under your feet which is matched by sort of relative darkness of the space, offering a sense of enclosure protection from the wind and the rain, and then you can see the main staircase up ahead. A few drawing you upwards towards the light kind of beacon.

Calling you into the building.

And then you move up to the light.

And into the museum space so they similar sequence to the art school in Birmingham only on a much grander scale here. And it's as if you've gone back outside again, only you in this clean and dry environment.

For viewing art.

This is a false color luminance photograph of that space. So luminance is the measure of the brightness of a surface and candela per meter square, and you can see the distribution of light in the space and how evenly the light is cast on the walls to either side.

Where the pictures would be displayed.

And then you have these 22 foot high studio windows.

Made of plate glass like South Kensington.

Um?

And I don't know if anyone can guess what the window brackets.

Here are four you might think they're just a sort of decorative feature, but they were actually to hold the boards for the window cleaners. Who would be round fairly regularly upon their ladders trying to get the suit off the glass.

And I I did some sort of rough measurements in this space and sort of average daylight factor of about 8%, which sounds very impressive by modern standards. But yeah, just remembering it would've been gloomier because of the smoke, But these studio spaces are basically acting like a light box.

Yeah, perfect environments for art and this is a contemporary photograph from about 1900. The windows are off to the left and you can see these curtains again that can be used to subdivide the space, but worth also noticing what people are wearing and how they are, how the how the practicing there are, how they're drawing of understanding, wearing quite heavy suits compared with what you would expect to do.

And while the North Lakes, under his studio spaces, creates this ideal environment for painting and composition, it also heightens the contrast in the pleasure of the warmth of the of the sun. Really shining horizontally through the facade and the South facing spaces, this is the corridor leading to the library. With those seating candles on the left.

And here's the section through the building.

And you can see how Macintosh is blowing light from the top of the Sky here to light those main studio spaces at first floor level, and the school was also installed with a plan and ventilation system like Birmingham, so external air was drawn into the building into the fan room from the light wells either side of the entrance through through a horsehair screen which are filtered out. Bigger particles of suits but could also be used to humidify the air was sort of.

Is the building over these steam coils?

Connected to the boiler to warm the air or there was actually an electric ice making machine which sounds crazy in Glasgow. Can't imagine they used it very much, but in theory you could cool the air.

Then the big fan wheels would draw the air into the plenum underneath the corridor in the basement all the way along the entire length of the building feeding these feeding these dots that lies up the spine wall of the building and then you just pull open or close these drawers on the wall of the building you can see in the bottom left hand photograph there to vary the amount of air that enters each space. So if you want it warmer you could pull it open and more warm air would come in. Or you could close it off.

So this system basically fulfills the criteria of air conditioning as defined by Willis Carrier. Few decades later, ventilation, supply heating, cooling and washing the air, but you could only humidify the air. You couldn't D humidifier, but still a very sophisticated very sophisticated system.

And here you can see in Mackintosh's plans the spine ball which plays a real crucial role in the design of the building.

The half of the building. If you like this solid, expansive thermal mass that you can retreat to and winter to stay cool or sorry in summer to stay cool or winter to stay warmer and rather than fireplaces, you have these ducts rising up through the building supplying.

Supplying fresh air, warm air and you can see the little arrows, Macintoshes, drawing, showing the extracts in the inlets and those spaces.

And they tested the system.

And during the commissioning of the school in 1910 and the architects described various alterations they made and fine tuning to the air system, measuring temperatures and all the different spaces, all the different rooms of the building to check. But it met the specifications really, and this was done in March 1910.

Um, the temperatures outside were about. You can see 8 or 9 degrees.

And the engineers noted that they only had to turn on three boilers the way oil is in the school. So they turned on.

Only three, so less than half of the potential system, and that was enough to warm the average temperatures in the studio spaces to about 16 degrees, which they said that was perfect. Why would you want to any warmer, except one studio? Which is this top Gray line here? The Red line is the temperature of the air and the fan room, so that's just showing how their varying the temperature of the air. This applying to this basis.

