ANYONE who has travelled around Europe will remember peering into the shadowy
interiors of Italian churches. But how many, confronted, say, by the Duomo in
Florence guess that the building was once used as an astronomical instrument? In
The Sun in the Church, J. L. Heilbron takes us back to an intriguing
period in European history when the Church in Rome sanctioned scientific
research in the house of God.

From the 15th century, the Papacy was obsessed with predicting the date of
Easter far into the future. Its difficulty lay in the “equation of
time”—which is used to calculate the difference between the time shown on
the clock (or calendar) and the time indicated by the Sun’s position in the sky.
The key to finding the difference was to measure the precise length of the solar
year and the lunar month, a task that demanded daily measurements of the Sun’s
position.

Usable telescopes had not yet arrived, so astronomers turned to the idea of a
giant sundial—a tall, dark building that admitted a shaft of sunlight
through a hole in the roof. A cathedral, in short. And this is how the
ever-pragmatic Church became, for three centuries, the prime patron of
astronomy.

Working in the 15th and 16th centuries, Paolo Toscanelli and Egnazio Danti
were the first to turn churches into sundials. A metal or stone rod called a
meridian was set into the cathedral’s floor to represent the north-south line of
the Sun’s apparent annual motion, and at noon each day the point where the beam
of light touched it was noted. But it wasn’t until the late 17th century that
astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini achieved the accuracy needed, at San
Petronio in Bologna.

Cassini’s remarkable feat created a new set of problems: the more accurate
the observations, the more complex the overall picture became. Heilbron leads us
through the hard slog of calculations, the ingenious interpretations, and that
moment when Rome finally had to accept that Copernicus was right all along.

The Sun in the Church is an entertaining evocation of a time when
people spent decades making millions of observations and calculations, and
towering intellects struggled to conceive of a four-dimensional Universe. It is
an ideal companion not just for those reading Thomas Kuhn’s classic The
Copernican Revolution, but for anyone visiting certain tall, dark
cathedrals in search of illumination.

EVERY field of human creativity needs its icons—its Hamlet,
its Parsifal, its Mona Lisa. Rowland Mainstone’s book deals
with a new kind, the structures we see around us in the built environment.
Mainstone presents his personal survey of the very best and most influential
structures of the past two and a half millennia, an iconography of buildings and
bridges. If you have ever wondered how enormous domes, sports arenas, railway
stations and skyscrapers are designed and built, this unique book will help you
find out.

Despite Developments in Structural Form’s technical subject, the
general reader will find it eminently accessible: many illustrations and
explanations of how materials and structures work make for a work of great
clarity. No less admirable are Mainstone’s explanations of how designers and
builders used their materials so effectively to erect roofs and bridges of
ever-increasing spans and buildings of ever-increasing height, while steadily
reducing the materials needed to create them. This is, in short, a story as
fascinating and complex as the better-known history and development of
scientific concepts and thought in astronomy, physics and chemistry.

WHAT is architecture? The artistic end of construction engineering? The means
by which people can go about their lives more effectively and enjoyably in
buildings and cities? Scholars of architecture disagree. Instead, they reckon it
reflects culture, society and history. In many ways, they say, architecture is
more akin to film and the novel. You’ll find this point of view throughout
At the End of the Century. Written to accompany an exhibition at the Museum
of Modern Art in Los Angeles, this book contains seven beautifully illustrated
essays by leading architectural scholars.

A major question addressed by several contributors is whether architect and
architecture are cause or effect in the dialectic with our built environment.
The usual suspects are rounded up as evidence for the former: Alvar Aalto, Mies
van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and, most dominant of all, Le Corbusier. The
other side of the argument is supported by many examples of both dramatic and
modest buildings of great quality and style by names not so familiar in Europe
and the US, most especially from Latin America and Japan. But photographs of
building exteriors do little to convey the experience of being in or using a
building.

The image of architecture conjured up by the authors contrasts with the
day-to-day passions of contemporary designers—the pros and cons of
mechanical and natural ventilation, the dreams that can be made real by the best
engineers. But this is not surprising and, hence, no criticism—historians
have difficulty in dealing with the recent past.

A RICH and fascinating introduction to 19th-century civil engineering in
Europe and the US awaits readers of Tom Peters’ Building the Nineteenth
Century. The book offers a Cook’s Tour of an era when technical marvels
were springing up on every side.

Peters argues that there were three stages of development: the preindustrial
stage, in which “builders did not yet recognise the act of constructing as a
process” and used manual labour; a second “transitional period”, in which
projects were planned around manual labour, but were completed with the use of
machines; and a third stage, in which builders planned and organised their
projects with mechanised and industrialised production in mind.

