Read Arch, Vault & Flying Buttress: A Complete History

The arch is architecture's most consequential invention. Once builders learned to turn a wall's downward weight into a sideways push that could be met, answered and carried to the ground, rooms could widen, ceilings could rise in stone, bridges could leap rivers and cathedrals could dissolve their walls into glass. This complete history follows the true arch from Mesopotamian mudbrick and Egyptian granaries through Roman voussoir and concrete mastery, Romanesque barrel vaults and the Gothic system of rib, point and flyer, Persian and Islamic vaulting, Renaissance and Baroque reinvention, and the iron, concrete, shell and gridshell arches of the modern age. It explains thrust plainly — with the thrust line and the funicular curve at its heart — and teaches the reader to read any arch or vault, from its springing to its pinnacle, at a glance.