One studio at 22 degrees, which appropriately was the Life Drawing studio where you might want it to be a little bit warmer, but that really shows you the ability to sort of.

Fine tune the conditions inside the building.

And while Manchester and Birmingham art schools were originally lit by gas, Glasgow was designed with an electric light system. There were 272 light fittings in the building, mostly 16 candlepower filament lamps.

And that's about 10 Watts in today's currency. So very dim likes maybe 18 or 20 and each room. So the equivalent maybe of a couple of 100 Watt light bulbs.

And the arts feel struck a deal with the Council who supplied the electricity at the time that they can have cheap electricity between 7:44 and 9:44 in the evening when nobody else really wanted any.

And you can see how the lights were strung up from the ceiling on these wires, partly to adjust them, but also becausw.

When a light bulb blew, there was a tendency for the flexes to sort of catch fire.

You wanted to suspend the light system away from the timber for safety.

But it's this sequence of spaces McIntosh added to the roof of the building, and the second face that I enjoyed the most really. First you arrive in the luje and you feel like you're in an undercroft. Really? The thermal mass of the bare brick arch is and that timber on the floor is actually laid on a concrete slab. All of the other floors in the building of steel and timber, and you have these three Bay windows and each window sill is fitted with a little hinged drawing desk.

And a chair so you can sit and study the the city outside the window.

And here's the view from those windows looking out over the Clyde and the Renfrewshire Hills beyond.

And I think this isn't too unlike Patchet Gettys.

His outlook Turbo in Edinburgh at the top of the Royal Mile and this is a building you start at the top of the building where there was this camera obscure study the city and its hinterland related to Gettys Valley section. If you're familiar with it, and then you move down through the building and it's really like a kind of encyclopedia on to explore the relationship between the city in the country.

City in the empire and eventually thinking about the relationship with the rest of the world as well. Bringing together the study of geography, economics, sociology into one discipline.

What gate is called geotechnics?

And I think you can see the same idea in the relationship.

Between the art school and the city.

Of course Margaret Margaret Mackintosh. Margaret MacDonald, Mackintosh's wife and Annie Anna Geddes were good friends and Gettys brought a delegation of visitors to.

It hasn't been exhibition by this building when it was opened.

And this is the hand run and again this dramatic contrast between darkness and light enclosure and exposure.

Ann and I think the key to understanding the building environmentalism is moving between these different internal spaces of the building with their very different atmospheres. Fine tunes for different activities, different light levels and temperatures suited to different tasks, with a standing in painting and sculpting or sitting, drawing, reading, eating your lunch.

And somehow today, this way of thinking about the environment inside our buildings and light and the relationship to place and context has been forgotten in the world of building management systems and smart technology, all designed quite carefully so that you don't notice the difference between time of day or season or weather.

And this questions about what to do with the school now after the after the terrible fire that this is a drawing just off the windows of the building and I think what's really interesting about this is it really shows you that this is enough to understand the building entirely form follows function if you like. Or in this case it's all about light and its direction ality, but more than that, the provision of light daylight electric light at night time was in a way symbolic of the power of art as well.

And this promise of a brighter, cleaner future, transforming these dark and uncivilized factory towns into refined cities of design and culture.

OK, I'll stop there. Thank you everyone. Very happy to take questions. Let me just escape my screen.

Like to buy the book?

Anne.

It's available in all good bookstores, or if you go in the Routledge website and you put in VS for Victorian Art school VS25, you can get a 25% discount and I I can't. I can't sign you copies.

But I promised I would. I would sign bookmarks postcards that I can send to you. So I've got. I've got a postcard of Manchester, one to Birmingham.

And one of Glasgow there. So you'd like one of those by way of signature in the cover of your book.

Just leave, I thought the easiest way to do it is just put your name and address in the chat or send me an email and I'll I'll post your post. You a bookmark for your copy of the book.

