WELCOME to Historic Building Geometry, Laurie Smith’s website.

Laurie Smith is a geometer and early-building design researcher, specialising in historic geometrical design systems. His research is recorded in a series of ARTICLES available from this site as FREE downloads plus some printed paperback titles available at a modest FEE that includes postage. For more details click ARTICLES.

The SHELTER photograph shows The Gardener’s Shelter, erected in the walled Elizabethan garden at Cressing Temple,  Essex, in 2008 as the culmination of an educational historic timber framing project organised and run by the UK Carpenters’ Fellowship. The project attracted an international team of carpenters from Canada, England, Holland, Scandinavia, the USA and Wales. 

The Shelter was designed using daisy wheel compass geometry (see the next page) set out at full scale on the ground. The frame was scribed, cut and raised manually in local Essex oak by lead carpenter Joel Hendry and project manager William Clement Smith.
The frame geometry was designed by Laurie Smith.

Lettering cut into the rear tie beam records A Frame for Cecil and Adrian, in memory of Essex historians Cecil Hewett and Adrian Gibson. The front tie beam, facing the garden, has the message Grow Beauty in The Garden of Your Mind. The wording was written by Laurie Smith and the lettering was cut by Rupert Newman. William Clement Smith cut the daisy wheel finial at the roof ridge.

The project record is available as a FREE download or as a printed paperback. For more details click ARTICLES and scroll to The Gardener’s Shelter at Cressing Temple.