Word: frameless
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Paper Plan. Behlen's big break came in 1947, when he designed a frameless corn crib made of corrugated wire mesh. Farmers jumped at it because it was so simple to assemble. Behlen borrowed from the RFC to pay for a bigger plant, netted $305,000 that year and paid off the loan in six months. Then the corrugating idea really blossomed. One day he devised a new way of double corrugation by folding a piece of stationery in an unusual pyramidal form. It was so much stronger that he decided to use the principle for building. Panels...
Today Behlen's frameless buildings are used for everything from grain elevators to supermarkets and churches. The buildings can be raised by 20-man crews in two or three days. A Behlen supermarket including interior costs $7 per sq. ft., about half the cost of a conventional structure. With his bigger plant, Behlen expects to boost his gross from about $16 million this year to $25 million in 1959. But he deprecates his inventive skill, feels he only applied old principles to new uses. Says he: "Any engineer can design a complicated gadget that can't be produced...