The Shukhov Rotunda is a unique circular steel pavilion designed by the engineer Vladimir Grigoryevich Shukhov and built in 1896 for the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod. The structure became the world's first example of a membrane roof structure for buildings and the first suspended steel tent in the history of architecture. After the exhibition closed, the pavilion was dismantled; it is considered a lost monument of engineering.[1]
Design
The pavilion was circular, 68 meters in diameter. Mounted on top of the steel frame of the outer cylindrical wall was a massive load-bearing riveted steel ring of the same diameter. In the central part of the rotunda, a second load-bearing ring, 25 meters in diameter, was set on 16 lightweight steel lattice columns. Between the two rings was fastened a suspended roof made of load-bearing steel strips, 50×5 mm in cross-section, crossing in a diamond-shaped mesh and covered with thin sheet metal. Large hexagonal frames fitted with glass panes for overhead lighting were spaced evenly over the steel mesh.[1]
At the center of the rotunda, the world's first steel membrane shell roof was attached to the 25-meter ring base, in the form of a concave, spherical dome made of sheet iron. The elegant combination of two shell roofs — the ring-shaped suspended roof and the central membrane — vividly demonstrated the possibilities of using steel in architecture.[1]
History of creation
By the time he designed the rotunda, Shukhov had a varied background: he had watched the construction of exhibition pavilions in Philadelphia, designed locomotive depots for the administration of the Warsaw–Vienna Railway, and attended lectures on the cell membrane and the membranes of living organisms at the Military Medical Academy. Shukhov embodied all of this experience in the design of a single building. According to specialists at the Shukhov Tower Foundation, the rotunda was the world's first suspended tent made of steel.[2]
Significance
The Shukhov Rotunda went down in history as the world's first membrane roof structure for buildings. Nizhny Novgorod became the birthplace of a structural principle that later gained wide use around the world. At the same 1896 exhibition, Shukhov also presented other innovative structures — a rectangular pavilion with suspended shell roofs, as well as the first hyperboloid towers.[1] Information about the design and fate of the lost rotunda has been preserved in archival materials and popularized by the Shukhov Tower Foundation — in particular, by its president, Vladimir Fyodorovich Shukhov, and vice president, Sergey Vyacheslavovich Arsenyev.[2]
Sources
- dic.academic.ru — Shukhov Rotunda — What Is It? What Is the Shukhov Rotunda? (archive)
- RIA Novosti — Nizhny Novgorod's Steel Tent. What Was Frightening and Astonishing About the Shukhov Rotunda (archive)