Thank you.

Great, thank you very much, Ronald.

Well done.

Thanks and now it's our turn to ask any questions or make any comments.

And who would like to go first?

Debate that hand up. Yes, very interesting talk links up in the technology that we do with the qualitative aspects of this as meaning to do the work. That's the type of stuff that we're doing with lighting and also and that your consumption. One thing that so it comes to my mom lies soil. Brilliant presentation is.

Did school know about the actual? You know, the capacity of the of the boilers that you mentioned. You said three of them were running at the classical School of Arts with at full capacity and whatever efficiency of those folders back in those days.

Thank you, yeah I'm I'm not an expert on my face on on blankets that were eight boilers and they fed. They had. I think it was 1516 steam coils.

It would have been very different to the obviously the modern ones. Yeah, yeah. So the only using five or six of them. So yeah, so amazing. The temperatures from 78 degrees to 16 degrees and most of the space and so 8 degrees temperature difference.

Which is interesting. Competitor is what we would expect today, but then that gives you a sense that, yeah, if it was zero or minus one or really cold, they probably had sufficient.

That's quite interesting. 'cause obviously losing Glasgow it's going to be colder anyway. Back in those days public colder still because climate change is really kicked in yet and also the the building fabric is obviously not as well as tight and you know, well insulated as current standard so you make it interesting case. Yeah, something interesting we found out when after the first fire I went to visit talk to the contractors in the building team a couple of times we were looking back at the original drawings and.

The studio windows and they were actually originally double glazed. Believe it or not, wow.

Would you publish later on or no?

This amazing, quite quite crudely done about an inch apart. Still yeah, there's something, and apparently we're trying to date how long it lasted, but it seems they took out that second after 10 years or so. I guess. Condensation stuff and.

Thank you very much. OK, thank you so much. Prof Henrik, would you like to?

I mean, Christina.

Thank you for the presentation and really enjoyed it. And of course I had the luxury of actually seeing this work developed when we were both wearing Cambridge together and it's nice to see you having been turned into book.

It got interesting. The picture that you showed you nobody from 1912 to know showing the people wearing face mask. You know possibly to protect themselves from the certain pollution at the time which you find in the newspaper articles being written about quite a lot right? Have you notice that there were these face masks and their sort of you see, sometimes pictures of people respirator, sometimes within faith, types of face mask?

Just as people do in Asia today and bicycles, you see I understand.

Yeah, um.

Yeah, you do find sort of allusions to it as well in at Birmingham School of our founder sort of reference. Going through the minutes to arguments about when different classes would be and when, when the when the women's class and when the Mail class should be.

And arguments about the capacity of the school and comment that there was one comment which stuck in my mind about. Please let us enter the building at night time. We won't make the atmosphere any worse than it already is. The sort of understanding particularly relevant now in terms of the Hills.

Different people sharing the space, yeah, I mean. The interesting thing is that while you're talking about these sort of air conditioning type, earlier conditioning method that we used to know 1890s early 1900s.

In some ways, McIntosh is sort of that island of a tradition that can be sort of trace back to the 1830s.

So what do you think? Some other use of horsehair fabrics?

To know to filter air to spray them, watered, humidify that's been experimented in London in the 1830s, so it's interesting that when almost concede, McIntosh are sort of lost. You know proponent or utilizer of these in traditions of environmental control, there would eventually be succeeded. I mean, if you're thinking about the BBC Broadcasting House opened in 1819, thirty two that already had to fully mechanically air conditioned carrier system in it? Yeah, that's quite interesting how there's suddenly there is a break.

In a sort of tradition of environmental control is much more embedded in the Victorian culture moving into influence American and innovations and technologies other than having their international success. And I think this is quite an interesting thing. I don't know. I'm looking forward to reading your book whether you just start to situate that or not in this sort of wider.

