Word: nervy
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Pier Luigi Nervi is a great builder because Italy is scarce in trees and World War II demolished northern Italy. A stupid thing to say, I know, for even before the War Nervi had demonstrated undeniable genius as an engineer. Yet Nervi's is the genius of solving problems. Destruction and financial ruin in Italy necessitated speed and economy, driving Nervi to the discovery of "ferro-cement," a new reinforced concrete--cheaper, more elastic, and, of the essence, more rapidly constructed than older versions...
This discovery is typical of Nervi, of his career and of his whole approach to architecture. Widely regarded as an engineer, Nervi sees himself as an architect and architecture as a practical question of construction. Architecture's aim is to build, and buildings, regardless of beauty, cannot exist on paper; they are possible only when they meet immediate demands of site, specification, and budget. Beauty is desirable, but construction aiming at "economic efficiency," Nervi argues, is architecture's goal...
...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...
...second project, the Municipal Stadium of Florence (built in the early thirties), demonstrated to an international audience a thesis which Nervi has since maintaind: that the correct engineering solution to a difficult structural problem is a precondition not an obstacle to beauty of form, and that the architect, aiming at correct construction alone, can produce...
...thirties a half century of construction in reinforced concrete had dissipated public resistance to the new forms. Nervi's stadium with its famous external, spiral staircases reached an audience increasingly enthusiastic about the new substance and won him immediate acclaim...