Essay on Tectonic

Based on the principle of resistance through form, their buildings transmit a sense of necessity and beauty that is rarely found outside nature. There is nothing but the design of the structure, consid-
ered not just in terms of resistance but also in terms of final form, and thus as it is form that defines resistance; there is nothing superfluous, nothing useless.  

Yet in this condition of necessity, there is no lessening of formal datum, no technicality. Quite the reverse: in their work, Nervi, Candela, and ­Torroja make a very clear and in some ways necessary attempt to achieve synergy between the artistic ­concept and the technical and constructive concept. The three masters have always defended static in­tuition as a hybrid creative moment that straddles imagination and knowledge; certainly never as an artistic act or the very opposite, the upshot of decisions made on a purely technical basis.7  

The centrality of the intuitive stage derives from seeing the design process as an opportunity for acquiring new knowledge. The creative act never simply consists of the application of already known and established calculation formulae—all three engineers are extremely critical of this approach. It should always be viewed as an opportunity to explore form-structure potential especially within one very specific sphere: thin reinforced concrete roofs, at that time still largely unexplored.

All their language is therefore based on ­research and experimentation, especially using models, scale-models, and full-scale prototypes8. This is why they view natural forms and, more generally, all existing organic forms, as proof of a possible form of equilibrium, as sources of inspiration: “flower calyxes, lanceolate leaves, canes, eggshells and insects, shells, fans, lampshades, car bodywork, glass vases and even clothing such as women’s hats, are all examples of ­resistance through form, and the fact that that a new method of construction [reinforced concrete] enables us to extend these structures into large and very large sizes for the first time is extremely important.”9  Equally, however, they recognize that technical knowledge is a tool of the trade. According to Nervi: “The architect cannot disregard the technical and constructive reality, just as a composer of music cannot disregard a knowledge of the musical instruments and the rules of harmony and counterpoint.”10

If there is no dichotomy between formal datum and technical datum, no opposition between space and structure then in the work of Nervi, Candela, and Torroja, there can be no antinomy between designing and building. In fact the project exists in response to a need, an actual demand or as a tool for investi­gating a construction problem. This is why the final form is always also a logical consequence of a principle of constructive economy and rationality.  

While eliminating the traditional timber formwork was a constructive and financial obsession for Nervi, a synthesis of knowledge and awareness, one of Candela’s great pleasures was to see how the humble paraguas, the umbrella-shaped structures that are his most important typological invention, were successfully ­employed by many people all over the world:  

“In my particular case, the greatest satisfaction doesn’t come from having created certain spectacular ­structures […] but in having contributed, even minimally, to solving the substantial problem of covering usable spaces, demonstrating that the construction of shells is not an extraordinary achievement that confers immortality on its authors, rather a simple and flexible constructive process.”11 These paraguas are a ­perfect synthesis of formal intuition and structural resistance, constructive intelligence and spatial potential.

The form and structure of construction, which are inseparable, are therefore considered in their ­highest synthesis: a synthesis in which constructive intelligence and usefulness, in the true sense of the word, take on the same role as beauty. In fact, beauty exists as the end result of the design process.12  Aldo Rossi had this to say about this synthesis, which he maintained was what makes great constructions unique:

“The Palazzo del Lavoro in Turin is one of my favorite works and in some ways has influenced my architecture; I don’t know in what way, perhaps in the same way as the work of Mies van der Rohe. There’s something modern and ancient here and despite the static complexity of the work itself, it is dictated by that static, and I should say compositional, sensitivity that precedes all great constructions.”13  

The sixteen mighty concrete and steel trees at the Palazzo del Lavoro in Turin, 40 meters each side, ­separated by continuous slender skylights, communicate an incredible constructive intelligence, while at the same time evoking the magical effect of an artificial forest, defining a sheltered yet open and transparent space. The rhythm of the structure, the geometric rigor of the composition, and the role of natural light express the power of the invention, with all the classicality of a Doric temple. Nervi’s Palazzo del Lavoro is a timeless space.  

More generally, it is true to say that buildings by Nervi, Candela, and Torroya—great halls, markets, sports facilities, hangars—conjure up the same emotion as the Baths of Caracalla, the Mosque in Córdoba, a Gothic cathedral; spaces in which the grandiosity of the structure expresses not just its own constructive power but also a sense of necessity. They are spaces capable of being an expression of the civic and political legacy of an era. 

The philosophical formula Adaequatio rei et intellectus, the correspondence between reality and intellect, indicates that truth consists of the correspondence between reality and its mental representation, but it also indicates the coincidence between the made object and the thought that has generated it.  

