History of Building: Styles, Methods, and Materials (Mitchell's Building Series)

Author: George Balcombe

Publisher: Batsford, 1985

The 20 buildings described show how the styles, methods and materials of building have changed since Stonehenge was put up nearly 5000 years ago. They all still exist in some form and are all in the United Kingdom.

This book has five parts:

1. Stone Circles which looks at the earliest structures and at Roman building in Britain. The Anglo-Saxon style leads into:
2. Pointed Arches where the Gothic style and its Revival in Victorian times tell their own story.
3. Golden Rectangles which are a clue ot the secrets of the Classical style and of buildings such as St Paul's Cathedral in London.
4. Iron Rules because nearly 2000 years ago iron, and then steel, took over from wood and stone as the main structural material; and over many years rules for using the metal materials were worked out by tests and mathematics.
5. High Tech which brings the story of styles, methods and materials into the industrail world of the 1980s where high tech is not only the technology of high buildings but of the microchip.

ISBN: 9780713421866