Mens of but my credit environmental tradition of environment control innocence. Yeah well of course all of your research on the experiments that went into the to the Houses of Parliament and the systems in the House of Commons, which is really fascinating. Yeah, for me I think the art school in Glasgow how I like to position it in my mind is it's not really the technology itself that is completely that is innovative as you say it goes back a long time in the Victorian period.

But the idea that you deploy that kind of system and a building like this whereas.

Been been used in hospitals for again reasons concern about health and me asthma in the air or very important buildings like the Houses of Parliament or lower courts. But the idea that you can buy it as a kit of parts just for the fairly ordinary building on a one in ordinary budget.

Also Macintosh.

And and working with his engineers. But how the system is integrated really into the architecture of the building into the total fabric of the building. Still, with an awareness of the difference between North and South, and there was more.

Intangible passive qualities of the environment is really sophisticated again.

I think so.

Christina would you like to ask your question live please? Thank you very much for the great talk and there's a bit of an overlap. You passed partly already answered that, so my question was whether apart from the activities taking place, whether all these considerations about lighting, ventilation were taking into account three save their health and well being of the occupants effectively, so you've more or less addressed this thing about ventilation? What about lighting?

Were they thinking about that or was it just?

More so I don't know aspirational artistic considerations in terms of experience.

I think there's a lot of practical concern, particularly the first example I showed you in Manchester, for example, how the artificial light as best as they could, was replicating the quality or the effects of the natural light. So you would have one one very one centrally placed gas or electric light, sort of in the position of where the skylight is to try and replicate that quality of like.

Four classes in the evening, but I think the really interesting sort of story there is is about just for purely practical reasons, how much art education had to happen in the evening.

But they were always trying to replicate the quality of natural light and that really sort of plays with the development of the lighting technologies themselves. And then this transition from gas to electricity.

One of the interesting things about the development of these planner ventilation systems was one of the arguments that was made for the advances of that was to defend.

Defender the gas industry from electric light because it was felt one of the one of the big drawbacks of Gaslighting's. It's fitting suit and dirt across the space, so you needed a really good ventilation system to keep the air clean. And then of course, it's quite. It's quite ironic in Glasgow and it's got this ventilation system in the lighting system is moved on and electricity is the.

The scene is the future, yeah?

Thank you, thank you.

Thanks Christina anymore questions.

Or comments that a couple of answers it calling 1st and then Mr Hawks.

Mute myself hello. I just first of all see many congratulations to Ronald. It's not an easy task getting a book out and I was there of course, as external examiner back in 2014.

So that's six years ago now, and of course, wanted to point out a couple of ironies. One of the ironies is that his Bieber coincided with the first fire in 2014. Absolutely, we were actually discussing the ventilation system that another irony helped accelerate the fire that first one in particular. So yeah, quite emotional for me. In fact, to see all these slides of the.

Outschool when it was extent.

I need to for me was 'cause I was looking at these studios in some detail. Not long before the 1st fire and on Bright Summers Day in the slides that were evident that the electric lighting was often on quite unnecessarily, which raises the issue of management over what's required.

Not not just in that building, actually. It's a kind of common fault, specially educational buildings, but well done. I see. And thank you for all your help calling, yeah.

Yes, that I remember the well. I remember my vibrant going and turning on my computer and was the the top of the news.

Afterward.

Yeah, the the boulders, the ventilation systems in the fire then found in I think is Thomas Howorth's book. That description of the opening of the first phase of the building before before Macintosh had added the stone staircases, so there was only the central timber sterchi. The fact that there had to be people on duty at the bottom of the buckets of water and sands just in case just in case the worst happened.

That was.

1897's here.

OK, thanks for that comment coming notes next please.

Reynold, thank thank you as everyone said for the lecture.

And.

As you know, but most other people won't know that so true of these buildings, very important in my life. I was a first year architecture students in the Manchester Building in 1956, so that building means a great deal to me. And at the Easter holiday of my second year, which makes it Easter 1958, I first saw the Glasgow building on a study visit with my tutor from Manchester, to my shame had never seen the Birmingham building.

