JUNE 2008 » book review

In Praise of the Lowly

Corrugated Iron: Building on The Frontier
by Adam Mornement and Simon Holloway
W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY; 2007
224pp.; hardcover; more than 130 color photographs; $60
ISBN 978-0-393-73240-5

Reviewed by Nicole V. Gagné

A book about corrugated iron? What's next, a coffee-table book devoted to rivets? If anyone is capable of producing a book on rivets that is half as intelligent, fascinating, thoughtfully researched, and beautifully photographed as Adam Mornement and Simon Holloway's Corrugated Iron: Building On The Frontier, then it will be worthy of praise too.

To their credit, Mornement and Holloway are not oblivious to the knee-jerk dismissals of their subject. In their introduction, they readily acknowledge that corrugated iron "has long been burdened by a perception problem. To many it is regarded as cheap, temporary, and ugly; a crude material fit only for use in agriculture, industry, or shanty towns." But they challenge such misperceptions by extolling the virtues of this ubiquitous product, declaring it "a material of the frontier. It makes life possible in places that would otherwise be uninhabitable, whether due to extreme climate, inhospitable terrain, the scarcity of local building materials, or the sheer scale of demand for shelter." Corrugated iron, they remind their readers, "became one of the few products of the Industrial Revolution to be absorbed into vernacular building repertoires and the first truly industrially produced construction material to challenge the historic hegemony of timber, stone, and brick."

The term "corrugated" is derived from the Latin ruga, meaning wave or wrinkle, and its usage in this context was coined when the British architect and engineer Henry Robinson Palmer patented corrugated metal in 1829. Working for the London Dock Company, Palmer needed to construct sheds that were simple, sturdy, and economical, and his innovative treatment of sheet metal resulted in a building material that was rigid and self-supporting yet lightweight, which made it ideal for roofing; at the same time, it was also useful as walls, either in modular units or as continuous overlapping sheeting.

This breakthrough product quite naturally took on the patina of Modernism, and the authors describe how it soon aroused considerable fascination and enthusiasm: "During the 1850s corrugated-iron buildings erected prior to export – to check for defects and to number components – were regularly reported by the newspapers and became popular visitor attractions in their own right." One noteworthy example is an impressive two-story Customs House, designed by architect Edward Salmons and built in Manchester; destined for a settlement in Peru, it attracted 25,000 admiring visitors over a ten-day period in 1854.

Of course, nothing as utilitarian, widespread and just plain humble as corrugated iron could expect to generate such attention for very long, and by the 1870s it was generating more yawns than sighs. That indifference has persisted, and even the use of corrugated metal by such prominent 20th-century architects and designers as Buckminster Fuller, Frank Gehry, Nicholas Grimshaw and Charles and Ray Eames failed to make it as sexy as it once had seemed. Mornement and Holloway's study probably won't turn around that "perception problem" either.

By the early-21st century, corrugated iron can boast a status that's better than being regarded as sexy: It has become indispensable, and quite possibly, it today is "keeping the elements from more people's heads than any other material, a consequence of its prominence in the developing world" – a world that could not have developed as it has without relying upon versatile and inexpensive corrugated metal. (As Mornement and Holloway point out, iron has rarely been used for this building material since the early-20th century; today it's made most often of steel, zinc, aluminum or other composites, despite its having retained the generic name of "corrugated iron.")

But what structures made of corrugated metal are worth looking at now? Here again, Mornement and Holloway have the answers, as Henry Robinson Palmer's sheds for the London Dock Company soon led to an array of applications internationally: By the second half of the 19th century, corrugated iron had become what the authors call "the primary material of a worldwide industrial vernacular, a position that it retains today."

The book is rich with examples of buildings made from corrugated iron in the last century – in fact it has almost as many historic pictures and illustrations as it does contemporary color photos. Those inevitable tunnel-shaped warehouses and hangers soon gave way to domiciles in the Italianate, Bungalow, Chalet, Farmhouse and Cottage styles, as well as stores, ballrooms and gymnasiums designed along Carpenter Gothic lines.

Most impressive visually, however, is the array of houses of worship built of corrugated iron. Mornement and Holloway devote an entire chapter to what locals familiarly referred to as the "tin tabernacles." This building trend was launched by the Anglican gathering places that were constructed in England's overseas colonies, but it soon came home to roost: From the 1880s until the start of World War I, "thousands of corrugated-iron chapels were erected all over Britain. [...] Some are still in use, others are suffering the ignominy of dereliction, but all are decomposing with grace."

These churches and chapels and mission halls became something of a cause célèbre in England, arousing the wrath of tastemakers such as John Ruskin, who decried the usage of "modern materials" in the construction and decoration of churches. Yet others more wisely saw that what was important was not the church's skin but its soul, and so these buildings proliferated. Abroad, where the strictures were looser and necessity could be claimed, they were a constant, sometimes resulting in grand edifices such as the six iron churches of Australia's Diocese of Melbourne, which were built in the 1850s.

As wonderful as it is to leaf through big picture books of grandiose architectural inspirations, there is nevertheless a unique and genuinely gratifying joy to be had in contemplating the use of something lowly and plain. That rare pleasure is the heart of Mornement and Holloway's Corrugated Iron: Building On The Frontier. TB

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