Pier Luigi Nervi.

Natural shapes
 “... the arch of big dimension,
the covering of a great space, the
structure wich is subjected to huge
loadings, must have precise shapes
determined by nature, whatever it
might be the aesthetic tendency of
their designer.”

From Scienza o arte del costruire?, 1945,

chapter L’architettura verso forme e carat-
teri immutabili?.

pag. 1
1
 Natual arch shape:
“The architect that violating the
elementary laws of constructive eco-
nomy would realize such a structure
[1° bridge] [...] would do a tecnic
mistake but also a big aesthetic
mistake.”

From Scienza o arte del costruire?, 1945.

pag. 2
 Importance of the model:
“If we examine the problem in its
complexity, it becomes clear that the
effectiveness of the mathematical in-
vestigation applied to the problems
of the construction science, exists
3 4 only in an unreal world which
respects the premises of isotropy and
elasticity at the base of our theories”

From Scienza o arte del costruire?, 1945.

pag. 3
5
 Funicular shape:
“... the arch of a bridge of 100 me-
ters or more will have today, tomor-
row and always the same profile
determined by the funicular of the
loadings.”
6

From Scienza o arte del costruire?, 1945.

pag. 4
7
 Structural architecture:
“I think that we can define structural
architecture that particular structure
that has [...] a static scheme which
is intuitively thought and intuiti-
vely comprehensible, even from the
profane.”

From the interview Pier Luigi Nervi e l’ar-

chitettura strutturale, 1961.

pag. 5
8 9
 “... form and statics are in perfect
accordance even at the deepest and
less evident root of the static pheno-
mena.”

10

From Costruire correttamente, 1955.

pag. 6
11
 “... he [Nervi] acts like a medium,
which evokes, materializing them,
the ghosts of statics, which to other
appears mostly in the elusive symbol
of numbers. ”

12

From E. N. Rogers’ introduction to Pier

Luigi Nervi, 1957.

pag. 7
13
 Gothic inspiration:
“These ribs [that of the King’s Col-
lege chapel in Cambridge] are not
statically essentials, but they follow
the lines of the maximum concentra-
tion of internal stresses. In this case
they passed from structuralism to
pure decoration, even if inspired by
a refined static intuition.”

From Aesthetics and techology in buildings,

1965.

pag. 8
14
 “In examining this exciting mate-
rial, I often thought of your works
that are so perfect and similar to the
creations of nature.”

15

From a letter of Otto Frei to Nervi, 1962.

pag. 9
16
 “The principle of the ribs [...] evokes
the regolarity of snow crystals or
the condition of static balance of
honeycombs, that natural shapes that
better seems to indicate the presen-
ce of deep mathematic rules in the
things of nature.”

17

From G. C. Argan, Pier Luigi Nervi, 1955.

pag. 10
 “Getting closer with humble dispo-
sition to the mysterious nature laws,
the effort to interpret them and the
command them obeying which is the
only way to keep their majestic eter-
nity at our service, has inside a deep
18 poetry, that can translate into sha-
pes of a high aesthetic and artistic
expressivity.”

From Scienza o arte del costruire?, 1945.

