Engineering:Piloti
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Pilotis, or piers, are supports such as columns, pillars, or stilts that lift a building above ground or water. They are traditionally found in stilt and pole dwellings such as fishermen's huts in Asia and Scandinavia[1] using wood, and in elevated houses such as Old Queenslanders in Australia's tropical Northern state, where they are called "stumps". Pilotis are a fixture of modern architecture, and were recommended by the modern architect Le Corbusier in his manifesto, the Five Points of Architecture.
Function
In modern architecture, pilotis are ground-level supporting columns. A prime example is Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye in Poissy, France. Another is Patrick Gwynne's The Homewood in Surrey, England .
Beyond their support function, the pilotis (or piers) raise the architectural volume, lighten it and free a space for circulation under the construction.[2] They refine a building's connectivity with the land by allowing for parking, garden or driveway below while allowing a sense of floating and lightness in the architecture itself. In hurricane-prone areas, pilotis may be used to raise the inhabited space of a building above typical storm surge levels.
Le Corbusier used them in a variety of forms from slender posts to the massive Brutalist look of the Marseilles Housing Unit (1945–1952) with a range of bases, inclusions and surfaces. This was part of Le Corbusier's idea of machine-like efficiency where land, people and buildings would work together optimally.
Notes
- ↑ Sweden: a single photograph of such houses, whose caption calls the supports pilotis.
- ↑ www.historial.org/us/renseign/doss7-5.htm
References
- Article: "Pilote, die" in: Pevsner, Honour, Fleming: Lexikon der Weltarchitektur, München 1987
- Primer on architecture of the Musée Picardie, accessed 2009-06-20
- "pilotis", The Urban Conservation Glossary, University of Dundee, ISBN:1-900070-16-2, online version accessed 2009-06-20
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