This issue of Ædificare is organized around three dimensions of construction history: the material one of objects, tools, and materials (in this case the thirteen-knot rope, quine, design models, metal-framed windows), the human one centered on work (iron workers in the late Middle Ages as well as the tale of a revolutionary Parisian building site) and a political one (Spanish colonial asientos in Louisiana in the nineteenth century and the planning of Italian ports at the dawn of Italian Unity).