Personal Thoughts in Tribute to David P. Billington

How to relate an exchange with a recognized personality who is known for his books, his lectures and his teaching? How to situate this work of transmission operated by D. P. Billington to highlight the specificities of those engineers who are said to be artists? It may be by letting our thoughts wander to bring back memories of meetings and readings. This is the choice made for this contribution. Meet D. P. Billington, immerse yourself in his library at Princeton this place of reflection and memory resulting from his impressive work. There follow paragraphs devoted to some examples extracted from his teaching and writings, but also to the symbolic aspect, indispensable part in any artistic work. The identity of the artists' engineers is thus better defined, be it Maillart, Eiffel or Gaudi among others. The major role of the morphogenesis phase of their works is emphasized as the concomitance of a theoretical and technical skills that is put at the service of the design. D. P. Billington has been able to convey his historian's perspective by making available pertinent analyses, based on his erudition.