Designing Lightness: Structures for Saving Energy

A colorful, thoughtfully designed manifesto on the need to build lighter structures

This book is a call to build lighter. As a result of the rush to ever bigger cars, condos and airplanes, Dutch writers Adriaan Beukers and Ed van Hinte were forced to confront the combination of the growing costs of converting sufficient amounts of energy for production, distribution and waste disposal and the decreasing availability of raw materials. Beyond their call to build lighter, however, the authors give practical advice for doing so.

This richly illustrated book provides an extensive overview of everything involved in creating lightweight structures, offering a dazzling array of examples both from the past and future, covering everything from packaging to architecture, from hoverboards to spacecraft, ranging from abstract phenomena to bio-structures and from ancient discoveries to the newest technologies. Every detail is topped off with thorough but lighthearted explanations.