Architect and Engineer

A Study in Sibling Rivalry

Saint Andrew

How architects and engineers relate to one another has long been debated but never before addressed over a broad span of history. There are many controversial issues: about professional demarcation, about credit for design, about the value we attach to art in buildings, and about how that connects with advances in technique and efficiency. This pioneering and handsomely illustrated book esquires for the first time into the pattern of these relationships since the Renaissance. Concentrating particularly on Britain, France and the United States, "Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry" looks at what has actually taken place when architecture and engineering have interlocked. It examines projects ranging from the building of Waterloo Bridge to the evolution of the Chicago skyscraper, and personalities from Vauban to Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Frank Lloyd Wright. The results of this impartial investigation may often surprise and provoke the reader. It is a study that has radical implications for the compartmentalized ways in which the history of architecture and construction has conventionally been addressed.

About the Author

Andrew Saint is General Editor of The Survey of London. He is the author of "Richard Norman Shaw", "The Image of the Architect" and "Towards a Social Architecture", all published by Yale.

Reviews

"...[a] highly rewarding book, backed up by first-class research and beautiful illustrations. It has a surprisingly wide scope, well beyond what you would expect from this title" – John Pringle, RIBA Journal

"A finished building can be beautiful stately or useful, but it is most exciting while it evolves in the mind and rises from the ground. Saint's account of the ambitions of the sibling rivals of his title takes you to the sometimes divided core of the structural imagination" – Peter Cambell, London Review of Books

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