Architect Lectures on Versatility Of Reinforced Concrete Designs

Using a series of examples from his own work, Pier Luigi Nervi last night illustrated his belief in the close inter-relation between the technical and aesthetic elements in architecture.

In his first Charles Eliot Norton lecture, the Italian architect had argued that the best buildings of every age employ the structural techniques of that age in the simplest, most direct and most sincere way possible. Last night, in the second lecture of four, he demonstrated the validity of this principle in contemporary, reinforced concrete construction.

Nervi's admiration for reinforced concrete as a structural technique derives from the material's two unique attributes: its initial semi-fluid state which allows it to assume any form, and its monolithic unity. These characteristics offer the contemporary architect the opportunity to create a richness of form perhaps unparalleled in architectural history.

The basic from of a building, Nervi says, is dictated by the laws of statics, or equilibrium of forces. But "the suggestions given by statics will never in themselves design buildings."

Nervi again recalled his previous lectue, in which he had noted that many critics fear that the extremely technological approach to design during the last hundred years has tended to make architecture sterile and cold. On the contrary, Nervi remarked last night, "I have found that economy and statics are never the enemy of architecture but rather help aesthetics in each case."

Illustrated examples of particular buildings demonstrated the extensive variety and aesthetic possibilities of reinforced concrete. Slides showed that, in his own work, Nervi has made concrete appear light and graceful in the same way as builders of the high Gothic period did with stone.

Among the problems Nervi said he had solved with reinforced concrete were spanning a factory space 300 feet wide with a sort of suspension bridge construction, and seepding ceiling and floor construction through the use of highly mobile pouring forms.

On Monday Nervi plans to discuss the uses of reinforced concrete in pre-fabrication as opposed to on-the-site pouring.