Copious illustrations, often outstandingly beautiful, accompany accounts
of design philosophy, materials, construction, failures and the people involved
in building bridges. Participants in modern engineering and scientific achievements
are so numerous that anonymity usually prevails, but bridges, even now,
are often associated with individuals. Eugene Freyssinct apparently launched
his career as a designer by offering to build three bridges across the River
Allier in France for the price of one designed by the local highway department.
Other 20th-century designers named include Robert Maillart, Fritz Leonhardt
and Sandago Calatrava, whose harp-like Pucoic Alamillo rose above Seville
at Expo ’92.

The way medieval bridges enhance the urban scene is striking. One photograph
shows people socialising on the illuminated Ponte Vecchio in Florence, the
first European bridge to use the segmental masonry arch, on which work started
in 1345. (The form was, however, used 700 years earlier on China’s An Ji
Bridge). The bridge accommodates shops at street level and a full-length
upper gallery. A lovely view along the Karlsbrucke bridge (built around
1380) in Prague shows two solitary people walking between statues and decorative
lights mounted by the parapets. Through an arch in the Old Town Tower at
the end of the bridge one glimpses a city street. The modern motorway leviathan,
of breathtaking scale, but dominated for the pedestrian (if permitted) by
the noise and pollution of heavy traffic, provides a brutal contrast.

Nick Spencer Chapman is a civil engineer and senior lecturer at Oxford
Brooks University.

In 1949 Richard Whitcomb was conducting wind tunnel tests for the National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA’s predecessor, on the problem of
the rapid increase in air resistance as an aircraft’s velocity approached
Mach 1. While testing a combined delta wing and bullet fuselage, Whitcomb
hit on the idea of a ‘wasp waist’ – reducing the cross-sectional area of
the fuselage adjacent to the wings so that the cross-sectional area of the
combined wing fuselage was equal to that of the fuselage both ahead of and
behind the wings. The breakthrough came about, not through theory, but
because Whitcomb, who had undertaken years of wind-tunnel testing, was,
as another aeronautical engineer commented, ‘a guy who just has a sense
of intuition about these kinds of aerodynamic problems. He sort of feels
what the air wants to do.’

In Engineering and the Mind’s Eye Ferguson develops his hypothesis that
engineers, aided by computers, are over-concerned about mathematical analysis
at the expense of design skills, a nonverbal feel for physical behaviour
and common sense judgment. He argues that education and training neglect
these attributes that are largely developed by drawing, working with materials
and looking at objects and processes.

Tracing the development of engineering design techniques from Renaissance
times, he demonstrates the increasing sophistication of drawings and shows
how these are thinking tools as well as means of communication. The use
of engineering drawings, models and graphical methods of calculation such
as graphical statistics and nomograms is explored with numerous historical
illustrations. The origins of perspective drawing, orthographic projection
(three views of a human head and foot by Albrecht Durer dating from 1528),
exploded views and cutaway diagrams of mechanisms are fascinating. This
part of the book is a delight.

However, the final chapters on ‘The making of an engineer’ and ‘The
gap between promise and performance’ are less satisfying. The latter examines
the causes of engineering failures and largely blames a lack of feel and
judgment stemming from excessive reliance on theory and, more recently,
computers. This, Ferguson claims, results from changes in engineering education,
particularly in the US. There, it appears, that since the 1950s the higher-status
engineering schools have developed the theoretical content of their courses
because single-answer problems are easier to teach and assess. Meanwhile
engineering technology has been taught only in lower-status schools. In
the words of a 1961 report on engineering design by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology ‘Men (sic) trained at second-rate schools were often
found to be more willing to attempt solution of whole problems than those
trained at first-rate schools (and) worked into positions of leadership
whence they directed the work of those from the better schools.’ In Britain
the Finniston report, Engineering Our Future (HMSO, 1980), discussed this.
No equivalent division appears to exist although this may be due to the
firm hold on engineering education exercised by the engineering institutions.

