We’re going on a bear hunt
I’m not scared, etc.*
Oh no — a gap.
We can’t go around it.
We can’t go under it.
We’ll have to…
Build a simply supported beam,
Or a continuous span,
An arch,
A suspension bridge,
A cable-stayed structure,
A cantilever,
A propped cantilever,
A truss…
Not as poetic as Michael Rosen’s version, but it serves to illustrate one of the palettes of the structural engineer: structural form.
And there are other palettes too…
Concrete, steel, timber, masonry, stone, glass, composites, straw bales — just some of the colours in the material palette.
Footings, rafts, deep piles, mini piles, caissons — the foundation palette.
These are some of the colours from which structural engineers paint their ideas.
Some of the vocabulary from which they write their poems of structural form.
The wider the vocabulary, the more options for the poet.
*From We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen.