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Building Structures: from Concepts to Design Malcolm Millais, 2005 Abingdon, Oxon and New York, Spon Press 423+viii pp. 958 illust. £70.00 (hardback), £24.99 (paperback) ISBN 0-415-33622-8 (hardback), 0-415-33623-6 (paperback)
This is the second edition of a work first published in 1997, in which the author - himself a structural engineer - sets out to explain what the structure of a building is, what it has to do, and how it does it. So is this a textbook on structures? Yes it is, and as such any engineering student (and teacher too) will find here lucid explanations of what in the academic syllabus is called 'theory of structures'. But is the book also of interest to the construction historian? I certainly think so, for two main reasons.
Firstly, every building has a structure so that, to fully understand the building, we must understand that structure; this is rarely an easy task, even when the structure is visible and apparently 'obvious'. (Structural engineers themselves don't always get this right when working on an existing building!) The first half of the book is a comprehensive guide to structural behaviour. I gloss the author's definition, to the effect that the function of a structure is to carry loads applied to the building via load paths; these induce forces in the structure which generate stresses and movements that it has to carry while being strong and stiff enough, so that it doesn't fall down. It must also be stable, so that...