Pier Luigi Nervi’s Works

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Pier Luigi Nervi’s Works for the 1960 Rome Olympics. Tullia Iori and Sergio Poretti. (PDF)

Nervi carried out a detailed analysis of every single construction cost. He became an expert in calculating the incidence of every steel rod, every bag of cement, every wooden plank, every liter of petrol used for transportation on the global cost of erecting a structure. This allowed him to evaluate the most economical structural solution for every detail in the construction plan. (This meticulous analysis excluded two parameters, the cost of labor and design, both of which were considered to hardly amount to anything). Nervi’s analysis led him to focus on two fundamental points. The first was that in order to save on steel it was fundamental to reduce the use of cement: thin layers of densely reinforced concrete are more efficient —and therefore more inexpensive — than larger bodies of concrete with less reinforcement. The second was that reducing the use of wooden casting moulds for directly erecting elements proved to be the most important cutback. These simple reflections gave rise to two parallel activities. First, Nervi began experimenting with slender concrete

slabs densely reinforced with steel; secondly, he started an important experimental building yard in which he significantly reduced the need for wood, which was becoming exceedingly scarce, by making use of prefabricated on-site concrete elements. The experiments conducted on the densely reinforced concrete slabs were hardly scientific. They were very artisanal and conducted in chance labs, often in his house. (There even are accounts that state that Nervi conserved these experiments on his balcony). Nervi was only able to rely on load tests much later, when they were carried out in the Milan Polytechnic laboratory headed by Arturo Danusso.