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When Science meets Art

Faulconer showcases structural design today

by Merrick Meyers

Years ago, students in David Billington's course saw beauty in structures such as the Brooklyn Bridge and the Eiffel tower, not the traditional buildings he planned to discuss. It was a generation gap Billington tried to cross and even master.

Since then, he has shared his students' passions, focusing on structural engineering as art. He has taught structural design at Princeton since 1974, wrote related books and curated several exhibits on the topic.

Now, his most recent exhibit, "The Art of Structural Design: A Swiss Legacy," focusing on four Swiss architects, has come to Grinnell. Organized by the Princeton University Art Museum and the Princeton University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the exhibit will open today in the Faulconer gallery and run until Apr. 16.

It is a common mistake to think of structural engineering as architecture, Billington said. As quoted in the New York Times Book Review, he likens structural engineering to poetry and architecture to prose. Structural art, he says in his book Towers and Bridges is a "new art form, parallel to architecture" that arose from the Industrial Revolution.

Billington said that he sees structural engineering, while based on scientific principles, as being more a form of art than science. It is based on "principles of design, not principles of discovery."

William Case, Physics, noted a fundamental difference between structural design and architecture: a structural designer building a bridge must always consider practical matters of engineering first and then apply aesthetic considerations, while in architecture the opposite is often true. The most important thing is that the structure works. "Just because it's the 21st century doesn't mean gravity has gone away," said Case.

Case, who has known Billington for 20 years, once worked with one of the exhibit's featured engineers while on sabbatical. He said the art of structural engineering is of so much interest because of the "beauty of innovation, an elegant way of doing things."

"There are many different possibilities of things that would work, that would stay up, but [an artist will] choose something that not only works as a bridge, holds whatever the loads are up, survives a long time and isn't overly expensive, but on top of that is beautiful to look at, is very appealing," said Case.

The exhibit contains models of eight examples of structural art by four architects. Four of Billington's students built these models. The four featured architects ?? Robert Maillart, Othmar H. Ammann, Heinz Isler and Christian Menn ? were all educated at Eidgen?ssische Technische Hochschule (Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich, Switzerland. There, they were particularly influenced by two teachers, Wilhelm Ritter and Pierre Lardy. Billington calls the ETH the best school of structural engineering in the world. Their works include all major New York City bridges and the recent Boston bridge.

The exhibit came to Grinnell at the suggestion of Case, who is teaching the special topic course "Bridges, Towers, and Skyscrapers." Billington, as the Noyce Visiting Professor, gave three lectures last week to Case's class, and will return for three more the week before Spring Break. While he was here, he also gave a lecture in the cinema on Jan. 26 about the exhibit.

"It is interesting how [Billington] defines structural design differently than art or architecture or something about physics. He defines it in the middle of all three," said Nate Gates '08, a student in Case's special topic course.

The exhibit, conceived by Billington five years ago, made its debut at Princeton in 2003. Since then it has toured to MIT, Kansas City, Switzerland and Toronto. After Grinnell, the exhibit's next and last stop will be Swift College.

Sidebar: Facts about David Billington

Billington has taught at Princeton since 1960.

His awards and honors include the Dexter Prize and Usher Prize.

He holds three honorary degrees, including one from Grinnell.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His books include Robert Maillart's Bridges, The Tower and the Bridge, Thin Shell Concrete Structures, and The Innovator: The Engineering Pioneers Who Made America Modern.

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