BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DAM

From CHAPTER EIGHT:

[Princeton civil engineering Professor David] Billington appreciates that mathematical analysis can help generate safer and more efficient designs, but he spurns the notion that it unerringly leads to the creation of innovative structural forms. In his mind, the engineers whose work best exemplifies the ideals of structural art resisted an overarching "faith in formula [and]... sought rather to base design on simplified calculations and on observations of physical behavior." Whereas America's twentieth-century engineering establishment has embraced the idea that mathematically sophisticated analysis inevitably fosters more accurate methods of design, Billington considers mathematics as simply a tool in the overall design process.


Eastwood's work with multiple arch dams closely adheres to Billington's views; in rejecting reliance on mathematical theory as an absolute determinant of structural design, Eastwood resisted pervasive trends in the civil engineering community. His methodology, in which experience guided and supplemented the use of mathematics, frequently was greeted with apathy or active opposition. But in his ongoing search for more efficient structural forms, Eastwood never exhibited any qualms about deviating from the technological status quo.

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