Art du Trait de CharpenteArt of the Line for CarpentryGerman SchiftenBasic Task ModelsTC - DP Shadow LineCanted Hip & Valley RaftersNet Roof SurfaceFolding Roof Surface PlanesFootprint PlanesNet PlanesSloping RidgesRafter ClawsPurlinsDormersTréteau ? deversCanted TrestlesJoiners TableSawhorsesSaint Andrews' CrossWorldSkills Practice Task ModelTwisted CrossesCanted CrossHexagon Canted CrossPentagon Canted CrossWitches CutWarlock CutMoonWalk LinesRoof Framing GeometryRoof Framing Stereotomy

This book deals with the general concepts in stereotomy and its connection with descriptive geometry, the social background of its practitioners and theoreticians, the general methods and tools of this technology, and the specific procedures for the members built in hewn stone, including arches, squinches, stairs and vaults, ending with a chapter discussing the open problems in this field. Thus, it can be used as a reference book in the subject, but it can also read as a compelling narrative on this subject, one of the main branches of pre-industrial technology. Construction in hewn stone requires the use of geometrical methods and tools to assure that individual stones, either blocks or voussoirs, fit with one another and conform to the general shape of walls, arches or vaults. During the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, such techniques and instruments were developed empirically by masons and architects. Later on, learned mathematicians and engineers introduced refinements in these procedures and this branch of knowledge, known as stereotomy, furnished much material to descriptive geometry, a science born with the French Revolution which provided the foundation for projective geometry.

Robin Evans recasts the idea of the relationship between geometry and architecture, drawing on mathematics, engineering, art history, and aesthetics to uncover processes in the imagining and realizing of architectural form. Anyone reviewing the history of architectural theory, Robin Evans observes, would have to conclude that architects do not produce geometry, but rather consume it. In this long-awaited book, completed shortly before its author's death, Evans recasts the idea of the relationship between geometry and architecture, drawing on mathematics, engineering, art history, and aesthetics to uncover processes in the imagining and realizing of architectural form. He shows that geometry does not always play a stolid and dormant role but, in fact, may be an active agent in the links between thinking and imagination, imagination and drawing, drawing and building. He suggests a theory of architecture that is based on the many transactions between architecture and geometry as evidenced in individual buildings, largely in Europe, from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. From the Henry VII chapel at Westminster Abbey to Le Corbusier's Ronchamp, from Raphael's S. Eligio and the work of Piero della Francesca and Philibert Delorme to Guarino Guarini and the painters of cubism, Evans explores the geometries involved, asking whether they are in fact the stable underpinnings of the creative, intuitive, or rhetorical aspects of architecture. In particular he concentrates on the history of architectural projection, the geometry of vision that has become an internalized and pervasive pictorial method of construction and that, until now, has played only a small part in the development of architectural theory. Evans describes the ambivalent role that pictures play in architecture and urges resistance to the idea that pictures provide all that architects need, suggesting that there is much more within the scope of the architect's vision of a project than what can be drawn. He defines the different fields of projective transmission that concern architecture, and investigates the ambiguities of projection and the interaction of imagination with projection and its metaphors.

The enduring influence of the architect Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) derives primarily from his monumental theoretical foray Der Stil in der technischen und tektonischen Künsten (1860-62), here translated into English for the first time. A richly illustrated survey of the technical arts (textiles, ceramics, carpentry, masonry), Semper's analysis of the preconditions of style forever changed the interpretative context for aesthetics, architecture, and art history. Style, Semper believed, should be governed by historical function, cultural affinities, creative free will, and the innate properties of each medium. Thus, in an ambitious attempt to turn nineteenth-century artistic discussion away from historicism, aestheticism, and materialism, Semper developed in Der Stil a complex picture of stylistic change based on scrutiny of specific objects and a remarkable grasp of cultural variety. Harry Francis Mallgrave's introductory essay offers an account of Semper's life and work, a survey of Der Stil, and a fresh consideration of Semper's landmark study and its lasting significance.