Word: spain
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Trial by Fire. What has kept Torroja largely unknown is that most of his work is to be seen only in Spain. But the very fact that Spain is woefully short on steel supplied the driving force behind Torroja's exploration of concrete as a material that could be both cheap and strong. The son of a Catalan mathematics professor, Torroja trained as an engineer at Madrid University, then worked for five years as a contractor before finally deciding that "the structure of concrete cannot be figured mathematically-it is much stronger than the mathematician can prove...
...classic of shell construction. The next year he evolved a scheme for the Madrid Hippodrome, in which a series of soaring shell roofs (see color) were so delicately cantilevered that a thin, vertical tie rod behind the stands was all that was needed to keep them in equilibrium. In Spain's Civil War, the Hippodrome was subjected to trial by fire-it was shelled and took 26 hits. But Torroja's structure survived, bedraggled but still sound...
Torroja pioneered new techniques to build Europe's second longest concrete arch (a 690-ft. span) to bridge the Esla River at Zamora, Spain. His gull-wing roof over Las Corts soccer stadium in Barcelona is one of the world's most breathtaking architectural sights. Even in the small churches and shrines that Torroja has built for Pyrenees villages, he has exploited shell structure to produce new forms whose strength comes from shape and whose beauty springs from mathematical curves possible only in modern reinforced concrete. Torroja is fond of walking his institute visitors under the sickle-shaped...
...walked through the exhibits examining national products, eager representatives flooded him with gifts: a hippopotamus-skin shield decorated with gold and silver (Ethiopia), a coffee table (Liberia), embroidered linen (Yugoslavia), cloisonne vase (Japan), Bible (Israel), a boxed edition of Don Quixote printed on and bound in cork (Spain), 100 cigars (Cuba). From Eelco van Klef-fens, the European Coal and Steel Community's Ambassador to Great Britain, Ike got a boxed paperweight made up of metal flags of Common Market nations. Though the other gifts were to be sent down to Washington, he said, "My son can carry this...
...information), does his sleuthing from a book-lined study on Boston's Beacon Street. He attributes his success as a detective to his refusal to trust authorities. But even Slonimsky can err. He "feels disgraced" by the fact that he reprinted the story that Queen Isabella II of Spain gave Violinist Pablo de Sarasate a Stradivarius when he was ten (actually, as Slonimsky later learned, Sarasate bought the Strad himself when he was 22). And Slonimsky's new dictionary contains another error of which he is still unaware: Rumanian Pianist Dinu Lipatti died of what his doctor called...