Load & Form teaches architects to understand structures — not to survive them.Structure, taught the way architects think
Most architects meet structures twice. First in school, where it arrives as a wall of equations to be memorized and survived. Then again in practice, where they realize the formulas never added up to understanding — that they can run a calculation but can't picture how the building actually carries its load.
This library closes that gap. Every lesson starts from the physical question — what is this member doing, and why? — and builds the intuition behind the math. You learn to read a structure the way you read a plan: at a glance, with judgment, before a single number is run.A qualitative, visual method
The teaching here is deliberately qualitative. Concepts are drawn, not derived — developed at the whiteboard, one idea at a time, in the order an architect needs them. The goal is durable understanding you can carry into design reviews, into the field, and into the exam room: knowing where forces go, which members matter, and how a change to the form changes the behavior.
It is the same approach David Thaddeus has refined over more than two decades of teaching — and the reason students who "never got structures" tend to get them here.Your instructor — David Thaddeus, FAIA
David Thaddeus is a registered architect and Professor of Structures at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he has taught since 1999. His work centers on teaching structural concepts through visual and qualitative methods — the way architects actually need to understand them.
He leads Architect Registration Exam seminars on structural systems across the United States and Canada, and was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows in 2019. He holds a Master of Architecture from Yale.Who it's for
Students learning structures for the first time. Practitioners filling the gaps school left behind. And ARE candidates preparing for the Structural Systems division, who need understanding the exam rewards — not more formulas to memorize.
Ready to see structure clearly? Browse the lessons or get access.