Prefabrication experiments - 200 - master industrialists - 01 - Pier Luigi Nervi

Prefabrication is not a new idea in architecture. Rudofsky’s book Architecture Without Architects (1964) pointed out many examples of modular and standardized building systems predating modernity.  Master carpenters or master masons were responsible for a heuristic sharing of expertise, fusing material knowledge with technical competence and all prepared components ahead of construction. 

Industrialization transformed building culture and enabled a new type of master, linking traditional building knowledge with the ideal that industry could offer quality to the masses. Pier Luigi Nervi, engineer/ architect/ artist/ industrialist/ master builder exemplified the idea of a master industrialist with the ability to utilize historic building strategies such as domes or vaults with the understanding of new materials and methods. Educated at the university of Bologna as a civil engineer (1913), he began a proficient career with the Bologna society for cement works and later founded a construction company with engineer Roberto Nebbiosi (1923). Nervi operated the factory and the building yard as a setting for investigating and inventing, materials, methods and structural schemes. 

Four wartime experiments recount Nervi’s theories on industrialized building: The prefabricated house (1946) proposed 6 precast elements to structure a circular dwelling kit. Each wall or roof piece was geometrically coordinated so as to compose a perfected circular structural and spatial organisation. His patented hangars of precast components (1939-1941) explored a barrel vault construction system: the repetitive use of lightweight concrete arched elements shaped large spanning vaults braced laterally by precast purlins. This truss concept was further developed in his later lamella vaulted structures where each crossing intersection was reinforced by joining and welding the steel reinforcement and sealed with mortar. Lesser known but equally fundamental in shaping the idea of a master industrialist, the reinforced 400 ton concrete ship was designed almost like an inverted arch kit; precast reinforced concrete trusses formed the ribs of the naval structure while cast in place purlin beams provided the spine. The fourth project, a storage house in Rome (1945), was built from 30 mm thick corrugated “ferrocemento” panels for walls and roofs. The thin and lightweight panels produced by layering mortar and reinforcing mesh became synonymous with Nervi’s ribbed constructions and epitomised the capacity to fuse material knowledge, repetitive geometric tessellations and modern engineering with large-scale production. 

Four experiments in precast concrete - scanned from Rogers E. 1957.  The Works of Pier Luigi Nervi. Praeger. New York
clockwise: prefabricated house components, airplane hangar details, 400 ton ship section, ferrocement storage house.