The book is a development of an article in Science, ‘The Mind’s Eye:
Non-verbal Thought in Technology’ (26 August 1977) and in my view fails
to take account of developments, particularly in computer technology, since
then. It undervalues the power of computers to extend our ability to visualise
and gain a feel for behaviour. Techniques for representing three-dimensional
objects on paper are ingenious and permit the mind to explore and communicate
complex structures, but computers now permit a level of three-dimensional
and dynamic visualisation that greatly enhances engineers’ ability to design.
For example, in building services engineering computers permit one virtually
to move through and inspect clearances among a maze of structural members,
pipes, ducts and fixings before a single plan is finalised. Simulation
and modelling of complex interactions between systems is routine. Microprocessors
themselves could not be made without computer assistance.

The author is right, however, to call for a critical re-evaluation
of how we instil a questioning attitude among engineers to computer analysis
and other theoretical constructs and how we can foster the intuitive feel
for physical behaviour demonstrated by Whitcomb. I believe we should go
further and aim to develop a feel for the relationships between engineering
artefacts and social and natural systems. This book is a valuable contribution
to the debate on the formation of engineers, a debate of vital importance
for all of us, given their pervasive influence.

Nick Spencer-Chapman is a civil engineer and senior lecturer at Oxford
Brookes University.

This book is about building design, energy use, radiation hazards and
air quality. It promotes energy-efficient buildings, low-energy ‘natural’
products and traditional or innovative ways of combating cold, heat and
noise. But, while sympathetic to the authors’ aims, I am astonished at the
poor writing, poor editing and naive science that Healthy Buildings offers.

Anthony Sealey is an architect and a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological
Society, and has taught science. Bill Holdsworth claims no building services
or other engineering qualification but set up a ‘consulting group whose
prime base was building services and energy engineering’. They refer frequently
to their ‘design system’, Echoes (Environmentally Controlled Human Operational
Enclosed/External Space), that appears primarily to be a set of vague or
obscure guidelines such as this, which appears under the puzzling heading
‘Lines of sight for healthy living buildings’: ‘The building spot must be
geologically undisturbed . . . ascertain that there is no disturbance of
cosmic and terrestrial influence on the human life form (DNA) . . . take
care of harmonic measures, properties and forms’.

The authors dwell on current building concerns such as ‘sick building
syndrome’ (buildings associated with higher than normal absenteeism and
sickness rates, complaints about air quality, headaches, eye problems, dry
mouth and blocked nose), legionnaires’ disease and radon. They also make
great play of more contentious issues such as the effects of electromagnetic
radiation. They state that ‘electromagnetic rays have a wavelength of the
order of 1 cm . . . Natural rays occur in underground watercourses, geological
faults, mineral veins, oil and gas reserves, geomatic (sic) zones, and growing
zones (sic). Artificial rays are now occurring from . . . the mind (meditation,
music, sound, the DNA structure).’ Where two underground streams cross,
there is a ‘geopathic disturbance’ and the ‘geomagnetic flux’ drops from
’65 000 nT’ to ’53 000 nT’ (unit not defined). This is known as Yin, and
is a ‘discharge field’. Yang occurs on geological fault lines.

Examples of poor science and half-baked ideas abound. For example, part
of a design for a football stadium with a car park suggests to the authors
that ‘car exhausts could be collected and converted to provide fuel for
adapted gas-turbine engines’. An energy consumption of ‘126 (KW/m ²)/²â±ð²¹°ù’
(confusion between energy and power) is quoted for one building while for
another it is 111 (KW/m ²)/hour’ – try to visualise this!

On a more positive note, the authors do include many interesting examples
of building design, both traditional and innovative. In Poland and Germany,
underground ‘thermolabyrinths’, through which air is drawn for summer cooling
and winter heating, are incorporated into house design. The case studies
would have benefited from more detail and analysis. The authors demonstrate
the need for architects to consider comfort, health and amenity from the
outset of a project; when the design subsequently requires extensive changes,
this can only be a palliative measure.

The authors call for more holistic thinking in building; it is a pity
they do not do justice to their cause.

Nick Spencer-Chapman is a civil engineer and senior lecturer at Oxford
Polytechnic.