Light Structures of Light: The Art and Engineering Tensile Architecture

What will buildings of the next millennium look like? The shining roof of the new Denver Airport, the San Diego Convention Center and Canada Place in Vancouver give a preview. So does the Haj Terminal at the Jeddah International Airport, the world's largest roof structure. In this book Horst Berger tells the story of the design and construction of these and other tensile structures from his perspectives as the principal participant in their evolution, capturing some of the excitement and the anxieties of the process. Since tensile architecture is a new phenomenon, he takes great pains to explain the principles which determines its form and the mechanisms which make it work. He explores its roots in ancient forms of human dwellings and envisages potential future applications. Though this book will interest architects and engineers, also general readers will find it totally accessible.The author sees architecture as the raising of technology to an art form in order to create the spaces which house human activity. Tensile architecture achieves this with one integrated structural surface accomplishing all the things which, in conventional buildings, require the combination of many additive elements.