Building; 3,000 Years of Design, Engineering and Construction

Addis, Bill

ISBN 10: 0714841463 / ISBN 13: 9780714841465

Published by Phaidon Press, 2007

About this Item

First Comprehensive Survey of the History of Building Construction and Civil Engineering; More than 800 Photographs, Archival Drawings, and Specially Commissioned Diagrams. "The history of ideas in building engineering is a vast underexplored range. Bill Addis has written an excellent guide and history that is both encyclopaedic and subtle . . . [It] should be in every architect and engineer's library." -Professor Guy Nordenson, School of Architecture, Princeton University The Parthenon, Cathedral of Chartres, dome of St. Peter's, eighteenth-century silk mills in England, Crystal Palace, Chicago high-rises, Sydney Opera House, and the latest "green" skyscrapers all have the same common threads running throughout their foundation. Design, engineering, and construction links the ancient to the modern and are the blueprint of every building.

Seller Inventory # 80287

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Building; 3,000 Years of Design, Engineering and Construction
• Publisher: Phaidon Press
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0714841463
• ISBN 13: 9780714841465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

From Egypt and Classical Greece and Rome through the building booms of the Gothic era and the Renaissance, and from the Industrial Revolution to the present era of digital modeling, Building: 3,000 Years of Design, Engineering, and Construction, charts centuries of innovations in engineering and building construction. This comprehensive and heavily illustrated volume, aimed at students and young professionals as well as general readers, explores the materials, classic texts, instruments, and theories that have propelled modern engineering, and the famous and not-so-famous buildings designed through the ages, from the Parthenon to Chartres Cathedral and the dome of St. Peter's, from eighteenth-century silk mills in England to the Crystal Palace, and on to the first Chicago high-rises, the Sydney Opera House, and the latest "green" skyscrapers.

The book concentrates on developments since the industrial and scientific revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Incorporated within the continuous narrative are sidebars with short biographies of eminent engineers, excerpts from classic texts, stories of individual projects of major importance, and brief histories of key concepts such as calculus. Also included are extensive reference materials: appendices, a glossary, bibliography, and index.

About the Author

William Addis is a consulting engineer at Buro Happold in London and the author of numerous books, academic papers, and book reviews on construction history published over the past 25 years. He holds a doctorate degree in the history and philosophy of engineering from the University of Reading, where he taught this subject for 15 years; he has also delivered lecture courses on engineering history at Cambridge University, the University of Bath, and University College, London. In 1998, he helped curate the exhibition "The Art of the Engineer" at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and contributed to the book that accompanied the exhibition. Addis is an active member of the Institution of Structural Engineers' History Study Group and lectures at professional conferences around the world.