Frame Refinement

Abstract

The qualitative and quantitative explorations of frames in this chapter owe a great deal to two German professors and educators, Heino Engel and Curt Siegel. Engel’s landmark book Tragsysteme is well known to many because of its astonishing illustrations, which explore different types of structural forms, including frames. Engel qualitatively explored frame behavior in a visual, exploratory manner. Less well known is the work of Professor Curt Siegel of Stuttgart University, who made a major contribution to the study of structures, including frames and shells, with a book called Structure and Form in Modern Architecture. Siegel called his novel approach to teaching structures, which joined together static analysis of structures and design of structural forms, “Tragwerklehre.” This can be translated as “teaching on structures” or the translation of statics and elastic behavior of solids into actual structural elements of a building. This chapter on frames is indebted to both of these great pedagogical works.