Must do something about that when we can travel again. And of course, I'm very familiar with your work and I already have my copy of of the wonderful book. Now I strongly recommend it to everyone.

Although I love the postcards, they look great and but.

Will you just cry in quite some detail the.

Heating system ventilation system at Birmingham and in great detail. Of course at Glasgow, but you say nothing about Manchester in your talk. I wonder if you could just place that in this context. It's wonderful, of course that you begin with Manchester and the gloom had and the Villette paintings.

When I was in the Clean Air Act, it would have barely had any effect. In 1956 when I was student, I remember going to the hospital in the fog on on November mornings and but so so I was very much like that. They don't that just finished. We will be very nice if you could say something about the thermal side of Manchester at the outset.

At Yup shirt sorry, that was the drawing I missed out this second.

State ventilation system. There was a similar principle at.

In the first floor space and you can see from one of those photographs in 1900 vents in the floor.

So there was there was our brought, and as far as I can workout from the facade and you can see in the facade.

These outbreaks where they would come in but not weather mechanical system and then the ventilation was really driven by the chimney at the back.

So the hotel was extracted at high level in combination with the gas lamps I guess. And then along the corridor at the back of the space and not the chimney.

So I similar system in terms of layout. I suppose the difference really.

That you get when you apply a fan to the system as you then sort of pressure the environment on the inside.

Has advantages in terms of avoiding drafts.

As a Mancunian, writing to some extent how I I'm familiar of course with that from the book I wanted to the other the other.

Not to think that Manchester is very backward and of course that that that connects to Henrichs. Interesting observation about Monk about about Macintosh being kind of the end of a line of development of maybe had at least a century to him over the anti seasons. Interesting also that that red means close relation. What house was a great exponent of such installations in his buildings. There's a thesis for someone else perhaps.

The town Hall here. I think Kendricks been round half yard work.

Not sure.

Thank you very much. Yeah of course.

We don't think the Manchester School is any more backward than any of the others. Lovely place, Markham. I think you've got a question Anna.

Hi yeah I was just I was just going to say that when you finished by saying form follows function I thought you were going to say form follows light but you threw me there. I was thinking Oh yeah that makes sense.

But just a small observation that you know you pointed out the clothes that the men were wearing in the in the space.

And.

How we're talking about heating and ventilation and boilers and climate double glazing. And how perhaps we should all be wearing just more layers really? And we've become more reliant on architecture to do the job that something much closer to our bodies could do for us.

That was it really. It was just I think we were getting. You know, perhaps a bit lazy and wanting it wanting architecture too.

Yeah, do the job of a jumper or hat. Yeah, I completely agree, yeah.

Yeah, the more technical lengel about adaptive comfort theory.

And how you how you measure thermal comfort. But yeah, the principle that I always try to follow in my own work or how I understand the architecture is people are happiest when they can choose yes. So just having a diversity of conditions, having having some spaces that might be too cold or some that to warm some spaces in the middle somewhere, the sun shines in.

Well, I think it it kind of it relates a cross perhaps to what you also mentioned about that the space that you know the corridor, the staircase space with blazing above. And how in in winter it's colder. In summer it's hotter and as long as it's not ridiculously cold or ridiculously hot there is. There's pleasure in appreciating the seasons through architecture, and perhaps we're trying to create this constant that isn't really necessary.

In the same way that we expect to buy strawberries all year, you know. And actually we need to get.

More back in touch with one of the shifting temperatures and.

That was it. Really. Just remind, just highlighted it back to me. Thank you.

One question from Barnabas colder next and then another one from Butler Hegarty Architects please and then will finish.

Thank you, fantastic presentation, fantastic book as far as I've got so far in the middle of semester and fantastic audience as well as a very impressive group of people to have attracted.

I had a very small and geeky question which is about where the.

