Roberto Gargiani – författare

This groundbreaking new perspective on Le Corbusier is based on exhaustive archival research and the study of neglected or completely unknown documents. It is innovative in showing the role of materials and construction techniques in the architecture of Le Corbusier and the book also delves into the project management and the construction of several buildings in the period 1940 – 1965. Each worksite, from the Unité d’Habitation (Housing Unit) in Marseille to the city of Chandigarh, and the Tokyo museum, the Carpenter Center in Cambridge and the Unité d'Habitation in Berlin, is analyzed in detail.

The reemergence in the early eighteenth century of the technology and use of concrete provide the starting point for this first volume of the Treatise on Concrete. In this book are described and analyzed, for the first time, the various contributions that led to the rediscovery of concrete made by the specialists of the period, from chemists to volcanologists; from engineers to architects and construction workers; from inventors to archaeologists and even men of letters.The book traces the various criteria for concrete production using local materials, from hydraulic lime to pozzolana and trass, as well as how the technique of casting concrete in formwork developed from construction-site practices that had survived locally from the times of ancient Rome. The subjects of the book include the transport of Roman pozzolana with which Italian, French, English or Danish engineers built grandiose offshore concrete structures; the genealogy of techniques for manufacturing wood formwork for foundations at sea, in rivers and above ground; the description of the various formwork systems invented to pour concrete in water; the research conducted by chemists on lime and pozzolana that led to the development of concrete; the invention of artificial stone, obtained using various types of cement; and the series of fantastic archaeological findings about the concrete structures of antiquity, which, even if sometimes baseless, nevertheless helped build confidence that this material could be invented. Finally, several great personalities in the history of architecture, such as Piranesi or Soufflot, are presented in a new light and are shown to be vital players in the affirmation of concrete in the eighteenth century.Thus emerges the first entry of a new history of concrete, one that will provide the essential principles needed to understand how the manufacturing methods discovered between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century emerged and led to the production of this mythical material. This new history of concrete is clearly of present-day interest, specifically in the context of recent research which aims to encourage concrete production using local materials, including volcanic constituents such as pozzolana – exactly as it was fabricated during the eighteenth century.

The creator of buildings that stand out as surrealistic marvels amid the skylines of America, Europe, and Asia, Rem Koolhaas, along with his Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), is justly considered as one of the leaders of contemporary architecture. This book, the first critical monograph on the work of Rem Koolhaas and OMA, does more than just describe projects and buildings: It places Koolhaas’s career in a cultural context that allows the reader to better understand the creative process of modern architecture. The works considered are presented in chronological and thematic order, thus retracing the career of Koolhaas from his student days to his neo-avant-garde experimentation at the end of the 1970s and finishing with his most recent works in Porto, Seoul, and Beijing. The individual projects are analyzed from conception to construction, paying particular attention to the conceptual and technical reasons for choices of materials and configuration. Overall, the book addresses the theoretical formulations of Koolhaas, offering a reflection on the fundamental principles of the contemporary architectural project.

The most significant research conducted on concrete architecture in the United States from 1940 to 1970.The affirmation of reinforced concrete and the kinds of space generated by its structures is one of the most fascinating and revolutionary chapters in the history of twentieth-century architecture and engineering. This richly illustrated, three-volume essay offers the first complete overview of all the most significant research conducted in concrete in the United States from 1940 to 1970. It includes the greatest architects of the time, from Frank Lloyd Wright to I.M. Pei, Louis Kahn, Emery Roth & Sons, and others.The analysis of the works presented on the pages of the three books reconstructs the most important inventions in the use of concrete, whether reinforced or not, prefabricated or cast in place, used in the form of skeleton, walls, columns, blocks, or panels. The book also includes a chapter on a new kind of ornament, permitted by special plastic products applied to formwork, and other chapters dedicated to the different processing techniques used to obtain various surface textures. It enters the complex theoretical universe of truths and lies, upon which the greatest architects have debated through the manipulation of concrete. Finally, it guides readers up to the decline of the creative force of structures. A New Era of American Architectural Concrete not only offers the first exhaustive history of an architectural technique that was decisive in the United States, but also a new vision of twentieth-century American architecture.

During his long career, Pier Luigi Nervi has explored the potential of concrete through the cast-in place and the prefabrication of elements in reinforced concrete or in ferro-cement, the material he invented and patented during the war. All of his best known works, such as the Berta Stadium, the hangars built in Orivieto, Orbetello and Torre del Lago Puccini, the Halls of the Turin Exposition Center, the Unesco buildings, the Little Sport Palace and the Papal Audience Hall represent an important chapter in the history of architecture, structure and construction of the twentieth century.The passion of Nervi for the manufacturing process of the concrete and formworks is examined in a systematic manner within the volume. The authors illustrate the creative process put in place by Nervi through the examination of documents never even studied in other essays, unpublished designs, drawings, specifications, photographs of the yards and correspondence with colleagues and collaborators.