The Art of Structural Design: From Scholarship to Teaching to Practice by Professor David P. Billington, Princeton University

A new type of scholarship devoted to the greatest work of modern structural engineering promises to inspire students to see the future of practice as holding the potential for innovation and for new forms of elegance within the central engineering disciplines of efficiency and economy. When students study the grand tradition of structure they can better focus their careers on creating themselves works of structural art. This lecture will give examples of four such designers and their teachers.

David Billington is Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. His expertise is in thin shell concrete structures, bridge design and the history and aesthetics of structures. Prof. Billington is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and an Honorary Member of the American Society of Civil Engineering, the International Association of Shell Structures and the American Concrete Institute. He was recently honored with the NSF Director's Distinguished Teaching Scholar's Award.