Certain works of structural engineering design are also works of structural art. Such works can be classified as structural art when they attain excellence in the three areas of efficiency, economy, and elegance, as defined by Prof. David P. Billington of Princeton University.[1][2] A key part of the concept of structural art is that the structural engineer making the design must exercise his or her creativity and playfulness to create an elegant structure within the constraints imposed by engineering requirements. These constraints include the safety and serviceability of the structure. Therefore, a structure cannot be a successful work of structural art without also being a successful work of structural engineering design, yet many works of structural engineering design that are safe and serviceable do not rise to the level of structural art because they fail to be economical, efficient, or elegant. Structural art is a topic of active scholarly research at several universities in the United States, including Princeton University, Tufts University, Bucknell University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Roger Williams University, and in other parts of the world such as Spain (Universitat Politécnica de València) and Germany (HCU Hamburg). While structural artists often collaborate with architects, the discipline of structural art is based upon engineering rather than architectural design. A recent summary about this topic can be found in a review paper. [3]
- ^ Billington, David (1983). The Tower and the Bridge. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 9780465086771.
- ^ Billington, David (1984). "Bridges and the new art of structural engineering". American Scientist. 72 (1): 22–31. Bibcode:1984AmSci..72...22B. JSTOR 27852435.
- ^ Hu, Nan; Feng, Peng; Dai, Gong-Lian (November 2014). "Structural art: Past, present and future". Engineering Structures. 79: 407–416. Bibcode:2014EngSt..79..407H. doi:10.1016/j.engstruct.2014.08.040.