In some way for Mies this philosophical formula implied that truth in architecture could be measured by the relationship between design and ­reality, thought and form, form and structure, planning and construction, all combinations that are closely ­related. Mies is very clear about the relationship ­between truth and construction. For him, architecture was: “constructive clarity expressed to perfection.” What he meant by “constructive clarity” comes through when he talks about the chapel in Aachen:  

“I remember in my hometown in Aachen was the cathedral. This octagon was built by ­Charlemagne. In different centuries they did something different with it. Sometime in the Baroque they plastered the whole thing and made ornaments in it. When I was young they took the plaster off. Then they didn’t have the money to go further so you saw the real stones. When I looked at the old building that had nothing on it, just fine brickwork or stonework, a building that was really clear and with really good craftsmanship, I would have given all the other things for one of these buildings.”18  

Thus construction is also governed by the principle of truth; it is never a matter inherent in technique per se, rather the expression of a clear idea of architecture, seen as true. “Discipline—this has been the watchword of Mies’ life and work. Discipline order, clarity and truth. […] Although he was never a practicing member of his faith, the code to which he subscribed from his youth to this day—the code to which he added his own beliefs—is the moral code of St. Augustine and of St. Thomas Aquinas. He told that audience at Illinois Tech, in 1938: ‘Nothing can express the aim and meaning of our work better than the profound words of St Augustine—“Beauty is the splendor of Truth.”’”19 
For Mies, truth coincides with structure, of which he has a philosophical conception. Structure is a whole entity, from the head to the feet, down to the tiniest detail and all with the same idea. He described his approach to architecture as structural, ­believing that therein lay an assurance of objectivity, of neutrality; devising an architectural language was his true objective, a reusable, universal language, a widespread guarantee of quality. 

Structure was not therefore simply a specific or instrumental solution for Mies van der Rohe; it was first and foremost a general idea, a method, a design strategy. Mies’ idea is that structure is a resistant, objective, and founding element of architecture20. This approach, which he himself described as structural, shines through in all his architecture, but especially in the projects in which he ­explores what he calls the “universal-space clear-span roof structure,” a typology that he studied and ­ex­perimented throughout his life, from the Farnsworth House to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

But behind the idea of universal-space, clearly there was the idea of universal building: “This conception of the ‘universal building’ probably came to Mies out of his knowledge of Schinkel and the ­classical tradition. For the greatest contribution the classicists had made to our civilization—from the Parthenon to the Greek revival—was the idea of universality. They believed that mankind needed not special but universal solutions—solutions as applicable to a temple as they might be to a palace, as ­reasonable in a museum as in a customs house.”21 

It is in three universal buildings in particular, to which Mies was particularly attached, that this ­exploration is most evident. They are the Crown Hall (1950–1956) in Chicago; the Convention Hall, also in Chicago but never built; and lastly the Neue Nationalgalerie (1962–1968) in Berlin. These are three different projects, in terms of program and use, but they are identical architec­tural types: the open- plan room, the simplest yet universal space. Free-flowing spaces, devoid of pillars and defined simply by their roofs; buildings in which the space is the structure.

The sort of structure that, with its rigor, ­allows for the greatest possible degree of freedom: “A free plan and a clear construction cannot be kept apart: one is the basis for the other. Where there is no pure construction, we are simply not interested.”22 When asked by Norberg Schulz what he meant by pure construction, Mies simply replied: “We explicitly say pure structure because we want a regular construction that can be adapted to current demand for standardization.”23  

As far as Mies was concerned, flexibility did not signify casualness of form but, on the contrary, total control of geometry and proportions; it is only by adhering to clear rules that freedom can be expressed.  

It is therefore in open-plan buildings that the coincidence between form and structure can be expressed and therefore perceived most clearly, because the structure, in its transparency and ­continuity of space, remains visible. The space is the structure. The architecture is naked. 

Artigas designed many buildings, all extraordinarily powerful, but most importantly, he invented a structural type:31 a reinforced concrete roof folded back on itself and held up in just a few points, which creates a large covered space inside which all the various components of the program would fit. A sort of large suspended roof that sets up a sense of continuity between indoors and outdoors, between individual and collective, between private space and public space.

Artigas worked slowly but constantly on his typological-structural invention, which he tested in a number of buildings in Brazil. These include the Ginasio de Itanhaeem (1959), the Ginasio de Guarulhos (1962), the Vestiario do Sao Paulo Futebol Clube (1960), the Yacht Club (1961), the Garagem de Barcos (1961) and the Anhembi Tenis Clube (1961). How­ever, it was with the School of Architecture and the University of Sao Paulo (FAU, 1961–1968) that the form and structural type of his buildings acquired a clear meaning and, most of all, were consistent with political vision.  

On entering the School of Architecture, one is immediately struck by the lack of a real threshold; there are no doors, there is no boundary between ­indoors and outdoors. The city permeates the building and thus its public space. One then gets to the large central space, a piazza, an agora; the Salao Caramelo is at the heart of the project, a symbolic ­forum, and informal space: “I designed it as a kind of spatialization of democracy […], a temple in which all activities are licit.”32

As one wanders inside it, one has the clear sense of the ideological role played by this space. It is a place of freedom, a place for individual expression, not in one’s own right, but as part of a com­munity. Here one perceives a vision of a future in which social justice can be born of progress, and concepts such as freedom, sharing, openness, and inclusion can be bolstered and supported by the architecture itself.  

The typological invention is therefore not an end in itself, but through the language of the structure it expresses a public, not rhetorical, dimension of architecture. A vision that rests not on power but on people. Vilanova Artigas’s extended use of reinforced concrete ties in with this concept of progress; it is not an aesthetic choice in itself, but is intended to lay bare the constructive process inherent in his buildings and therefore to make visible the work of the people who contributed to build them.  

Artigas’s message is so clear that it has left a great legacy in Brazilian architectural culture. Think of the work of Mendes da Rocha and his public vision of architecture. Aside from his more strictly political and ideological message, there remains the social and ethical meaning of Artigas’s work: a meaning that can still be felt and equally powerfully needed.  

Maria Claudia Clemente