2 research outputs found
Structure and history of Guastavino vaulting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
No full textThesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2014.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 109-111).The R. Guastavino Company constructed structural masonry vaults for wings E and H of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (the Museum) between 1910 and 1912. In the early 1960s the Museum relocated the Egyptian and Near- and Far-Eastern galleries to these wings, which in combination with growing numbers of visitors doubled the design live load for the vaults. To accommodate this change, the Museum demolished the Guastavino vaults and replaced them with steel beams even though consulting engineers had not performed a thorough structural assessment prior to demolition. The vaults were a part of a landmark McKim, Mead and White building and warranted appropriate analysis to determine their capacity under increased loading demand. This thesis investigates both history and structural analysis. Primary sources reveal that the consulting engineers hired by the Museum were unfamiliar with the structural analysis of unreinforced masonry vaults, leading to the decision to demolish them. These historical events contextualize the quantitative focus of the thesis, which is to provide engineers with accessible techniques to structurally assess unreinforced masonry systems. This enables decisions based on evidence rather than a lack of comprehension of structural behavior. Three important assumptions about masonry behavior are adopted: Masonry has no tensile strength, it has unlimited compression capacity, and it will not fail from sliding between blocks or segments. With these assumptions, masonry analysis is primarily a problem of stability rather than elasticity. Analytical equilibrium and graphical techniques are used to determine vault stability under dead and live loading. Two vaults are investigated: A scaled Guastavino vault built for a recent exhibit, and a representative cross-vault from wing H of the Museum. Two methods of modeling structural behavior are used for each analysis technique: The triangle-arch and sliced parallel arches methods. Analysis shows that the Museum vaults had the capacity to resist the increased live load.by Jonathan Calman Ellowitz.M. Eng
A Welfare Consensus? Social Policy from Thatcher to Blair
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A Welfare Consensus?
Social Policy from Thatcher to Blair
This thesis examines two central aspects of asset management by central government with special reference to health and education. First, it analyses the nature, structure and procedural legacy inherited by New Labour after eighteen years of Conservative control, and carries this analysis forward to determine the influence that this has on New Labour’s policy orientation. Second, with a view to the significance of institutionalist theories, which underline the potential importance of ‘path dependency’, the thesis seeks to determine what, if any, major policy differences developed with the transition from the Conservative governments of 1979-97 to the New Labour governments of 1997-2007.
From a wealth of documentary evidence this thesis concludes that New Labour, throughout its ten years period in office, while it softened the well entrenched Thatcherite policies inherited it did not reform the core objectives of ‘rolling back the state’ which had led to the introduction of market-style competition designed to drive up standards, choice and availability accompanied by the driving down of unit costs. Over a time span of almost thirty years all governments have placed health and education as twin focal points of their policy initiatives. This thesis has therefore chosen these two political drivers as major examples of continuity and changes in social policy over that period, stretching from the late 20th century and into the 21st century.
New Labour’s pragmatic acceptance in 1997 of its Thatcherite legacy with its compounded bipartisan approach led to a new welfare consensus coupled to enhanced strategic public expenditure priorities. In doing so, New Labour, under Blair, set aside its traditional, historical policies and embedded its own legacy so deeply into the economic fabric and culture of the UK that any future government, of whatever political persuasion will find the forward momentum of these policies powerful inhibitors of change. Thirty years of rolling back the state has achieved its outcome.
John D Holland
St Cuthbert’s Society
School of Applied Social Sciences,
Department of Sociology
Durham University
November 200
