Robert Maillart's Bridges: The Art of Engineering

Robert Maillart was one of the heroes of the 1930s; his Swiss bridges in reinforced concrete were among the most admired artifacts of those years. They combined structural innovation with the creation of pure, intelligible forms whose aesthetic refinement all could recognize... [Billington] rightly presents the bridges as structures and illustrates the loading diagrams and reinforcement systems that lie behind their simple geometrical contours, but he subtitles his book 'The Art of Engineering' and leaves the reader in no doubt that Maillart was fully conscious of the aesthetic implications of his search for economy and efficiency. The book is a model of what such a monograph should be. -- J. M. Richards The Times Literary Supplement A brilliant, highly readable essay on the interplay between art and science in engineering design. Maillart ... Built bridges of such breathtaking beauty that they have become cult objects among avant-garde intellectuals... Maillart was, in Billington's view, an artist-engineer; the expression of engineering design at its best... This is a beautiful book. It is lavishly illustrated, and written with remarkable clarity, insight, and wisdom. -- Edwin T. Layton, Jr. Isis A welcome and penetrating study of a wonderful man, and a valuable contribution to the history of ideas. Scientific American Billington's Robert Maillart's Bridges is the result of the author's sustained interest in the life and works of Maillart and also of a broader concern, of which he has become the leading exponent, with the relationship between art and engineering on the one hand and the role of analysis in the creative process of design on the other. In a remarkable way Billington has brought these concerns to bear in this book... The book should appeal to a wide audience interested in Maillart and his work, but perhaps its greatest contribution is the unusually clear insight Billington brings to the process of structural design. -- Emory L. Kemp Science