Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0262132877, Hardcover)

The technological side of architecture is a fascinating yet often overlooked aspect of architectural history. This collaborative volume by architectural historians and research engineers provides fresh insights into the early builders' art. It examines innovative structures in eras that saw the development of new, large-scale building types and describes the modern scientific tools for clarifying the technological circumstances and the design techniques employed by pre-Enlightenment builders.

Illustrated with over 200 diagrams and photographs, specific chapters treat such structural components as soils and foundations; walls and other masonry; vertical elements such as piers, arches, and buttresses; masonry domes and vaults; and timber roofs and spires. The most generally taught western monuments ranging from ancient Greece to the Scientific Revolution are then reexamined in the light of this information.

The concluding chapter summarizes the overall pattern of prescientific building design, pointing up some of the reasons for its remarkable record of success, and discusses the displacement of the craftsman-master builder by the artist-architect, with a most important and surprising consequence of this transformation. Robert Mark is Professor of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Princeton University. His previous books include Experiments in Gothic Structure and Light, Wind, and Structure, which served as the basis for the Nova/WGBH television program, "The Mystery of the Master Builders."

Contributors: Sheila Bonde. Lynn T. Courtenay. Michael Davis. Peter Fergusson. Joel Herschman. Clark Maines. Robert Mark. Rowland Richards, Jr. Elwin C. Robison. Elizabeth B. Smith. Leonard A. Van Gulick.