Function v. Rhetoric 
Peter Campbell
It is difficult to work out who gets the credit for a building – so many people are involved, from owners, contractors and governments to bricklayers and roofers – but it is particularly hard to decide what is due to the architect and what to the engineer. Andrew Saint, in his new book, sees them as sibling rivals, and in tracing how their relations have changed over time, looks for answers to three questions. Was there a time when the roles of architect and engineer were indistinguishable? If so, how and why did they separate? And, finally, have they now been reconciled?
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Peter Campbell is the London Review’s resident designer and art critic.
Other articles by this contributor:
At the National Gallery · Paintings from the Berlin Nationalgalerie
At the British Museum · London 1753
At the National Gallery · Russian landscapes
At the Royal Academy · Frank Auerbach
At the Imperial War Museum · Agitprop
At the Royal Collection · Retrieved at the Restoration
At the Atlantis Gallery · the Survey of India
At the Royal Academy · Turner’s watercolours
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