Early Reinforced Brick Floors in Germany

Since fire-proof brick constructions had begun to replace the traditional wood structures following the Chicago Fire in the 1870s, reinforced brick floors have shaped the system of skeleton construction worldwide up to our times – in a wide range of multi-storey buildings as well as in many famous buildings of “classical modernism” from Le Corbusier to Mies van der Rohe. In recent years a research project at the Chair of Construction History and Structural Preservation of the BTU Cottbus, enabled by funds from the German Research Foundation DFG, gave the opportunity to investigate for the first time systematically the historical development and structural typology of early reinforced brick floors in the German empire from the beginnings in 1892 up to 1925. The first phase of the project was focused on historical questions as different construction types, proliferation, typical advantages and faults or historical methods of dimensioning. The research in this phase was based on patent documents and contemporary publications as main sources but analyses of brick production works and of the transport ways in the German inland water and railway networks were also used. Building on the results of the historical studies, the second phase of the project was dedicated to the structural examination of reinforced brick floors from a contemporary point of view. Aiming at a close-to-reality assessment of the load bearing capacity the usual calculation algorithms could be refined.