GSA stands on that energy shift from gas and coal to electricity. What's powering the plenum? 'cause the for earlier 19th century ventilation schemes, it's obviously a steam engine, but is there a steam engine working away in the basement with constant maintenance? Or is it electric already?

Electric Motors for driving the fans you know, so it must be quite earlier as being an electric plane, and presumably is it? Yes, yeah, and Glasgow Corporation crossword counts over one of the first to install an electric grids if you like.

But yeah, that that question of energy performances is interesting. I don't have how much called labor unfortunately, but it must have been a lot to keep the to keep the boilers going.

But I once did the masks with the light bulbs.

2 hours a day for however many days a year, 200 days a year and I got one kWh per meter square per year.

Edge.

Then today's currency is is very, very good, but I guess it's just thinking about electricity is a scarce commodity something that something that was a luxury that had to be used carefully for only two hours in the evening when you really needed it?

Yeah, it's amazing how far we've come.

I think it's the other interesting thing about that building or that particular age. The building on what Henrik was saying is that it's it marks that point where it's almost for the first time. It is possible technologically to build a building that is entirely divorced from the outside terms of the climate and weather. Obviously, Macintoshes, an architect, would never do that. You know he's he's far too skillfully, cares far too much about the environment inside the space.

So he doesn't do that, but you can see how it would be possible for the first time.

And then, as as the cat has the air conditioning systems become things you can buy off the shelf.

So easier is to forget about the context, at least environmentally in terms of how you built.

Yeah, thank you. Just fascinating that they're using that. Getting away from a from electric lighting by an electric planer. It's kind of an interesting argument, isn't it? But thank you very much. It's pretty.

Parliament introduced the first electric system in 1901.

Call driving a fan for ventilation.

Appear when that transition is definitely on its way.

Final question, please yes, but the Haggerty architects Hye Reynold Fantastic when you broke out absolutely brilliant. Delighted for you. I know others will be in this in this call.

I am sitting here thinking there's probably a whole raft of stuff around radiant heat and surface is an construction. I'm also putting together a bit of knowledge around. Think of concrete and knowing that this was exactly the point when people were experimenting with that sort of new material construction. I just wondered whether you found any evidence that was part of the equation in modifying these environments at all, or or any of those sort of new technologies that were floating around just at the term of that.

Of the century.

I'm not explicitly.

I think I think, for example, Macintosh completely understands those principles is.

Winston stay, the boiler is directly underneath the entrance in the concrete floor and it's radiating the heat.

Um?

No, I'm good.

Going back in time, Dean and I have just been doing some work on hardware call.

You know, I.

Modeling the fireplaces and how the fireplaces there were were used to provide radius comfort which is which is fascinating. And again the relationship between standards that we've come to expect about radiant heat in terms of.

In terms of a Cemetery, you know exposed to very hot fire.

Old window and the standards that are set out today of course alot more stringent than would have been expected in the past and in the past. People were perfectly happy or comfortable with the idea that if you called you might might stand next to the fire for 10 minutes until you slightly singed, then move away.

Experience.

It's a real pleasure to to have that experience that that duality of life, yeah, yeah yeah, well thank you.

Nice to see you, thank you.

Everybody that takes us to 2:00 o'clock and I know people have got teaching and other commitments now, so thank thank you so much. Ronald. Brilliant talk, so great book. Have read it. I really recommend it.

Thank you everyone, and yeah, if anyone wants a postcard or a bookmark, just drop me an email with your address. I'll send it in the post. I've got a file here so there's plenty.

And if you'd like to join us again next week, how May Chen will be talking about circular economy in construction industry and then our final talk on the 2nd of December is by a stereo cycle. Thetis and think it's going to be parametric design, so we can just go down to the bottom to the little reactions button.

Give a clap or a thumbs up if you like.

And then thanks everybody for joining us. We really appreciate it and hope to see you all soon.

Good afternoon.

Thanks bye.