This book was inspired by the 50th anniversary of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS) and is dedicated to the memory and legacy of Eduardo Torroja, its founding president. It focuses on the past work of its many and various members in this field of structural engineering and, in doing so, gives an overview of many of the most interesting and original feats of structural engineering in the past 50 years, encompassing shells, tents, masts and bridges.
Not surprisingly, with the main emphasis being on the historic rather than the technical, the book's papers do not aim to describe the processes used for analysis or form-finding. This limits its usefulness for the engineer looking for design guidance. However, one of its attractions has to be the considerable number of references provided at the end of most of the papers, which should prove useful for further research for readers seeking more technical detail. The book needs to be taken as a celebration of the IASS and the work of its members rather than a broader textbook on the subject of space structures.
The book is divided into three parts – an historical overview of the IASS, a deeper appraisal of work in different fields of the IASS spectrum and a short look into the future.
Part 1 gives a decade by decade review of the field of shell and spatial structures and the growth of the IASS during this period. Papers have been written by notable members and these highlight many of the most prominent engineers and their work through time. The detail on any one individual or any one project is necessarily brief but the section serves to put some kind of perspective to the past 50 years of achievement in what has been a very interesting and inventive area of structural engineering.
Part 2 is by far the longest and is really the core of the book. Here the field is broken down into different structural types according to structural action
▪ shells
▪ tension structures
▪ framed and lattice structures
▪ temporary and movable structures
▪ special spatial structures (glass structures, footbridges, masts and towers)
▪ ‘topics’ in spatial structures (morphology, form-finding and environmental compatibility).
Within each section there are between two and four different papers that provide a chance for more detailed survey of structures that fall into these categories. In the main, these papers are historic and provide only brief information about the structures reviewed. Papers vary in length considerably. The paper by Masao Saitoh on hybrid string structures runs to 30 pages and gives rather more detail on the categorisation of these types of structure and where they sit within the shell and spatial structures (S&SS) family. This made it more satisfying than papers with a purely historic viewpoint and is an indication that the content of the papers, and the value they add to the material, varies enormously.
Part 3 ‘Looking to future’ is devoted to a single paper by current president of the IASS, Professor John Abel. In just six pages he gives a review that highlights many of the issues that need to be addressed in the future such as considering environmental compatibility, application to sustainable power generation, addressing climate change effects, application to disaster response, new materials and systems, and extraterrestrial applications. These final pages start to bring the field into the future rather than looking at the past. Although providing only a very brief assessment, it is important to establish that this form of construction has a strong and vital future.
Our ability to define, model, analyse and optimise complex forms had grown in leaps and bounds over the past 20 years. This should allow us to create envelopes to enclose space that are both intelligent and optimal. This demands creativity from engineers and a willingness to work across conventional discipline boundaries. The future of S&SS and surely the IASS has to be with the incorporation of fields of engineering other than structural, such as environmental, mechanical and robotics. This is indeed a dazzling future.
I would recommend this book primarily for the historical perspective it gives to a field of engineering that has provided us with some of our most dramatic examples of the art of structural engineers in recent times. We have to recognise that these innovative structures are getting old and it will not be long before people will be faced with assessing their heritage value, assessing their remaining life and refurbishing (or demolishing) them. This will probably have to be done by people who were not involved with their design and construction. This book will be a good resource for painting the wider picture of what was going on, to help evaluate the value of a particular exemplar and to provide the references to publications that could help younger engineers understand how the structures work and how they were designed and constructed, in order to be better able to refurbish them. In addition, it could provide a stimulus for engineers to take the investigation further and to make this book a driver for future innovation in new structures using the new tools at engineers' disposal but with an insight into the experience of great engineers of the past.
Mike John Cook
