The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games will finish this week with the closing ceremony at the Olympic Stadium, while the Paralympic Games will kick off on 24th August. The Paralympics were actually presented for the first time in 1960 in Rome. Staged throughout the Italian capital, the games attracted 400 athletes with a disability from 23 countries.
The architect and engineer Pier Luigi Nervi designed and built four structures for the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome that were also used for the Paralympic Games - the Palazzo dello Sport (Sports Palace), the Palazzetto dello Sport (Small Sports Palace) and the Stadio Flaminio (Flaminio Stadium), plus the viaduct that served the athletes' residential quarter, the Olympic Village. These works were the results of his studies on statistics, construction and architecture and of a new method he devised – the Nervi System.
The Sports Palace (with Marcello Piacentini), in the EUR area of the city, is a dome-shaped structure hid behind a glass cylinder that partially reveals the perimetral stands structure. The most interesting feature of this palace is the internal surface covered in V-shaped waves.
The Small Sports Palace (with Annibale Vitellozzi), in the Flaminio area of Rome, features instead a sixty-meter diameter dome supported by 48 radial Y-shaped structures that end up creating a sort of decorative motif. The dome is smooth on the outside and it is vaguely reminiscent of a jellifish, but inside it is characterized by a rhomboidal motif.
The Flaminio Stadium (with Antonio Nervi), features several moulded frames, supporting the ridged canopy covering the grandstand.
The Corso Francia Viaduct, in the Flaminio area, integrates pillars with a varying width (and with sections that change from rectangular to cross-shaped), with the transitional surface from one to the other in a hypar surface formed by straight lines and V-shaped beams.
Nervi created all these structures in a very short time - roughly four years - while he was working also on other projects. He managed to complete all of them thanks to the Nervi System, the result of a long experimentation on statistics and construction that allowed him to devise a new building material – ferrocemento (ferrocement or ferroconcrete) – and a new structural prefabrication method.
The ferroconcrete was the result of several experiments Nervi carried out, some of them in his own house. To make the horizontal and vertical slabs needed for these projects, Nervi superimposed layers of metal netting made with a steel wire with a small diameter (1 mm diameter or even less). Accurately prepared mortar made with cement and sand was then pressed into one side of the metallic mesh with a trowel or float until the cement emerged from the other side. No wood moulds were needed to shape the mortar until it hardened, which meant that the Nervi system was quick and economic.
This new material was more elastic, isotropic and resisted to traction and compression. Nervi patented it in April 1943, while Italy was still at war. He continued working on it and developing his theories about structural prefabrication after he closed his building company when the Nazi forces occupied Rome and he refused to collaborate.
The new material and his system allowed him to reduce the use of wood in building and he started using it also to build 6 hangars in Italy between 1939 and 1942 in Orvieto, Orbetello and Torre del Lago.
In these cases, he eliminated the wooden moulds that he needed to erect the ribbed vaults by dividing the ribs into small and identical elements. He prepared them in moulds that could be reused and then the elements were lifted into place with a scaffolding system and joined with concrete pour.
In November 1939 Nervi obtained a patent for this procedure. Nervi tested this system on the hangars and on Hall B of the Turin fair, that was built very rapidly between September 1948 and April 1949. He got to fine-tune the system when he was assigned to build the structures for the Olympic Games.
Nervi favoured the curved form and traditional architectural solutions, but he revolutionised traditional domes adding complex internal detailed, pleated and ridged or ribbed surface areas, creating in this way a striking contrast between the external smooth surface of the dome with a sort of oculus at its centre reminiscent of Rome's Pantheon and the intricate interior.
The secret behind Nervi’s structures is simple as their great complexity actually hides simplicity. The best way to create complex structures and surfaces is indeed not to be overwhelmed by their complexity, but to break it into smaller parts. The key in this case was to break down the huge system in small parts that could be prefabricated and then reassemble them together. Nervi de-composed the structures he designed into smaller lightweight elements prepared ahead of time or built on site and erected into position. The sections were small so it was easier to move the pieces and this also helped streamline material costs.
In the case of these sports facilities, the architect used wave elements (patented in 1948) and rhomboidal elements (patented in 1950). The former were used for the Palazzo, the latter in the Palazzetto.
The vault of the Palazzetto featured 1,620 elements (rhomboidal elements called "tavelloni") precast on site with a matriarchal process (grandmother, mother, daughter) influenced by Gothic cathedral builders, but only 19 different types pf pieces (12 rhomboidal elements of varying shapes and 1 anomalous piece for the apex, repeated 108 times, plus 6 elements for the edge repeated 36 times). The spherical vault of the Palazzo dello Sport featured instead 1,008 elements of 9 types. The Stadio Flaminio was simpler with a single piece repeated dozens of times, and the floor of the Viaduct system was created in the same way. These elements were prepared on site and the elements were put into place with scaffolding. As much of the structure was prefabricated, the dome of the Palazetto was erected in only 40 days.
From a fashion point of view, we have seen in some geometrically conceptual collections such as Junya Watanabe's A/W 15, motifs that call to mind the internal shapes of the Sports Palace and the Small Sports Palace, maybe recreated as origami and accordion-like motifs on laser-cut capes, coats, ponchos, and biker jackets.
We have also seen such motifs in Noir Kei Ninomiya's S/S 21 and A/W 21 collections, but one of the most interesting aspects of the Nervi System is its skillful combination of prefabrication and casting, using small pieces and creating great effects by joining them all together.
This is a principle that we have often encountered in Noir Kei Ninomiya's collections that, as seen in previous posts, feature designs made combining together small parts with geometrical shapes. This is very much a mathematical process of addition and substraction that provides the designer with the final result - an innovative silhouette.
As construction method progressed, Nervi's system, based on the artisanal nature of the building sites, was progressively abandoned. Yet, Nervi's system and his structurally bold solutions entered the history of architecture and its principles and geometrically dynamic shapes still keep on inspiring not just architects, but designers and fashion designers as well.
Comments