pag. 11
19 20
The idea of talking about the natural inspi-
ration in the shape of Nervi’s structures it
came to my mind by reading the book “scien-
za o arte del costruire”, one of the most fa-
mous and interesting books that Nervi wro-
te during his life, wich was written in 1945.
Nervi sustained here that even if in regular and mi-
nor architecture such as habitations we have a re-
lative freedom in shaping structures, great structu-
res such as huge dimension bridges and coverings
must have a shape which is determined by nature,
because they need to reach high levels of economy
in materials and tools used, because they need to
be efficient, and this constitutes also their beauty.
The most efficient shape for arches for example is
the funicular one, and Nervi sustained that an arch
which has the funicular shape, as it is its “natural
shape”, will always be more beautyful than another.
Hanging to a cable the loadings that will act on the
structure, the cable will deforme in such a way that
all its parts will be in tension, because the cable has
not the capacity to transfer bending moment. This
means that if we then will give the same shape to
a rigid structure, and turn it upside down, all the
parts of the structure will be only in compression.
Gaudì already had this intuition in the XIX century,
and the models he made demonstrate it very clearly.
Nervi was sure that that of building is an art
even in the most technical part, because what’s
more important in the building technique is
what he called the “static intuition”, wich co-
mes before the mathematical computation.
It’s clear now why Nervi took in such a gre-
at consideration structural models, even more
than computations suggested by the scien-
ce of construction, which as Nervi said are
often too abstract and cannot take into con-
sideration all the complexity of a structure.
All great structures projected by Nervi use
this funicular curve, and not only in a 2dimen-
sions development but also in a spatial arti-
culation. This idea of shaping according with
nature is not limited to the general shape of a
great structure, but it also concerns all its ele-
ments. The pillars have often a varying size
section, wich is shaped by Nervi according
exactly to the internal actions of the element.
But a pillar of this shape is often much more diffi-
cult and more expensive to build than a pillar with
a simple section, even if the second use more ma-
terial and is less efficient. This simple fact show
clearly that the shaping of the structure for Nervi
was mainly an aesthetic issue. His structures make
internal actions clear to visualize from the outside,
and it’s always clear where the fluxus of forces is,
what elements bring the forces to the ground; they
has what has been called a “structural honesty”.
A very interesting issue to analyze in Ner-
vi’s buildings are horizontal structures.
They usually have ribs, which are shaped by
Nervi in such a way to distribute the stress in a
uniforme way. A perfect example are that par-
ticular concrete slabs which ribs follow the
isostatic curves, that are two families of cur-
ves, orthogonal, which represent, we can say,
the directions of the principal stress lines.
This kind of slabs are extremely complicated to bu-
ild, and also in this case the efficiency is more a matter
of aesthetic than of practical economy becau-
se the same performance would have a paral-
lelepipedal concrete slab without ribs, even
if the meterial would have been much more.
Again form is in a perfect accordance with
the internal forces that act in the structu-
re, and this is, in Nervi’s idea, its beauty.
As a great master Nervi didn’t allow actual con-
struction techniques to limit the complication
of his structures, but transformed the former
way to build such structures and invented him-
self some methodology to make these structure
feasible, like the system called “nonna, mam-
ma, figlia” and the use of “ferrocemento”.
The former, dividing the works on the site of the
construction in 2, permitted to speed up the con-
struction of negative formworks necessary to crea-
te the concrete ribs. The latter permitted the use of
thin concrete slabs and even to not use the formwor-
ks in some cases, so to speed up the construction.
As we said the physical model was also more im-
portant than numerical computations for Nervi,
and he used to verify the isostress curves using the
photoelasticity principle on a transparent object.
What comes to our mind watching these ribs
is obviously the ceilings of gothic cathedrals.
Even gothic builder were inspired by nature, in
particular by the vegetal world, trees, leaves.
Even if in some cases the ribs on the ceiling of
gothic cathedral were more an aesthetical is-
sue (we can think in particular to english and
deutsch churches), they were the clear evi-
dence of the stresses inside the structure, a
kind of simplified static scheme, and this was
pag. 12
most interested in. This link between shapes of
nature and structures, that interested so much ei-
ther great gothic builders and Pier Luigi Nervi,
was investigated in the former years of the 60’s
by a deutsch architect named Otto Frei, who
in fact has had a corrispondence with Nervi.
The main issue why nature was so interesting for
them is that natural shape are the result of mil-
lion, even bilion of years of optimization, and
they often show the highest level of efficiency
of material used thanks to a particular shape.
We can think to ribs of great leaves such as
that of the ninfee, or inside the wings of a bug.
Otto Frei in fact compared these shapes with
Nervi’s structures such as the pillar for the Pa-
lazzo del lavoro in the article he than wrote.
This disposition to observe natural shapes and
turn them into structures is even more cle-
ar in the ceiling of the former zoology lectu-
re hall of the Freiburg University, which has
a ribbed structure that evokes the image of a
natural skeleton or of a ribbed leaf ’s surface.
Here also because of the irregular disposition
of the supports of the ceiling, a very natural
asymmetricity take the place of the simme-
tricity that often dominates Nervi’s buildings.
The naturalness complexity of this structure, whi-
ch aim is to reach the high level of efficiency that
things of nature have, really remind us to the at-
tempts that these last years building technique is
doing to imitate nature with the algorythm based
design on informatic software such as Grasshopper.
The algorythms adopted for example by
the so called generative design or by the to-
topology optimization, aims to create the
most efficient shape for a structure, the for-
mer looking for it between many many solu-
tions created on a parametrical base, the lat-
ter by sottraction of material that is useless.
This new border of the construction technique,
as Nervi prophesied is closer to the methods
of nature, and allows us to creat structure whi-
ch seems supported by trees, or by bones.
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pag. 13
Sitography:
• http://costruirecorrettamente.org/site/appro-
fondimento/index.php?doc_id=141
• https://medium.com/the-2016-civil-col-
lection/nervi-the-master-of-parametric-desi-
gn-and-construction-7e083da543cd
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vieto. Ibid.
8. Evation of the column supporting the
roof of the Palazzo del Lavoro in Torino.
Ibid.
9. Plan of the Palazzo del Lavoro’s column.
Ibid.
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pag. 14
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Cambridge. Ibid.
15. Comparison made by Otto Frei between
natural shapes and architectures. Ibid.
16. Microscopical picture of a diatomea. Ibid.
17. Roof of the former zoology lecture hall
in the Freiburg university, under con-
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civil-collection/nervi-the-master-of-parame-
tric-design-and-construction-7e083da543cd
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pag. 15