Engineered design of masonry buildings: fifty years development in Europe

This paper describes the development of the structural design of multi-storey, load-bearing masonry buildings in the United Kingdom and the European Community over the second half of the 20th century. Tall buildings of this type had fallen into disuse in the first half of the century as the empirical rules governing their design led to walls of excessive thickness. The application of engineering principles to load-bearing masonry was pioneered in Switzerland, and in the United Kingdom a rudimentary code of practice appeared in 1949. This was used for the design of buildings in the following decade, but its limitations led to research work on a number of key problems, and eventually to the publication of a completely new code, based on limit state principles, in 1978. Parallel work by international organizations and later in the European Union led to the publication of a draft code, intended for use in countries of the EU in 1995. Essential problems of overall stability and safety and the design of walls in compression and under combined compressive and lateral loads have been addressed. The paper summarizes the approach to these problems which has been adopted in the UK and EU codes with reference to relevant research work, in particular to projects with which the author has been associated.