Author Description

We are entering a period, says Tony Robbin, in which engineering is the unrecognized avant-garde in architectural design, a period in which new materials and structural systems create new aesthetic principles. In this important and generously illustrated book, he shows us why this is so, pointing out the beauty and utility of structures made of fabric, film, and "smart materials," of buildings that can be disassembled or redeployed for other uses. Robbin writes for architects who wish to know the most recent engineering techniques, engineers who are interested in the aesthetic dimensions of their work, and general readers who enjoy watching and musing on the creation of buildings. Robbin explains tensegrity systems like Buckminster Fuller's domes and the deployment of preassembled buildings that are erected on site in a few days. He tells about hybrid structures, like Masao Saitoh's Sakata gym, that combine different structural systems and use one or the other as the load dictates. He examines plate structures and discusses shells, exemplified in the marvelous constructions of the Swiss engineer Heinz Isler. And he informs us about such engineering developments as shape memory alloys, micro-defect-free concretes, and computer-generated forms that are certain to influence future architecture.