Two clear and evident aspects represent the common denominator of the 14 works by Pier Luigi Nervi presented at the MAXXI in Rome, in the exhibition curated by Carlo Olmo, Sergio Poretti and Tullia Iori titled “Pier Luigi Nervi: architecture as challenge. Rome: genius and construction”. They are: Nervi producer of structural icons, and Nervi, great builder. We will begin with the latter. Nervi’s architecture is engineered, or an architecture where the form is inseparable from the constructive aspects. These two aspects are not, generally, compatible; indeed, they are more often than not divergent. In the history of Italian structural rationalism for instance Riccardo Morandi, and especially Sergio Musmeci, have represented an engineering of pure planning, where the construction site was considered menial with respect to the phase of ideation and calculation. The bridge on the Basento by Musmeci, with its eerie plastic forms, that are the results of an innovative interpretation of the calculation system, is an evident example of this attitude; without doubt an extraordinary work, but too costly to have seen further developments. On the opposite front we find Silvano Zorzi, according to whom the technical and economic requirements could not be separated from the drawing-table and the calculation, to the point that Zorzi’s most famous work, the bridge on the Sfalassa on the highway between Salerno and Reggio Calabria, has been designed precisely on the basis of its construction requirements. Nervi represents a rare synthesis between the two aspects, a synthesis which has reached its full maturity in the buildings for the 1960 Olympics in Rome. The Palazzetto dello Sport, The Flaminio Stadium, the Palazzo dello Sport and the Corso Francia road bridge have not only been designed by Nervi; they have also been built by his construction firm (“Nervi and Bartoli Engineers”), among other things after having won a competition. And competitions are won, then as now, by presenting a bid that is advantageous to the customer. The reason why he won the competition may be explained by what Poretti and Iori define as the “Nervi system”, which consists of an innovative way to build large structures with essentially craftsmanship methods: ferrocemento and on-site prefabrication. The Palazzetto dello Sport, built with these methods, cost 200 million lira, a very low figure for the period, and was built in only seven months, also thanks to a careful organization of the construction works, in which the piers were installed while the 1620 prefabricated elements of the dome were simultaneously being cast on the formwork on the ground. A large model of the Palazzetto in construction occupies a prominent place in the exhibition; with it, the curators manage to render both the “Nervi form” and the “Nervi system”, inseparable from one another and finally explained with extraordinary didactic care to the public. The question comes spontaneously: what would happen with the “Nervi system” today? Sad to say, not much. The cost of labour, which has increased out of all proportion as compared to fifty years ago, would render ferrocemento untenable; in fact, it was made of a very dense structure of thin iron reinforcements with a minimal concrete casting. The same it true for on-site prefabrication, which is labour-consuming and complex, difficult to realize for the unspecialized workers of present-day construction firms. News from a bygone world, therefore, a world that was diametrically opposed to the present-day one, where standardized and industrialized processes do not, except in a very few cases, succeed in producing works that are great either in terms of size or quality. Anyone who works in the field of engineering, who is familiar with constructions, is perfectly aware of all this, and also of the fact that the increasingly dense web of regulations is inhibiting invention to an ever-greater extent, reducing it to a quality associated with the good old days. Nervi’s ability, not just as a builder but also as an entrepreneur, which he has handed down to posterity not only with his works but also with texts as “Building correctly” (1964), therefore makes it possible today, by contrast, to reason on the current situation in which the process which has transformed the method of building in reinforced concrete from avant-garde knowledge to what Poretti justly defined, in a Casabella from a few years ago, as “routine knowledge” (no. 739; 2006) definitively seems to be an accomplished fact. The exhibition must therefore be considered an appeal to unblock the current technical and political situation. In fact, if a talent like Nervi were to be reborn today, he would find it impossible to express himself. The other idea on which the exhibition pivots consists of the extrapolation, from the works, of fragments with a strong plastic impact, capable of summing Nervi’s work up in true slogans, or in other words icons. Carlo Olmo, one of the curators, admits that the idea serves as a simple and immediate means of communicating with the public and the exhibition design (curated by Alessandro Colombo and Paola Garbuglio) is ideated, with grace and measure, precisely in this sense. This kind of iconographic interpretation is a novelty when it comes to Nervi. In fact, it is usually Riccardo Morandi who is remembered for his icons, above all the “balanced beam”, as Bruno Zevi has interpreted it and as we therefore remember it. But this approach also works for Nervi. We may in fact extrapolate the piers, the ribbed and undulated vault elements, the pillars with striped surfaces, the roofs with isostatic ribs and the pleated buttresses without thereby depriving them of their meaning. This is indicative, and should make one reflect. In fact, while Nervi dissimulates it with great skill, he is a designer who tends to compromise: he is classical yet avant-garde, his domes may be considered a synthetic compromise between the Roman vault system and the ribbed Gothic one, and therefore the sense of his forms, while tending towards plastic synthesis, intentionally never completely reaches it, to the point that it is still possible to extrapolate the single elements (the icons) in a partial but clear autonomy.
A final observation. Last year has been Nervi’s year: exhibitions in Brussels, Venice and Rome, publications, books, and the list could go on. One gets to wonder what is the cause of this phenomenon, which is in my opinion to be found in the contemporary architecture. In fact, we perceive, from several holds, a discomfort with an architecture that has by now for several decades preferred shells to structure, with the “clothed architecture” that has become the trademark of the archistars. Nervi’s naked architecture, where what you see is the structure, where surface treatments are reduced to a minimum, where the form is clear and immediately appreciated, where the interiors correspond to the exteriors from a stylistic viewpoint, thus appears as the antidote, even if vintage, to a season, that of all-facade architecture, which has by now had its day.
Valerio Paolo Mosco (Rome, 1964) is architect and architecture critic, has taught in Venice, Brescia, Ferrara and Chicago and IED in Rome. He is author of the following books: ”Architettura Contemporanea, Stati Uniti – West Coast”, 2008 and ”Architettura Contemporanea, Stati Uniti – East Coast”, 2009 edited by Motta Edizioni Sole 24 Ore; “Steven Holl”, edited by Motta Edizioni Sole 24 Ore (English edition); ”Sessant’anni di ingegneria in Italia e all’estero” edited by Edilstampa, 2010.
