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 re-examined in 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.

Soils and foundations / S. Bonde, C. Maines, and R. Richards, Jr. -- Walls and other vertical elements / S. Bonde, R. Mark, and E.C. Robison -- Vaults and domes / R. Mark and E.C. Robison -- Timber roofs and spires / L.T. Courtenay.