How buildings work

by Allen, Edward

What do buildings do, and how do they fuction? Edward Allen's new book provides a full and elegantly articulated answer to these fundamental questions about architecture. "A house of snow in the Arctic obeys the same physical laws as one of bamboo in the tropics," writes Allen, "and a steel-framed skyscraper is not so far removed from a tree house as we would sometimes believe." But the principles involved in the functioning of buildings has never been clearly laid out in one place. Edward Allen's book is the first comprehensive, nonmathmematical physiology of architecture, and will enable lay people as well as professionals to understand how buildings work. Every chapter of How Buildings Work concisely describes one aspect of building function. Here, for the first time in a single volume, are chapters on thermal considerations in architecture, keeping water out of buildings, reducing danger from fire, fitting buildings to people, the structural behavior of buildings, and much more. Ea