Rating: 
Summary: Not necessarily for engineers...
Review: Peruse this book it extensively before you buy it. As an engineer, I feel it is long on graphics and musings but short on insight. I think his intended audience is architects more than fellow engineers. I think he wants to show them how engineers are also innovative and multidimensional designers, that we aren't just number-crunchers. A worthy goal, to be sure. But I was hoping to be wowed with project-specific responses to architectural challenges. I wasn't, but I don't consider basic overturning resistance and load transfer to be sheer brilliance. On major backflips of his designs, he holds his cards close. Also, Balmond correlates his work extensively to nature, frontier conceptual science and the arts in the tradition of great thinkers. But the correlations are rarely logical, nor do they show a consistent consciousness or developing method across his oeuvre. Were this not the case, I would be more inclined to believe these epiphanies occurred during actual design as opposed to monograph-writing. Also, it sure is a tiny book for $....In his defense and perhaps my own, a disclaimer: in no way is this review intended to diminish Balmond's significance to the world of architectural structures. We as engineers aren't known for writing flourishes. And has anyone ever read a design monograph free of ego? I would recommend What is a Bridge? by Pollalis or An Engineer Imagines by Peter Rice over this book. Both clearly convey the real experience and potential brilliance of the modern structural designer.
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