Review: Seven Structural Engineers: The Felix Candela Lectures by Guy Nordenson, editor

Abstract

Historical surveys of modern architecture often begin with a celebration of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century structural engineering, citing works such as the iron bridge at Coalbrookdale and the frame of the Home Insurance Building. But as the narratives advance into the twentieth century, such illustrations become less frequent, leaving awkward thematic gaps and a view of architecture that accounts poorly for structure, construction, and materials. Efforts to reframe the story have been hampered by a lack of publications bridging the disciplines of architecture and engineering. Andrew Saint's recent Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry makes a valuable contribution to this end.1 For its part, the Museum of Modern Art has published the Felix Candela Lectures, which were presented from 1998 to 2005 in conjunction with the schools of architecture at MIT and Princeton University and the Structural Engineers Association of New York. Organized by Guy Nordenson, professor of architecture and structural engineering at Princeton, the lecture series offered a forum for distinguished engineers and scholars to share their thinking with a general audience. This proved to be a challenge, and the speakers took a variety of approaches in presenting their work, ranging from straightforward, chronologically organized descriptions to thematic and theoretical presentations. Interesting to review, these presentations are instructive as one considers how best to weave the subject of structural engineering into architectural history.The seven engineers represented in the MoMA collection are Eladio Dieste (1917–2000), presented by Stanford Anderson, Cecil Balmond (b. 1943), Leslie E. Robertson (b. 1928), Heinz Isler (1926–2009), Mamoru Kawaguchi (b. 1932), Christian Menn (b. 1927), and Jörg Schlaich (b. 1934). A concluding essay by David Billington and Maria M. Garlock offers a survey of thin-shell concrete structures by Candela (1910–1997), Isler, Anton Tedesko (1903–1994), and Pier Luigi Nervi (1891–1979).In his introduction, Nordenson seeks to devise a critical language for the art of structural engineering that accounts for the discipline's fusion of aesthetics and empiricism. Drawing on sources familiar to a museum audience, ranging from Octavio Paz on Marcel Duchamp to the poetry of William Carlos Williams and Stéphane Mallarmé, he locates the achievements of structural engineers