1999 Structural Engineering Traveling Fellowship
Common Threads in the Art of Structural Engineering

I first discovered the beauty possible in structural design during the summer after my junior year in college. I had recently completed my first design courses in concrete and steel, and my professors had provided me with an excellent education in the technical basics behind determining loads and designing structural members such as beams, columns, and connections. However, I felt my education was lacking in that I knew little about holistic approaches to structures. I knew how a concrete beam might behave under load, but I lacked a knowledge of how a structural form might be developed from a system of such members in an efficient manner. Searching for answers, one day in a bookstore I discovered David P. Billington’s The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering. In this book I learned about the integration of efficient structural forms, construction methods, and economy achieved by designers such as Robert Maillart, Eugène Freyssinet, Félix Candela, Pierre Luigi Nervi, and Fazlur Rahman Khan. Naturally, I developed an appreciation of structural aesthetics from my investigations into efficient structural forms.

In my formal education I have chosen to focus primarily on technical subjects rather than courses in architecture or art. No great structural designer has ever built beautiful structures without first mastering a knowledge of materials, mathematical methods of analysis, and construction methods. However, outside the classroom I have immersed myself in books and periodical articles about what is commonly referred to as “structural art”: structures in which the designer has combined efficiency, economy, and conscious artistic expression within the context of the setting (time and location) to produce beautiful results.

Travel Itinerary Overview

In selecting my plan of study, I have attempted to create a study of both historic and modern structures in which efficiency of form combine with the artistic inclination of the engineer to produce results that are fascinating technically and aesthetically. The principal theme of my travel is a chronological tracing of the development of doubly curved forms in building structures, but I have also included a thorough study of the bridges of Robert Maillart. Each of the structures I have chosen to visit represent difficult technical challenges which the designers have solved by integrating efficient forms, economical construction methods, and an eye for elegance.