Architects + Engineers = Structures

by Ivan Margolius. Wiley-Academy,
London and New York, 2002. 104 pp., illus. Paper, $40.00. ISBN
0-471-49825-4.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens
2022 X Avenue, Dysart, Iowa
USA.
ballast@netins.net

In looking at certain historical prints (nearly any wood engraving by Gustave Dore, for example), it is evident that there are two signatures. One is that of the artist, who made the initial drawing, while the other is that of an unknown craftsman, the engraver, who converted the drawing into a finished print. The concern of this book is with a comparable asymmetry in the practice of architecture: The architect is amost always listed as a building‚s sole creator, while the work of the engineer goes unacknowledged. Sometimes they are one and the same person, when architects have also been trained as engineers, or vice versa, but even then they still perform distinctive tasks, both of which are indispensable to the process. Ideally, argues Czech-born architect Ivan Margolius, it is neither the architect nor the engineer who should be credited with the authorship of a building (or bridge or monument), but the seamless collaborative efforts of both. Throughout this articulate, elegant book, he discusses and illustrates nearly fifty examples of extraordinary structures that resulted from balanced, collaborative ties between architecture and engineering. Many of these are well-known, such as the Crystal Palace, the Johnson Wax Building, the Sydney Opera House, and the Pompidou Centre, while others are largely unheard of. In the book‚s lucid narrative, among the observations made is that, to some extent, both architecture and engineering are about the defiance of gravity (or at least the persuasive appearance of that), both spiritually and physically. In a related photograph, we are shown an ingenious method devised by the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi for harnessing gravity, or (as Marcel Breuer said) for using "gravity to defeat gravity." Functioning as both architect and engineer, Gaudi built upside-down models of his vaulted structures, from which he suspended weights, structures he later inverted to form his eccentric church steeples.

(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 18, No. 1,
Autumn 2002.)