British engineering dominated the first two stages until about 1860, while
engineers from the German-speaking countries, France and the US dominated the
third stage. Though perhaps this is not Peters’s main objective, readers will
gain valuable insight into why Britain declined from being the world’s leading
industrial nation, and how certain attitudes to industry still linger.

Peters first presents some historical background—developments in
communications and commerce, the improving technology of construction materials
and manufacturing methods. A kaleidoscope of fascinating and entertaining
snippets of information help illustrate his points. Then he fleshes out his
argument with case studies.

The tunnel under the Thames (1824-43) devised by French emigré Marc
Isambard Brunel (1824-43) was the first to be constructed beneath water. Peters
contrasts this feat with the Mont Cenis Tunnel (1857-71) between France and
Italy, the first to be completed under the Alps. While the former was an amazing
technical innovation, it was not planned or executed as part of a major
transport scheme or larger development, and its long-delayed opening was a
commercial disaster.

The origins of the Mont Cenis Tunnel, however, date back to Napoleon’s plans
for linking the parts of his empire. The journey across the Alps was reduced
from 15 hours to a fraction of the time and the project was a commercial
success.

The chapter following this discussion links Robert Stephenson’s massive
Britannia Bridge, carrying the railway from Wales to Anglesey (1845-49), and the
Suez Canal (1859-68). They were both projects that pointed the way towards
20th-century engineering in their use of careful planning and mechanisation.

The Britannia Bridge was arguably the greatest structural engineering
achievement of the 19th century, the epitome of Britain’s engineering
excellence. Its boldness—it was six times longer than any contemporary
bridge—came about because of the urgent economic and political need for a
bridge in that location, and its construction was achieved by means of a highly
effective research and development programme.

The Suez Canal also demanded some dramatic and decisive engineering. Mainly
manual workers had canalised the Nile under the direction of British engineers
some years earlier. But with the Suez Canal, it soon became clear to
Ferdinand-Marie Lesseps, the French entrepreneur behind the project, that this
slow progress was threatening its completion by allowing people’s political and
commercial interests to waver.

A massive investment in machinery and improvement in productivity of the
workforce accelerated progress and rekindled the belief that the project would
repay commercial backing, though this only happened long after it opened.

The author moves on to look at significant buildings which chart the use of
cast iron, wrought iron and steel through the century—the Sayn Foundry in
northern Germany (1830), the Palm House at Kew Gardens (1846-48), the Crystal
Palace, built for the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851, the Eiffel Tower,
built of wrought iron, and the Galerie des Machines, made of steel, both
constructed for the Paris exhibition of 1889.

The final case studies, dating from the early years of the 20th century, are
recognisably modern. The Langwies Viaduct (1912-14) brought the railway from
Chur to the Swiss Alpine village of Arosa. It was a reinforced concrete arch
spanning 100 metres and rising 65 metres above the river below—the highest
concrete arch of its day. Its engineer, Eduard ZĂĽblin, had trained in
Switzerland but from the early 1890s had also worked widely in Europe using the
concrete reinforcement technique newly patented by François
Hennebique.

At Langwies, he used all his ingenuity in developing climbing formwork on the
piers, and he was one of the first in the construction industry to use bar
charts as an organisational and management tool.

Peters ends by saying that the century saw the focus of construction change
from the product to the process, and reflected similar changes in other
industries and society at large. This is hardly a powerful conclusion, and it
highlights one of the book’s problems: it attempts to please both the popular
and academic markets. It rather falls between these two stools.

Despite the wealth of contemporary engravings, which are charming although
sometimes poorly reproduced, readers would benefit occasionally from more recent
illustrations to bring the projects (most of which survive, like the Britannia
Bridge on the left) alive to those who do not know them. The general reader will
also find that the book’s 984 endnotes make for a rather bumpy ride.

The academic reader will find the book’s overall thesis vague and less than
convincingly argued. It is difficult to see the relevance of much of the factual
information to the main argument. Despite copious references to original
material, many writings on the subject by recent (especially European) authors
are missing.

The author also makes many statements that will puzzle the engineering
historian. He claims, for instance, that the Palm House at Kew and the Galerie
des Machines are “lesser-known projects”. He suggests that the rib arches in the
Palm House “were rolled deck or bulb beams, precursors of our modern I-beams”,
yet I-beams were already well known and had long been used. These all tend to
reduce Peters’s authority.

In aiming at a broad readership, the title of the book is misleading, for it
does not deal with the full range of 19th-century construction, rather, it
focuses on an apparently idiosyncratic choice of case studies. The reason lies
in the book’s origins. It is largely a translation and reworking of Peters’s
earlier book, Time is Money: die Entwicklung des modernen Bauwesens
(1981) which was, in turn, based on his doctoral thesis at Zurich(1977). The
titles of these works reflect the subject more accurately: the development of
the modern construction process.

