同济大学建筑学专业英语阅读材料225.docVIP

225...FRAMES AS THICKENED EDGES . . . assume that columns and beams are in and that you have marked the exact positions of the doors and windows with string or pencil marks - NATURAL DOORS AND WINDOWS (221). You are ready to build the frames. Remember that a well made frame needs to be continuous with the surrounding wall, so that it helps the building structurally - EFFICIENT STRUCTURE (206), GRADUAL STIFFENING (208). Any homogeneous membrane which has holes in it will tend to rupture at the holes, unless the edges of the holes are reinforced by thickening. Therefore: Do not consider door and window frames as separate rigid structures which are inserted into holes in walls. Think of them instead as thickenings of the very fabric of the wall itself, made to protect the wall against the concentrations of stress which develop around openings. In line with this conception, build the frames as thickenings of the wall material, continuous with the wall itself, made of the same materials, and poured, or built up, in a manner which is continuous with the structure of the wall. The most familiar example of this principle at work is in the human face itself. Both eyes and mouth are surrounded by extra bone and flesh. It is this thickening, around the eyes and mouth, which gives them their character and helps to make them such important parts of human physiognomy.. A building also has its eyes and mouth: the windows and the doors. And following the principle which we observe in nature, almost every building has its windows and doors elaborated, made more special, by just the kind of thickening we see in eyes and mouths. The fact that openings in naturally occurring membranes are invariably thickened can be easily explained by considering how the lines of force in the membrane must flow around the hole. The density of the lines represent increasingstress concentrations. The increasing density of lines of force around the perimeter of the hole requires that additional