The Story of Buildings: From the Pyramids to the Sydney Opera House and Beyond [Hardcover]

Aspiring architects will be in their element! Explore this illustrated narrative history of buildings for young readers, an amazing construction in itself.

We spend most of our lives in buildings. We make our homes in them. We go to school in them. We work in them. But why and how did people start making buildings? How did they learn to make them stronger, bigger, and more comfortable? Why did they start to decorate them in different ways? From the pyramid erected so that an Egyptian pharaoh would last forever to the dramatic, machine-like Pompidou Center designed by two young architects, Patrick Dillon’s stories of remarkable buildings — and the remarkable people who made them — celebrates the ingenuity of human creation. Stephen Biesty’s extraordinarily detailed illustrations take us inside famous buildings throughout history and demonstrate just how these marvelous structures fit together.Clear explanations of basic building concepts (cantilevers, arches and domes, reinforced concrete) are balanced with discussions of more abstract principles such as symmetry, geometry, and pattern. But the volume is truly set apart by Biesty’s elaborate, meticulously detailed, and clearly labeled drawings (some stretching across two large-format pages plus two half-page fold-outs). ... Biesty here adds a kaleidoscopic yet tightly integrated visual dimension that will transfix readers.
—School Library Journal (starred review)

A diverse selection of buildings are highlighted... Working with colored pencil, Biesty uses a gentler line than in his hyperattentive Cross-Sections books, but there’s no loss of detail: you could, if so inclined, count the steps leading up to the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City. Each picture is thoroughly but unobtrusively annotated... The main text has a nice narrative flow that links the buildings and eras together, and Dillon has a gift for evocation as well as explanation. lc)