Much of the additional work for this book appears to have been undertaken by
researchers under the author’s guidance, which is no bad thing, but it has made
his job of integrating this mass of information into a convincing, coherent work
more difficult. It might have been better to publish the full historical stories
in academic periodicals and to make the book more general.

Design is reappearing in the curriculum of engineering degrees after a gap of
more than half a century. But the news is not all good. It is often tacitly
assumed that a knowledge of thermodynamics or mechanics is all that students
need. Nowhere is this unfortunate attitude more manifest than in the textbooks.
Engineers must be numerate specialists, but the artefacts they help to design
and make are created by multidisciplinary teams of people, many of them
non-engineers—architects, product designers, specialists in marketing and
so on. Furthermore, all the products they make have an impact on society and the
environment. Yet how often are student engineers exposed to qualitative debate
in this wider context?

Students intending to work as building design engineers are, in principle,
among the most fortunate, since an enormous amount is written about the context
for their engineering. But these books are often shelved under “architecture” in
bookshops. They seldom appear on the reading lists of engineering courses. Can
it be that people who want to become engineers are not interested in society,
the environment and the broader context of their work? I doubt it. Many recent
changes in school curricula have emphasised such a broad approach; it is the
university engineering courses and lecturers who are now behind the times.

The need to use the world’s resources sparingly provides a tremendous
challenge to engineers, something that ought to appeal to engineering students.
“Sustainable” is the catchword. Its meaning and the means of achieving it are
spelt out in excellent books such as Renewable Energy: Power for a
Sustainable Future edited by Godfrey Boyle (Oxford University Press,
ÂŁ22.50, ISBN 0 19 856451 1 pbk), Sol Power: The Evolution of Solar
Architecture by Sophia and Stefan Behling (Prestel, Munich, ÂŁ42.50,
ISBN 3 7913 1670 2) and Towards Sustainable Architecture by Brian
Edwards (Butterworth Heinemann, ÂŁ29.55, ISBN 0 7506 2492 2). This trio
will introduce important concepts to the young engineer, from embodied energy
and energy audits, global warming, energy and pollution to methods of assessing
the environmental impacts of materials and products. They provide a robust
armature for what many believe to be the fluffy ideas of cranks.

At a more specific level, Solar Energy in Architecture and Urban
Planning, edited by Thomas Herzog (Prestel, ÂŁ42.50, ISBN 3 7913 1652
4), Environmental Design by Randall Thomas et al (E. & F.
N. Spon, London, ÂŁ19.99, ISBN 0 419 19930 6), Handbook of Sustainable
Building by David Anink et al (James & James, ÂŁ25, ISBN
1 873936 38 9) and Microclimatic Landscape Design by Robert D. Brown
and Terry J. Gillespie (Wiley, ÂŁ32.50, ISBN 0 471 05667 7), illustrate how
a better understanding of energy is bringing about a revolution in the type of
buildings constructed, as well as in their energy efficiency.

You might expect Engineering a New Architecture by Tony Robbin (Yale
University Press, ÂŁ28.50, ISBN 0 300 06116 1) to address similar issues
from the engineer’s point of view. But, although an excellent book, it hardly
mentions energy or the environment. This is a sad reminder that many engineers
still ignore the radically different philosophy behind an energy-conscious
approach to building design. It is architects who are initiating these changes.
(An exception is Max Fordham, the engineering practice behind Environmental
Design.)

So, although most of these books are aimed at architects, they should be read
by students of all engineering disciplines, for they deal with subjects of vital
importance to all branches of design and manufacture. Engineers are not leading
this design revolution because they are not taught that it could be their job or
even their duty. Actually, the engineer’s job often requires devising methods of
using less material or energy. Now, that sort of answer to the 5-year-olds’
question might well inspire more of them to value the role of the engineer.

Much the same could be said of the textbooks we had. But there have been changes. Professional engineers still require a good education, as well as training, yet firms are doing less training than ever. University courses have tended to cut out more and more “non-essential” work. This makes room for more analysis and computing, and arises partly, it must be said, from the need to teach more students in less time, using fewer staff. And fewer good students are attracted to engineering and manufacturing.

Engineering courses and the books written for them have got to change if they are to survive. For those who seek them out, there are quite a lot of books that do make engineering appear interesting and that link engineering science with real engineering design issues.

This trend was probably set back in 1980 by what is now a classic – Engineering Materials by M. F. Ashby and D. Jones. All volumes are still in print, now from Butterworth-Heinemann. From the same publisher comes a sister book, Metals and Materials, by R. E Smallman and R. J. Bishop (£19.99, ISBN 0 7506 1093 X), which goes more deeply into materials science, yet keeps one foot firmly on the ground for the design engineer seeking a direction to follow in an unfamiliar situation.

