Word: architecturale
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Back at the Ranch. The West Side apartment of Textile Manufacturer Benjamin Heller strikes some as an art gallery with a bed. Huge paintings by Pollock, Rothko. Newman and other abstractionists, as well as Greek and African sculptures and pre-Columbian potteries, loom everywhere-in the living room and kitchen...
Throughout history, Nervi remarked, architectural style has reflected the technical possibilities of the day. Insofar as style has followed technological trends, it has been aesthetically pleasing. But when style becomes an ornamental gloss, covering and hiding new developments, buildings lose their beauty.
The union of technique and architectural expression reached its greatest perfection during the Gothic period, the Italian architect said. In Gothic construction, "one cannot distinguish the engineering aspect from the architectural one."
In 1920 he founded his first contracting firm. In 1926 he initiated the now familiar pattern of submitting architectural designs of structural concepts aiming at efficiency and economy.
"What is beauty?" Nervi asks. "I am a builder. I am no artist. People tell me some of my designs are beautiful, and I am glad. But I don't aim at beauty." Nervi maintains that the different stresses which different situations place on the physical properties of reinforced concrete...