Sir John Soane knew as much about the practicalities of construction as any architect of his generation: not just how to build in brick and stone, but with other materials as well, especially timber. Soane had time to see the Grubenmann...
moreSir John Soane knew as much about the practicalities of construction as any architect of his generation: not just how to build in brick and stone, but with other materials as well, especially timber.
Soane had time to see the Grubenmann bridges in three places - at Reichenau, Wettingen and Schaffhausen, all of them built in 1756-66. These were not tourist hit-and-run visits. He made careful annotated drawings of each bridge as part of his travel diary, and these notes (which mercifully remained with him, despite the loss of the rest of his luggage) are the heart of the exhibition. True, they are not as spectacular as the wonderful models on display, or the large drawings he had made to illustrate his Royal Academy lectures, but they show us exactly how he understood the bridges as structures.