All children want to know why; and as they grow older, they also want to know how. This is what engineers do for a living. Principles of Precision Engineering by Hiromu Nakazawa (Oxford, ÂŁ60, ISBN 0 19 856266 7) and Planning and Design of Bridges by M. S. Troitsky (Wiley, ÂŁ58, ISBN 0 471 02853 3) are two wonderful books that ought to be aimed at students.

Each of these texts provides an uncluttered overview of their subjects. At every step the books address those obvious questions: why is precision needed? How can you attain it in different contexts? How do you compare and choose between different alternatives? Both books assume that the reader will be getting the full mathematical, “scientific” treatment elsewhere.

As an engineer, I would make not just these, but also the following titles, compulsory purchases for students. They are rich in examples and engineering experience. Introduction to Engineering by P H. Wright (Wiley, £15.95, ISBN 0 471 59998 0) is an excellent mini-encyclopedia about every aspect of the engineer’s job, but let down by dated photos. Design Paradigms by Henry Petroski (Cambridge, £12.95/$17.95, ISBN 0 521 46649 0), is a lively and informative read. It presents a dozen excellent case studies from 2000 years of structural engineering history, showing how engineers can learn from failures. Invention and Evolution by Michael French (Cambridge, £50 hbk, £17.95 pbk, ISBN 0 521 46503 6), is full of fascinating design examples, collected under the three main areas of engineering design activity materials, mechanisms, structures and systems.

The final three books focus on the process of engineering design: Engineering Design Methods by Nigel Cross (Wiley, ÂŁ15.95, ISBN 0 471 94228 6), Product Design by N. F. M. Roozenburg and J. Eekels (Wiley, ÂŁ27.50, ISBN 0 471 95465 9), and The Engineering Design Process by A. Ertas and J. C. Jones (Wiley, ÂŁ62, ISBN 0471 51796 8). This approach can be dangerous, for there is a large and growing group of academics who teach and write about design as if it is only process.

The future, I hope, is to be seen in books like that by Ertas and Jones, who are based in Texas Tech University. Here we get intelligent and well-exemplified treatments of everything engineers need to master in their professional life.

Our student engineers need to know and do all of this. The answer, of course, is obvious – change the courses so that the students can be rewarded for reading all these interesting books.

The very activity of engineering design has a habit of becoming invisible. The need for an architect to decide what a building will look like is as obvious as the need for a builder to build it. But it is less apparent to outsiders that much effort and engineering skill is needed to ensure that the architect’s ideas can be made real, choosing materials that can be used to build speedily and with ease, and using them with economy and elegance in ways which exploit their properties to the full.

Yet the design of all major buildings involves structural and services engineers from the start. Their input is as essential to the completion of a building as that of design and production engineers in the aircraft and car industries.

Among the many engineering design consultants who are known within the construction industry, there is perhaps just one whose name has spread into the public domain that of Ove Arup and the partnership he founded in 1949. The list of projects with which this firm has been associated is impressive – the Sydney Opera House, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Lloyds’ Building in London are three of the most famous. Arup projects have won more than 700 design awards. Recently the firm has been in the public eye for its proposals for a rail link – and, in my view, the best – from the mouth of the Channel Tunnel in Folkestone to London.

This compact, elegant and well-illustrated book addresses both the issue of what structural and civil engineers do and, in particular, what Ove Arup & Partners has done. It is written from an outsider’s point of view by three Austrians who sought to understand how this firm has become world famous in an industry so short on famous names.

One reason for the firm’s high profile is the number, range, excellence and geographical distribution of many of the projects it has undertaken. There is also the fact that good (and famous) architects have a habit of establishing relationships with Arup engineers and working with them time and again, developing an ever closer understanding of each other’s skills and inventiveness – Foster, Rogers, Stirling, Farrell, MacCormac, Grimshaw and Renzo Piano (who wrote the introduction to this book) included.

Rogers and Piano worked on the Pompidou Centre with Peter Rice who, unlike most of Arup’s engineers, achieved fame in his own right before his untimely death a couple of years ago. Rice also helped Piano with his designs for the new Kansai Airport building in Japan, recently featured in a short TV series on Channel 4. Finally, there is the magic which Ove Arup himself brought to the firm and which survives to this day, even in offices thousands of miles apart and among thousands of staff who never knew him.

In striving to explain the firm’s success, the authors look at its philosophy and history and then feature a score of recent projects. They end with an essay entitIed “Experience and experiments”, which explores the variety of fields of activity that the firm tackles and the ways the Arup partnership strives to make its impression on building projects in which it is directly involved.

The book contains parallel texts in German and English, and this causes some difficulties, especially in relating illustrations to the text. The English translation is also a little awkward in places, and sometimes rather misleading – for instance the acceptable translation of Entwurf is “design” not “planning”, an annoying error in a book about design engineering.

Nevertheless, this book is an admirable introduction to the engineering design of modern buildings and gives the reader some excellent examples of such engineering at its best.