Structures by Design: Thinking, Making, Breaking

Structures by Design: Thinking, Making, Breaking is an award-winning structures textbook written for those who prefer to learn about buildings using hands-on, creative problem-solving techniques. Instead of focusing only on formulas and diagrams, this book teaches concepts before calculations and how principles of structural and material behavior can be applied to the design of effective, efficient, and expressive building designs. 

The book received a 2021 TAA Textbook Excellence Award. The award jury described the book as, "...an innovative and abundantly illustrated book packed with interactive exercises and informative diagrams. It is a book that will likely traverse conventionally siloed aspects of architecture curricula, finding its way into structures courses as well as design studios. The author uses easy-to-understand and appropriate examples, starting with the simple and building to the complex, to walk the reader through the world of structural engineering."

The book's format makes it easy to adopt the content into a wide variety of courses that deal with building structures and architectural design.  Each section of the book is focused on a particular manner by which structural resistance is provided: Form (Arches and Cables), Sections (Beams, Slabs, and Columns), Vectors (Trusses and Space Frames), Surfaces (Shells and Plates), and Frames (Connections and High-Rises). More than 500 original illustrations and photos provide example solutions and inspiration for further design exploration.

In each section, design exercises are shown which use a Think, Make, Break method of reiterative design. These examples demonstrate how to generate and evaluate different structural options for building designs using a variety of structural design tools including: the human body, physical models, historical precedents, static diagrams, traditional formulae, and advanced digital analysis. These examples range from introductory lessons of structural fundamentals to advanced techniques and systems. Each chapter includes potential lab exercises, questions for flipped classroom discussions, and suggestions for additional learning.

 

Rob Whitehead, AIA, LEED AP, is a licensed architect and Associate Professor of Architecture at Iowa State University where he teaches structural design, integrated design studios, and design-build. His design work, research, and writing is centered on the conjunction of architecture, structural design, and construction in pedagogy and practice.
 
He is the author of Structures by Design: Thinking, Making, Breaking (2019), a co-author of Design-Tech: Building Technology for Architects (2014) with Tom Leslie and Jason Alread, and various other publications and proceedings related to architectural structures and education.  

He received the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Teaching from Iowa State University (2020), was named one of 30 Most Admired Educators by Design Intelligence journal (2014). He received the Iowa Educator Award by the Iowa Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (2014), and the Emerging Faculty Award by the Building Technology Educators' Society (BTES) in 2011. His structural design course sequence, Structural Technology in Practice, was awarded the Creative Achievement Award (2014) by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). 

In addition to teaching, he currently serves as a Faculty Fellow for High Impact Practices at Iowa State University's Center for the Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT).