Word: nervy
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...building has ever been "recognized as excellent from the aesthetic point of view if it is not also excellent from a technical point of view," Pier Luigi Nervi told a packed Lowell Lecture Hall last night...
...internationally renowned innovator of reinforced-concrete building techniques spent his first Charles Eliot Norton lecture discussing the "rapport between technique and aesthetics" in construction. To demonstrate the inseparability of these "material and spiritual" components of architecture, Nervi noted that "no one could feel a comfortable sense of tranquil aesthetic enjoyment in a room whose walls or ceiling visually gave the sensation of being on the verge of collapsing...
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...
Likewise, Nervi stated. "Excesses of dimension or disproportionate richness of decoration deteriorate very easily into vulgarity and in any case disturb that sensation of general balance which, as I see things, is the essential foundation of good architecture...
Gothic structural technique, Nervi claimed, was so perfectly suited to its ends that, using the same materials, modern engineers could not "introduce important modifications with out at the same time destroying the main anticipated result, Le., to cover stably the large central nave...