Unhindered by tradition and often out of the purview of public scrutiny, industrial buildings have been fertile sites for architectural experiments following the Industrial Revolution. Driven foremost by pragmatic ambition, it is a typology that generated some of the purest results of integrated design, uniting engineering, expression, and performance in the articulation of constructed space.

This new book investigates spaces of production through seminal projects by engineer-architects such as Robert Maillart, Albert Kahn, Auguste Perret, Pier Luigi Nervi, and many others. The result of research done at tthe École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne's School of Architecture, it also includes interviews, essays, and student works.