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French to English translations [PRO] Architecture / History Book On Charlemagne
French term or phrase:construisaient...en dur
Contexte:
"À l'époque de Charlemagne et certainement jusqu'au XIIème siècle, on construisait beaucoup en bois en Austrasie/Lotharingie du Nord. Mais les romains constuisaient leurs monuments **en dur.**
Explanation: "en dur" often means "permanent construction", even if the first two little piggies' houses were actually intended to be as permanent as the third, and probably would have come pretty close (with appropriate maintenance) had it not been for the Big Bad Wolf.
And whatever other durable materials the Romans might have built with, not that I can think of any, unless you start counting things like clay roof tiles ...
Mineral materials as opposed to organic.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 20 hrs (2008-01-21 22:37:38 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
While it is true that in many European cities, we still have medieval stone buildings while timber constructions have not survived, there are also towns where timber and earth construction has survived. Apart from fire, the main reason for the disappearance of these "temporary" constructions, is not so much their "non-permanent" nature, but rather the fact that they were not grand and important, were not the homes and institutions of the wealthy and the governing class, just the houses and shops of ordinary people, so when someone wanted to broaden a street so his carriage could drive down it, he pretexted insalubrity to flatten whole districts. Nothing changes.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 20 hrs (2008-01-21 22:45:50 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
Another difficulty with "permanent" as I see it is the difference in meaning it has taken on over the years. A timber-framed house these days is intended to be just as "permanent" as one made of brick and/or concrete.
But in the distant past, timber-framed houses were designed to be relocatable. The original half-timbered houses of Normandy, for example, were brought here by the Vikings in their longboats for wintering over (the Scandinavians didn't have flat-pack furniture yet, but they did have flat-pack houses). The framing was assembled with wooden dowels and the gaps filled in with all available materials: sod, stone, dung, etc. While the house itself might have been "permanent", they were not initially intended to be permanently installed in a given place. These days, though, you can still have a permanent half-timbered house built with nothing holding it together but mortise and tenon and wooden dowels.
thought up the artificial stone theory centuries ago, if it was that simple. Then again, concrete IS a relatively recent re-invention, and it IS sometimes difficult to think out of the box. Only the future will tell.
Bourth (X)
16:15 Jan 24, 2008
Well, a mould doesn't require MUCH wood, and the key thing is that they can be used time and time again. If pressed, they could have recycled ovalized chariot wheels whenever someone forgot to chock his cart up over night ;-).Must say I find it odd no one
Nothing beats laboratory analysis, of course. Unfortunately, even if I had been prepared to pay the excess baggage charge, the authorities are very strict about artificts leaving the country and wouldn't have allowed me bring back a pyramid stone ....
So it should be easy enough to "prove" this theory (or not). I would think a simple magnifying glass would be enough to tell the difference between naturally formed stone and an artificial "agglomeration." I'm not impressed by the website of the Main Guy.
The theory itself is interesting, but raises a few questions (like, what did they make the *molds* out of?). Modern petrographic analysis is so sophisticated that building/sculpure stones can be traced back to the exact quarry they were taken from.
Well I never (as my grandma would have said)... Interesting theory, but having scrambled over a pyramid or two, I can't say I'm very convinced by all this. The stones looked stoney enough to me, though of course that's how I was expecting them to look...
:) This discussion is fascinating - and I think Bourth's theory (I'm sure he is the author) deserves further research, but I'm afraid a moderator will wipe all this away before very long - unless femme finds it especially pertinent to to her question !
Actually, there were innumerable pyramids in wood --some much larger than the paltry stone ones which have survived. But, since they were not made out of a durable material, they all just rotted away. So it Goes.
Bourth (X)
14:27 Jan 23, 2008
A new theory is that the stone of the pyramids is not actually natural stone at all, but an artificial stone, a sort of concrete made by mixing sand with a binder and placing it in moulds.
Yes, I suppose the Egyptians only built the pyramids in stone because there wasn't enough wood around .... ;) But without more general context for the question, I think your "masonry" suggestion is the most appropriate.
Wood sometimes lasts longer than masonry - it depends what forces it is exposed to. '70s tower blocks were "en dur" Elizabethan houses or Mirepoix arcades used wood. http://www.gites-mirepoix.com/Images/Mirepoix.JPG
The Pantheon is a good example of Roman concrete at its most creative (for the period) - but does the general context suggest anything more specific than a permanent monument as opposed to wood ?
Is the Pantheon concrete? "The most celebrated feature of the Pantheon is the mass concrete dome, which was the largest dome in the world for more than 1,000 years and is still the largest dome made of mass concrete. " http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A5340
peer agreement (net): +1
