Frame and Form

Creator of some of the most spectacular engineering works of the last century, Robert Maillart was one of the first structural designers to understand and explore the possibilities of an innovative material at the time, reinforced concrete.

Hombachbrucke Schangnau (c) ETHBIB Archive

His ability to explore the versatility offered by the reinforced concrete when compared with the stone, the wood or the iron, common materials at the time, provided the creation of structures that maintain an eternal modernity.

Its design was based on a structural intuition, avoiding the known types, whose behavior could be verified with the analytical methods. This attitude towards the design of structures was fundamental to innovate, experiment and learn on each work. In his projects, the careful study of the construction phases and the on site load tests where fundamental, thus obtaining valuable data that permitted some progress on each new challenge.

Switzerland Locarno Maggia bridge (c) ETHBIB Archive

One of his contributions to structural design, were the mushroom (slabs), like the ones on the Water Filter building in Rorschach or in the Catalan Gas and Electricity Plant, where he designed a flared column that connects to the slab with a great aesthetics sense, thereby reducing efforts on the slab-column connection.

Water Filtration Plant Rorschach

Another key innovation was the three-hinged hollow arc, whose best-known example is the Salginatobel bridge. With a 90 m, this bridge is an outstanding example of this structural type, where forms consistently run with the forces, creating a structure in great harmony with its location.

Salginatobel Bridge (c) Matt Schoenholz @ flickr

His most impressive structural innovation is perhaps the slender arch with rigid deck, as seen in the following examples. In this structural type, the slenderness of the arch is taken to the an extreme level.

Schwandbach Bridge (c) Kvetner @ flickr

To obtain the necessary stiffness and a favorable load distribution, Maillart designed a stiff deck, connected to the arch with extremely slender elements. Nowadays, Maillart's structures remain as a reference, as in Infante Bridge in Oporto.

Gateway Töss (c) Shigeyama @ flickr

Today, when the ability to analyze and forecast the behavior of the structures is increasingly accurate, it seems necessary not to forget the spirit of names like Maillart on the structural design. The structural intuition, purity of forms, the care for the aesthetics and integration of the work, the optimization of materials… should continue to be some of the conductive lines of structural design.