Spectacular religious buildings, elegant townhouses, long-span bridges or early industrial plants still have the power to amaze us. We stand in awe before the Pantheon in Rome, built around 125 AD, before the cathedral in Trier, Germany’s oldest, or the Doge’s Palace in Venice, which dates to the ninth century. Judged by the norms and standards of today, most of these buildings should no longer be standing. This book documents traditional building methods, analyzes historic load-bearing systems, and provides an overview of empirical joining techniques and contemporary materials. In separate chapters devoted respectively to construction methods in timber, masonry, steel, and concrete, international examples are analyzed