Joseph Monier (1823–1906)

In the 1860s and 1870s Joseph Monier developed and patented the techniques and early applications of reinforced-concrete construction, later taken up by engineers and architects worldwide. Monier himself used his invention in his work as a gardener and garden designer.

He was born in the village of Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie near Uzès in the south of France. He and his family worked in the fields and gardens of the Duke of Uzès. When he was 17 he was taken by the Duke to be a gardener at his house in Paris. After 6 years there he took a post at great Tuileries garden in Paris. He was responsible for the orangery, where trees were grown in large ceramic pots that often broke when they had to be moved. As a result, Monier experimented with making pots of cement reinforced with a mesh of steel. He designed features for other gardens and found other uses for his material, including rockeries, pools and pavilions. He showed these at the Paris Exposition universelle of 1867 and applied for a series of patents for garden pots, pipes, reservoirs, flooring, building cladding and roofs. His designs were a breakthrough as they combined the tensile strength of steel with the strength in compression of concrete. Many of his designs imitated the trunks and branches of trees (‘faux bois’). By 1869 he owned large workshops. After the interruptions of the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune, in 1873 he patented a design for bridges. In 1878, his vision for the material extended beyond the needs of gardens to railway sleepers and structural beams, and in 1886 he was awarded a patent for earthquake-resistant houses.

In 1890, Monier established a company called L'Entreprise générale de travaux en ciment J Monier. Aligning himself with new technologies, he designed conduits for electricity and telephone cables. His system was taken up and further developed for general construction by Wayss & Freytag in Germany and by Hennebique in France among others. Monier himself experienced personal tragedies and financial difficulties until his death in 1906.