Word: cements
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Nervi graduated from the Civil Engineering School of Bologna in 1913 and immediately joined the growing number of engineers who saw in reinforced concrete the revolutionary solution to Italy's historic poverty of steel and concrete. He regards his next years, spent working for a firm of cement contractors (with the interruption of military service), as formative. "It was here that I really learned of concrete's great number...
...constructing the spiral stairs that Nervi first hindered by the rigidity which an interior timber formwork imposed on reinforced concrete. The next twelve years witnessed Nervi's various modifications of the skeleton of reinforced concrete and "in retrospect' strikingly continuous progression toward ferro-cement...
...material substituted flexible steel mesh for timber, in a way that simplified the cementing process and thus allowed for vital short-cuts in reinforced concrete construction. The substance could be mass-produced at a ferro-cement factory established by Nervi in 1945. Prefabrication, a second vital innovation, allowed the builder to transport parts from a center of mass production to the building site and simplified the actual job of erecting the structure...
...elimination of timber beams or their steel equivalent made ferro-cement cheaper, lighter, thinner, and the new process of production incomparably faster...
Nervi's ferro-cement dome ceilings, strengthened by corrogated beams are today among his most familiar works. Conceived an executed as technical problems, these domed ceilings nevertheless attain a soaring beauty not foreseen in by the builder--entirely dependent on structural design yet not included...