Auguste Fabre and the Construction of Tile Vaults in France: The Industrialization of a Traditional Technique

Auguste Fabre was a French contractor specialized in the construction of masonry vaults. He founded his company in 1896 and patented different systems of light and economic vaults, among them one for tile vaults. Fabre built thousands of vaults in France, Belgium and Algeria, some of them of great importance, such as the dome of the Petit Palais for the international exhibition in Paris in 1900, or the dome of the Congo Museum in Tervuren (Belgium). Historicism was a breeding ground for the construction of vaults, however, there is scarce technical documentation about them in the journals of the time. This paper explains the work of Auguste Fabre, his patents and some of his buildings, focusing in particular on the construction of tile vaults.