Although patents existed in Renaissance Italy and even in Confucian thought, it was not until the middle third of the nineteenth century that architects embraced the practice of patenting in significant numbers. Patents could ensure, as they did for architects' engineering brethren, the economic and cultural benefits afforded by exclusive intellectual property rights. But patent culture was nev…
With its incorporation into architecture on a grand scale during the long nineteenth century, steel forever changed the way we perceive and inhabit buildings. In this book, Peter H. Christensen shows that even as architects and engineers were harnessing steel's incredible properties, steel itself was busy transforming the natural world. Precious Metal explores this quintessentially modernist m…