A nontechnical exploration of the principles and aesthetics of Swiss structural engineer Maillart (1872-1940). Includes many new color photographs of his spectacular bridges, buildings, and interiors, taken specifically to illustrate points made in the text, which is in parallel columns of English.

The description for this book, Robert Maillart's Bridges: The Art of Engineering, will be forthcoming.

An essential exploration of the engineering aesthetics of celebrated structures from long-span bridges to high-rise buildings What do structures such as the Eiffel Tower, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the concrete roofs of Pier Luigi Nervi have in common? According to The Tower and the Bridge, all are striking examples of structural art, an exciting area distinct from either architecture or machine design. Aided by stunning photographs, David Billington discusses the technical concerns and artistic principles underpinning the well-known projects of leading structural engineer-artists, including Othmar Ammann, Félix Candela, Gustave Eiffel, Fazlur Khan, Robert Maillart, John Roebling, and many others. A classic work, The Tower and the Bridge introduces readers to the fundamental aesthetics of engineering.

The description for this book, Robert Maillart's Bridges: The Art of Engineering, will be forthcoming.

Cable-nets, membrane roofs, and unique bridges are among the structures designed by Schlaich and his partners.

Power, Speed, and Form is the first accessible account of the engineering behind eight breakthrough innovations that transformed American life from 1876 to 1939—the telephone, electric power, oil refining, the automobile, the airplane, radio, the long-span steel bridge, and building with reinforced concrete. Beginning with Thomas Edison's system to generate and distribute electric power, the authors explain the Bell telephone, the oil refining processes of William Burton and Eugene Houdry, Henry Ford's Model T car and the response by General Motors, the Wright brothers' airplane, radio innovations from Marconi to Armstrong, Othmar Ammann's George Washington Bridge, the reinforced concrete structures of John Eastwood and Anton Tedesko, and in the 1930s, the Chrysler Airflow car and the Douglas DC-3 airplane. These innovations used simple numerical ideas, which the Billingtons integrate with short narrative accounts of each breakthrough—a unique and effective way to introduce engineering and how engineers think. The book shows how the best engineering exemplifies efficiency, economy and, where possible, elegance. With Power, Speed, and Form, educators, first-year engineering students, liberal arts students, and general readers now have, for the first time in one volume, an accessible and readable history of engineering achievements that were vital to America's development and that are still the foundations of modern life.

Enth. u.a.: S. 30-73: Robert Maillart: Master of concrete forms. - S. 128-162: Heinz Isler: structural art in thin-steel concrete.

This volume traces the process by which reinforced concrete emerged during the 19th century as the successful building material of today. Early work on testing the strength of cements led into a period of experimental work by a number of engineers, notably in Britain, France and America, to devise successful systems of embedding iron in concrete in such a way that the two materials would act together to carry imposed loads. The papers take the story to the early years of the 20th century and provide a thorough review of the gradual evolution of ideas and the contributions of individuals to this technology.

Inverting rules with obvious relish, Florentine artist Piero di Cosimo (1462–1522) is known today—as he was in his own time—for his highly personal visual language, one capable of generating images of the most mesmerizing oddity. In this book, Dennis Geronimus overcomes the scarcity of information about the artist’s life and works—only one of the nearly sixty known works by Piero is actually signed and dated—and pieces together from extensive archival research the most complete and accurate account of Piero’s life and career ever written. Unfettered imagination was the sign under which Piero exercised his pictorial invention, and yet the complicated artist was also a product of his culture. The book fills gaps in the artist’s biography and provides intensive analysis of Piero’s protean imagery, discusses his various patrons and commissions, and lists his extant, lost, and uncertainly attributed works.

This comprehensive biography traces the life and works of Robert Maillart, one of the most important engineers and designers of the twentieth century. His career developed around a central issue of modern technological society: the debate between two antithetical views of engineering opposing applied science, which relied on general mathematical theories for understanding structures against design, which Maillart championed. Maillart considered structures not merely works of utility but also as works of art. As utilitarian objects, he created a series of innovations of lasting significance. Aesthetically, Maillart shaped his three innovations in concrete to create surprising and often stunning new forms. Providing an analysis of these innovations, this biography also connects Maillart's aesthetic ideas with the private and professional context in which he worked.