Word: nervy
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Rogers), was picked by UNESCO to name Les Trois who would actually design the building. The site was changed twice to placate the jittery guardians of Paris' celebrated skyline. With that act over, the U.S.'s Marcel Breuer, Italy's famed master of concrete, Pier Luigi Nervi, and France's Bernard Zehrfuss could get down to work...
Last week Engineer Nervi's latest building, Rome's Palazzetto dello Sport (see color pages) was in full operation with a solid calendar of basketball games, boxing matches and fencing competitions. Neither the appreciative spectators, gazing at the soaring, concrete-ribbed dome free of any obstructing pillars, nor the art critics, who praised it as "a masterpiece of creative genius ... perfection," would believe that Nervi had no esthetic scheme in mind. But it was a fact that he had merely worked out an orderly system for transmitting the flow of the great dome's stress along...
Economy Begets Art. An artist to his fingertips, Engineer Nervi protests that his buildings, which he likes to call "coverings" or "space limits," are simply "a rigid interpretation of structural necessities." Says he: "Beauty does not come from decorative effects, but from structural coherence." Then he slyly adds: "In the absence of good taste, economy is the best incentive...
Living up to this philosophy, Nervi has won his commissions not for esthetic reasons but through his ability to undercut his competitors, make records in construction time. His stadium in Florence, seating 35,000, cost only $2.90 per seat to build; recently he put up a three-story factory in 100 days. Faced with commodity scarcities and cutthroat competition, he has still managed to raise pure structure to the level...
Delight in the Ruins. Born in the Italian Alps, Nervi got his engineering degree from Bologna, served as a lieutenant in the World War I Italian Corps of Engineers. Out of the army, he worked out his apprenticeship with one of Italy's best construction companies, then at 31 set up his own office in Rome. His first spectacular chance to prove his worth came when he won a contract to build huge airplane hangars for the Italian air force. To avoid using scarce wood and steel, Nervi created a design in reinforced concrete with prefabricated vaulting, produced vast...