Developments in Structural Form

Encompassing buildings of the West, North Africa, and the Near East, from native construction to modern technology, Developments in Structural Form considers the physical principles of structures, the materials they are made of the ways in which they maybe built, and the history of man's involvement with them. Mainstone interweaves these approaches so deftly that the evolution of structural forms seems as natural and inevitable as the evolution of plants and animals

The book first identifies features that distinguish the forms built by man from those shaped by nature and discusses the physical and other constraints on the choices that can be made. It then looks in turn at all the elementary forms - arches, domes, beams, slabs and the like - which combine into the more complex forms of complete structures, and at the different classes of the complete forms themselves. The development of each form is traced chronologically, but with an emphasis on the chronology rather than on the problems that designers have continually faced in trying to serve new ends with limited means or to serve old ones in new ways. The book concludes with a chapter on the processes of design, showing how a growing understanding of structural behavior has widened the designer's freedom of choice.