Wednesday 30 March 2011

Geometry and Proportion in Structural Design


A great book about construction history:
"This collection of essays covers the wide range of topics about structural design, structural design approaches and structural pioneers in honor of the Spanish architect Ricardo Aroca. [...] He radically changed the structural education of architectural students. Aroca pushed it away from a primary analytical analysis towards the discovery of the flow of forces [...] This book includes most important and interesting thoughts on the relation between architectural and structural forms and the fact that both disciplines – architecture and engineering – have differing approaches to the function of a structure." Cited from the book review by
Annette Bögle. The only handicap for me is, that some of the essays written in spanish are not translated into english.



In his essay, Santiago Huerta, one of the book's editors, discusses the fascinating theorem of transformation of structures by William Rankine, first described in the Manual of Applied Mechanics (1858). Huerta's full article can be downloaded here.

2 comments:

William Woodruff said...

Thanks for sharing this.

William Woodruff said...

Some say that architecture begins with geometry. Since early times, the construction trusted the imitation of natural forms - circular Stonehenge in the UK- and then applied math principles to standard and copy format. We can find geometry and proportion everywhere and to write geometry assignments, I Buy Assignment Online.