Role of the structural engineer.
Aesthetics of built form.

Much of my research effort as an academic was devoted to studying and reporting on important non-technical factors which influence decision-making in the design of structures. A conventional undergraduate education in engineering can leave a student with the impression that all decisions made in the application of technology are derived logically from unassailable facts. My first taste of real world design quickly convinced me this was far from the case - so when I joined Monash University as a lecturer in 1966 I determined to write a book which would lessen the "culture shock" that young engineers experience on graduation. That was published by Oxford University Press in 1986 as "The Art in Structural Design" (Japanese version, Kajima, 2001).

In researching the effect that architects and architecture have on structural design, I became engrossed in the question of "appreciation of architecture". How do buildings affect us? What is it that makes us prefer one building to another? I decided to try to summarise the theories which have been put forward to explain this, and hoped to apply them to the utilitarian structures that engineers design. It turned out that the summary was more than ample for one book, which was published as "Aesthetics of built form" (OUP, 1992). (The word "aesthetics" was used in the title for brevity - though the sick feeling that structural engineers get when they see an illogical structure is a genuine case of the aesthetics.)

Both these books are now out of print. They were rather unconventional and their interdisciplinary nature made them an even bigger gamble for the publisher. I am grateful to OUP for giving me a chance.

In the later years while writing these two books, I published a number of papers applying the concepts of "appreciation of built form" to various materials or types of structures. These found a place as introductions to conferences organised by relevant industry associations and interest groups.

In 1995, I submitted a collection of published work as a PhD thesis entitled "On the aesthetics of built form and its place within the design of structures". This consisted of the first two books plus a new "academic" volume containing: the six papers on "appreciation of built form"; a paper proposing a concept of structural design as an academic discipline; the academic footnotes which had been eliminated from the books for commercial reasons; and a number of afterthoughts.

Researching the above topics on sabbatical leave I met Jörg Schlaich who has given a great deal of thought to them, whilst forging an international reputation as an academic and practising engineer. He and his structures made a perfect subject for a third book: "Jörg Schlaich: the art of structural engineering", Edition Axel Menges, Stuttgart, 1997. This book is still available, so only some notes on Schlaich will be included here.

In recent years, especially since taking early retirement at the end of 1996, I have concentrated on the John Monash history project and have not kept abreast of changing concepts in architecture, but retain a basic interest in decision-making in structural design and in the appreciation of built form.

John Monash's engineering to 1914.

My ongoing research into the history of the engineering enterprise of (Sir) John Monash prior to the First World War is reported in the greater part of this web site.

I can be contacted via jmciveng@gmail.com

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