Opinion+on+Denis+Oliver+Quotation



//“The old cast iron buildings died out. I'm not really sure whether the new skyscrapers killed them or the new esthetics”// //Denis Oliver//

I think that what Denis Oliver tried to express in that sentence is that is actually a combination of those two facts that the cast iron started to be forgotten as a construction material.

The material high weakness to tension stress and bending tension stress made lots of construction (especially bridges) to crack and finally fall down//,// reducing the possibilities of construction into arches, to make all the parts work in compression. This versatility and resistance faults made the cast iron to fade away into a under used construction material when the concrete and reinforced concrete apperared which didn't have any of that faults//.//

Furthermore, in the estethics the concrete also had the upper hand because cast iron was easily oxidated and that gave the buildings not a very good look, and it was needed to protect the surface with different chemicals to keep it neat, while concrete almost needed no maintenance at all.

Finally, the cast iron cost its almost the triple of the concrete making it really expensive in comparison and also it weights almost twice compared to the concrete, and having that weaknesses finally made the cast iron to dissapear and the concrete to surface as revolutionary and way better material than cast iron was for construction.