Technology and design inspired one another in the architecture of Pier Luigi Nervi. The Italian artist-engineer was called a poet of concrete for his rigorously imaginative use of functional building material. Like the author of a sonnet, he worked within tight constraints, pre-fabricating parts and assembling them manually. Nervi reached the apogee of fame in the 1960s with his stadiums for the Rome Olympics. As Iowa State University architecture professor Thomas Leslie writes in his illustrated monograph, Nervi’s ribbed concrete forms “bear direct comparison” to Santiago Calatrava—indeed, the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Windhover Hall resembles photographs of Nervi’s work included in Beauty’s Rigor. Yet, as Leslie continues, Nervi’s structures were simpler, his structural components integral to the design rather than concealed amid sensational forms.
