CategoriesDesign Concepts and Techniques
Reinforced Concrete Construction
Building with concrete strengthened by embedded steel, which lets structures span, cantilever and curve in ways stone never could.
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About
Concrete resists crushing but cracks under tension; steel bars cast inside it take up that tension, and together they make a material that can be poured into almost any shape. The French gardener Joseph Monier patented iron-reinforced planters in 1867, and in the 1890s François Hennebique turned the principle into a building system licensed widely. By 1903 Cincinnati had the Ingalls Building, the first reinforced-concrete skyscraper.
Engineers and architects soon explored its range. Frank Lloyd Wright cast Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois (1905–08), in exposed concrete, Robert Maillart's Salginatobel Bridge (1930) leapt a Swiss gorge on a thin arch, and Eero Saarinen spread wing-like shells over his TWA terminal in New York (1962). In Rome, Pier Luigi Nervi roofed the Palazzetto dello Sport (1957) with a ribbed concrete dome. Look for the marks of formwork, slender columns carrying large spans, cantilevers and thin curved shells.