Engineers by Wells, Matthew -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Contents Illustration credits Preface Introduction Chapter 1 Prehistory and ancient times

Myths to organise thought Technological apartheid Prehistoric technology Building in ancient Egypt Pyramids diversity in their construction Construction management influencing form Space conception contrary to technical capability Greek thought and construction Early mathematics Pre-adaptation in early Greek technology Eupalinos and Tridon Engineers and social function Hellenism

Chapter 2 Rome and the East (220 BC–AD 533)

Greece and Rome Roman reliance on problem-solving Technical development and imperialism Engineering as propaganda Military display transmuted into public works Engineering reinforcing power structures Assimilating otherness Method and codification: Vitruvius Pollio Value systems applied to construction Building viewed as a hermetic system Technical development through exchange Mixing cultural motifs The late appearance of pragmatism in engineering Alternatives to geometric forms The recognition of obsolescence The influence of geographical diversity Materials and morphology Early foundation engineering Piled foundations Scale changes in construction Matter becomes inanimate Symmetry and sub-systems permitting scale increases Monasticism and aesthetic rules Barbarian under-exploitation

Chapter 3 Byzantium and the European Dark Ages (476–1000)

Technological excess in lightweight construction Engineering for defence Early European timber construction Hagia Sophia, Constantinople Greek mechanikoi Transitions expressed in built form Building on precedent The stutters of technical change Arab thought Duality in western consciousness Mediterranean marginalia Ancient Chinese technology Bridge forms developed in parallel Chinese boatbuilding: bulkheads Atrophied technologies Landscape engineering

Chapter 4 Light (1000–1600)

Christianity in Northern Europe Saint Augustine The manipulation of light Gothic vaulting Beauvais Cathedral Mason’s rules and Euclid’s Elements Systematic knowledge Villard de Honnecourt Medieval patronage Animism Paracelsus Medieval shipbuilding The Mediterranean pool of ideas Lullism The dome of Florence Cathedral Leonardo da Vinci

Chapter 5 Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)

Venice The courtesan Galileo Standardised ship designs Abstracting an engineering problem The reception of engineering ideas Simon Stevin The calculus The influence of astronomy Algebra Mysticism maintained Machines The method of Francis Bacon Andrea Palladio’s generating system St Peter’s, Rome Mannerist engineering

Chapter 6 Early modern engineering (1580–1789)

Sir Christopher Wren John Vanbrugh Nicholas Hawksmoor Theatrical structure The theory of elasticity Simple bending theory Leonhard Euler The sublime Giovanni Piranesi and the Grand Tour The Grubenmann bridges and John Soane Charles Coulomb Colonial engineering Artillery forts The Industrial Revolution Iron Fireproof construction The Pantheon, Paris Building renovation and new forms

Chapter 7 Encyclopaedia (1750–1860)

Napoleon Meritocratic engineering Engineering education Claude-Louis Navier The French mathematicians Stability Structural metonymy Eugene Viollet-le-Duc English (and Scottish) pragmatists The Britannia bridge, Menai Strait Contingent design and immediate obsolescence Isambard Brunel Engineering showmanship The Crystal Palace Steel The Tay bridge disaster Cultural differences in engineering Extreme clippers New load environments

Chapter 8 The American reconstruction (1860–1890)

Commercial engineering and the Roeblings: father and son Emily Warren The expansion of the railroads Trussed girder design: diversification James Eads Niche environments Innocent engineering Skyscrapers Acquired engineering Alexandre Eiffel Vladimir Suchov The aesthetics of technology in Germany Teachers and researchers Alberto Castigliano Hardy Cross Science fiction and the use of speculation

Chapter 9 Classical analysis and reinforced concrete (1890–1920)

Pre-adaptations in the development of reinforced concrete Engineering approach: presentation and accessibility Paul Cottancin Pre-stressing concrete Design vocabularies for new materials Initial over-refinement Swiss engineers Robert Maillart Marginal and hybrid forms Émigré engineers Large suspension bridges Very tall towers Structural indeterminacy Classical statics

Chapter 10 Flight and the World Wars (1900–1950)

Flight achieved by compartmentalised solution Process stability in design Beauty admitted to aeronautics Airship structures Military development: acceleration and atrophy Over-extension and pre-determination Idiosyncratic engineering Weight-saving in very large structures Artificial constraints forcing developments Austerity and production in-balances; the efficient and imaginative use of materials The plastic theory of structural design Structures supporting new technologies Over-sophistication in engineering Fracture mechanics Old materials, new ways Transmuting manufacturing capacity and its products Flaws in the conceptual basis of structural engineering

Chapter 11 Early contemporaries (1945–1960)

Post-war reappraisal of conventions Individuality: Felix Candela Frei Otto and the German reconstruction The persistence of technological propaganda Focused development Crane design Very large transports Reinforced concrete construction developed as a universal building system Pre-cast concrete Edouardo Torroja Ricardo Morandi Pier Luigi Nervi Marina City, Chicago Modern foundation engineering Karl Terzaghi Structural engineering as industrial product design The relationship between architect and engineer The Sydney Opera House The ‘high-tech’ movement The Tacoma Narrows bridge Technical beguilement Aerospace structures The piecemeal that is modern structural engineering Tools framing problems

Chapter 12 The continual present (1950–2000)

Collaborations between architects and engineers Lightweight steel houses Cold war design Frank Newby The collapse of Ronan Point Anthony Hunt Centre Pompidou, Paris Integrated design Structures for the North Sea Dis-ordered systems The Art of Engineering’ Oskar Graf Santiago Calatrava The proliferation of alternative discourses The critical analysis of engineering David Billington Regional engineering Modern lightweight structures Purity in engineering Globalisation and regionalism Corporate engineering and individual responsibility Wind engineering Designer’s tools Parametric modelling Pro-active structures

Notes Bibliography Index