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An Introduction To Shell Structures The Art and Science of Vaulting Michelle Melaragno Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York
An Introduction To Shell Structures The Art and Science of Vaulting Michelle Melaragno Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York
An Introduction To Shell Structures The Art and Science of Vaulting Michelle Melaragno Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York
348
H. G. Allen
An introduction to shell
structures: the art and science
of vaulting
Michele Melaragno
Van Nostrand Reinhold, New
York, 199 I, xiv + 4 2 8 page
(Chapman and Hall, UK,
543.50), ISBN 0-442-23725-1
The author is a professional engineer who
is also a professor of architecture (University of North Carolina). This book on the
art and science of shells is very strong on
art - and not so strong on science. The
'engineering' sections of the books are in
places barely adequate, in places irrelevant, and in places inaccurate. Further,
some of the most significant technical concepts receive scant or no treatment.
There can be no quarrel with the broad
sweep of the book, The first part deals with
wood and masonry domes, their origins
and symbolism, and their history from
ancient to Islamic, through Romanesque to
the present. An astonishing range of
examples is illustrated and described, but
without any unifying technical thread. For
example, the bulbous 'onion' domes of
Russia are well exposed, but there is no
discussion of the fact that a shell which
embraces more than a hemisphere cannot
be stable without tensile reinforcement (or
without cheating by not being a shell at all!
Professor Melaragno is clear, elsewhere in
J. Heyman