Against Gravity: Building Practices in the Pre-Industrial World

Robert Ousterhout, Dorian Borbonus, and Elisha Dumser, editors

Publication date: January, 2016

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Following on the success of “Masons at Work” (held in spring 2012, and published online (below), the symposium will gather specialists to examine building practices in the pre-industrial world, with an emphasis on Greek, Roman, Byzantine, medieval, and pre-modern Islamic architecture. Building practices will be considered in a variety of ways: examining regional and local trends, considering specific architectonic forms, practices of construction, cultural interaction, and wider considerations of the built landscape and change over the longue durée.

Masons at Work: Architecture and Construction in the Pre-Modern World

Robert Ousterhout, Renata Holod, and Lothar Haselberger, editors

Arthur Thourson Jones, associate editor

Publication date: October 2012

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

This symposium assembled specialists in various fields to examine building practices in the pre-modern world, with an emphasis on aspects of construction and structure in ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine, medieval, and early-to-middle period Islamic architecture. While some technologies and built forms may be shared across pre-modern cultures (such as vault construction or the use of centering), other may be specific to a single period or region (such as the use of concrete or structural ribs in vaulting). Papers examined the problems pre-modern masons commonly encountered—and the solutions they developed—in the process of design and construction.