Reconstructed setting· The columns of time

Steam and the crowd

1800 → 1950

This backdrop shows the industrial landscape of the nineteenth century: sawtooth roofs, working chimneys and blocks of housing behind.

Backdrop representing the industrial landscape of the nineteenth century: sawtooth roofs, working chimneys and residential blocks in the background.

What the evidence shows

Steam-powered industry spreads from Britain between 1800 and 1900, and urban growth accompanies it. The residential blocks figure behind the factories and not beside them, housing having followed the location of work. The sawtooth roofs, known as north-light roofs, have glazed slopes facing north, in order to light the workshops with a constant illumination free of direct sun. The band covers the period in which human population moves from about one billion to two and a half billion, and in which, in certain countries, most inhabitants for the first time reside outside food-producing areas.

Bounds and conventions

The composition is established from the British and northern European case, where the process begins and where it is best documented. Elsewhere, industrialisation occurs later, on other terms, or in the form of a transformation imposed from outside.