Review: The Structure of Design: An Engineer's Extraordinary Life in Architecture, by Leslie Earl Robertson

Abstract

Leslie Earl Robertson The Structure of Design: An Engineer's Extraordinary Life in Architecture New York: Monacelli Press, 2017, 336 pp., 313 color and 23 b/w illus. $60, ISBN 9781580934299 The Structure of Design is a compelling and unique contribution to the discussion of an underrepresented topic: the relationship between architecture and structural engineering. It presents the truly remarkable life and career of its author, Leslie Earl Robertson, a dynamic and pathbreaking structural engineer. The book is, as Robertson states, a product of himself—it is both by him and about him. This autobiographical effort not only documents Robertson's past projects and innovations, as well as the architectural relationships that defined his professional career, but it also allows him to recall remarkably personal experiences and directly share his views with the next generation of architects and engineers. His stories—organized both chronologically and by architectural partnership—oscillate between in-depth discussions of specific buildings and technical achievements and more casual anecdotes and recollections of personal relationships. Robertson provides vital insight into an important period of architectural and structural history but leaves a sense that there is still much more of the story to be told. Robertson's professional work supports the claim that he was among the most impactful structural engineers of the last half of the twentieth century. He was instrumental in introducing the digital production of construction documents (on punch cards) and played an important role in the beginnings of computer optimization in structural design. He also pioneered the use of steel-and-concrete composite columns, the use of boundary-layer wind tunnel testing and engineering, and a variety of other specific technological leaps in structural engineering. These technologies emerged not through isolated invention, however, but through individual projects that Robertson worked on in collaboration with architects and firms such …