Pier Luigi Nervi was one of the great engineers of the 20th century who applied his engineering innovations to the design of buildings. From the 1930s to the 1960s, he built a variety of public building types in Italy and around the world, ranging from airport hangars to skyscrapers to stadiums. In many of his designs, Nervi made novel use of modern materials, especially concrete, to create his trademark style. He opened his first office in 1920, called Nervi and Nebbiosi, in Rome and practiced his craft for almost 50 years. In 1932, the name of the practice was changed to Nervi and Bartoli. Believing architecture and engineering to be interrelated, Nervi designed his structures with an eye to knowing the laws of nature, materials, and construction.

Important buildings by Nervi begin with the Municipal Stadium of Florence (1932), with a grandstand constructed of dramatic cantilevered reinforced-concrete beams and a helical concrete staircase. Immediately, Nervi displayed his virtuoso skill in the manipulation of concrete structures, molding them into dynamic configurations that always retain their structural purpose and integrity. "An architect is a builder, not an artist," he said in his Norton Lectures delivered in 1961-62 at Harvard University. The beauty and dynamism of the forms come from their structural capacities and necessities, not from an applied aesthetic. A good structural solution has an inherent aesthetic force; thus, aesthetic theories were not necessary in architecture. The building is conceived as a structural organism, exploiting the qualities of the materials with which it is built. In the case of Nervi’s public works, the materials are mainly steel and reinforced concrete.

Between 1935 and 1955, Nervi built a series of airplane hangars, exhibition halls, and stadiums with long-span concrete roof structures, ribbed reinforced-concrete trusses, and assembled precast-concrete components. With his particular understanding of concrete’s potential for an expressive combination of strength and beauty, Nervi utilized two important concrete construction methods in his buildings, both of which have continued to define the structural limits of concrete. Nervi’s buildings, like others of concrete, use reinforced concrete that is cast in place or from prefabricated forms, creating carefully engineered structures that this architect and theorist imbued with an enduring sense of simplicity and power. In this way, some believe, Nervi rivals Mies van der Rohe as a pioneer in the adaptation of building materials and technology in the 20th century. Nervi’s most compelling structures include the Turin Exhibition Hall, with a vaulted roof and a perimetric roof system of precast beams in a material called “ferro-cement.” Ferro-cement combines reinforced concrete and several layers of fine steel mesh sprayed with cement mortar. This malleable material provides strength and elasticity as a building material and enabled Nervi to sculpt his dynamic structures. Whereas the structural necessities of the building create its aesthetic, the “structural architecture” of Nervi is based on the combination of structural analysis, static systems, and tension and compression in materials. Other factors in the design of his buildings are economic efficiency (as in the low-cost production of steel and concrete), the technology of the construction, and the functional requirements of the building.

All these factors were optimized by Nervi in a series of important buildings realized between 1955 and 1961. Nervi included these designs in a book called New Structures in 1963. These structures include the UNESCO Headquarters (1958, in collaboration with Marcel Breuer and others) in Paris, the Pirelli Building (1959, in collaboration with Gid Ponti and others) in Milan, and the three sports stadiums built in Rome for the Olympic Games in 1961: the Palazzetto dello Sport (Small Sports Palace, 1957), the Palazzo dello Sport (Large Sports Palace, 1958), and the Flaminio Stadium (1958). The Palazzo per Lavoro (1961, Worker's Palace) in Turin has mushroom columns and floor slabs with ribs following isostatic lines of bending movements, which were also applied to the Gatti Wool Factory (1951) in Rome. Nervi’s Port Authority Station (1962) at George Washington Bridge in New York City is characterized by triangulated roof trusses. The Nathaniel Leverone Field House (1962) at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, features a vaulted construction. The Cathedral of Saint Mary (1971) in San Francisco features a roof made from large cement slabs in the form of a cross. The Aula delle udienze pontificie (Papal Audience Hall, 1971) in Vatican City in Rome is constructed in elastic structural forms sculpted in white cement.

Nervi expressed his ideas about architecture in several books and articles, including Arte o scienza del costruire (1945; The Art and Science of Construction), Costruire correttamente (1954; To Construct Correctly), Structures (1956), and Aesthetics and Technology in Building (1961-62; The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, Harvard University). For many architectural historians, Nervi joins Frank Lloyd Wright for his profound grasp of the meaning of materials and their intricate relationship with nature and methods of construction, and both were fearless experimenters. In 1962, Nervi received honorary degrees from Dartmouth College and Harvard University. Contemporary with Kenzo Tange, Nervi was the architectural craftsman par excellence of the 20th century, making use of the structural capabilities and malleability of steel and precast concrete to create large-scale urban projects that answer the demands of modern functions and make optimum use of modern technologies. All of Nervi’s buildings are intricate structures of grace and elegance born from an insightful understanding of the structural capabilities of materials and a rigorous adherence to the role of the architect as servicing the functional needs of a society. He was awarded a Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects, the American Institute of Architects, and the Académie d’Architecture.

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2 (G-O).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.