Form and Forces: Designing Efficient, Expressive Structures [Hardcover]

Edward Allen (Author), Waclaw Zalewski (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 047017465X | ISBN-13: 978-0470174654 | Publication Date: September 28, 2009 | Edition: 1

Here, in one volume, is all the architect needs to know to participate in the entire process of designing structures. Emphasizing bestselling author Edward Allen's graphical approach, the book enables you to quickly determine the desired form of a building or other structure and easily design it without the need for complex mathematics. This unique text teaches the whole process of structural design for architects, including selection of suitable materials, finding a suitable configuration, finding forces and size members, designing appropriate connections, and proposing a feasible method of erection. Chapters are centered on the design of a whole structure, from conception through construction planning.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

FINDING GOOD FORMS FOR STRUCTURES--A GRAPHICA APPROACH

In Form and Forces, bestselling authors Edward Allen and Waclaw Zalewski offer a fresh, new approach to the study of structures for students and practitioners of architecture and structural engineering. Emphasizing graphics rather than mathematics and rote learning, Form and Forces teaches statics and strength of materials in the context of a set of projects that involve students in the entire process of designing elegant, long-span structures, from concept generation to detailing and planning for construction.

Readers engage in such projects as a hanging roof for a transportation terminal, a concrete shell roof for a basketball arena, a wood truss roof for a summer camp activities building, cantilevered concrete shells to cover a stadium grandstand, and other fascinating, real-world designs. As they pursue these projects, students learn each fundamental structural design technique as it is needed, in the context in which it is useful, making it easy to remember and employ the principles discussed, including:

• Statics

• Bending and buckling behavior

• Finding form and forces for long-span structures

• Beam and column formulas

• The choice and layout of framing systems

Supplemented by a companion Web site with step-by-step graphic statics tutorials, interactive learning tools, and a special-purpose graphic statics solver program, Form and Forces allows every architect and engineer to employ the almost magical power of graphical techniques for generating good form.

Form and Forces equips the reader with simple, powerful tools employed by the great structural designers of the past 150 years—from Eiffel, Gaudí, and Maillart, to Schlaich and Calatrava—so that even beginners can design entire structures that are elegant and exciting.

Companion Web site: www.wiley.com/go/formandforces

About the Author

EDWARD ALLEN has taught for more than thirty years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, and the University of Oregon. He is the bestselling author of Fundamentals of Building Construction, Fifth Edition.

WACŁAW ZALEWSKI  is Professor Emeritus of Structural Design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (September 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 047017465X
• ISBN-13: 978-0470174654
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 10.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edward Allen has taught for more than thirty years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, and the University of Oregon. He is the bestselling author of Fundamentals of Building Construction, Fifth Edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A life-changing book. Get it and study it!, November 2, 2010

By 

Ed Saliklis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Form and Forces: Designing Efficient, Expressive Structures (Hardcover)

This book is amazing and all structural engineers and architects, students included, should have this on their bookshelves. But more importantly than having it in your library is actually plunging into it and learning from it because if you learn these techniques they will completely transform the way you think about structural form and forces. I have been using this book in my classes, one class is taught to architecture students and the other to structural engineering students. The results have been astounding, the architecture students are empowered by the form finding tool of graphic statics and the engineers are thrilled by the beauty and logic of the force finding process. Both groups of students came up with dozens of elegant and efficient structures by linking the forces to the forms, and that is what I mean by "life changing". I find myself totally enthralled by this method and the power it unleashes. I have a PhD in structural engineering and I am a registered engineer in California and I have never been so excited about a technique as I am with this one. The book is clearly written, down to the level of having figures and text match up on the page so you don't have to flip pages to refer to a figure. Some exercises are straightforward, so much so that I taught them to 6th graders as an outreach exercise. Other sections are deeply connected to higher order theories and merit study from my graduate students. Many references are made to the giants of our profession who have used these techniques to design graceful and efficient structures. Yet the book manages to be all these things in a precise and clear manner. The authors really want you to understand each step thoroughly and they give you the tools needed to really understand important ideas about structural form.