ggreatreat aachievementschievements Mario Salvadori Champion of Structural Design in Architecture By Richard G. Weingardt Named by Engineering News-Record (ENR) methods. (The Salvadori Center’s current than a dozen books and nearly 200 papers in 1999 as one of the top 20 structural director is Dr. Lorraine Whitman — on mathematics, structural and architectural engineers of the last 125 years, Mario George [email protected].) engineering, many of them crafted so the av- Salvadori impacted the design/building in- One of the main elements of his teaching erage non-engineering-trained person could dustry far beyond engineering. A charis- methods – to get youngsters to fully appreci- easily understand complex technical issues. matic professor of structural engineering ate science and mathematics – included the Two of the most popular were Why Buildings at Columbia University for more than 50 use of hands-on study of bridges and other Stand Up and Why Buildings Fall Down. years, he was known internationally not structures. His demonstrations of the appli- In the latter, Salvadori offered the opinion only for his teachings skills but also for his cations of engineering principles often in- that, more than anything else, “all structural extensive writings and innovative engine- cluded using everyday household products failures may be due to a lack of redundancy,”© ering designs. In the United States, especial-Copyrightlike cardboard, string, marshmallows, straws, and that, “the ‘infallible’ computer is run ly New York City, he was also well respect- toothpicks and balsa wood. His use of folded by fallible human beings and cannot be ed in his later years for his dedicated efforts paper models to create various kinds of struc- trusted to give right answers all the time. No in acquainting inner city youngsters with tures always captured the imagination of structural engineer should accept the output engineering and the joys of learning. young and old alike. of a computer unless it agrees (more or less) “With his boundless engineering know- “I think Mario would most like to be re- with what experience tells him [or her] to be ledge and deep sense of public commitment, membered for the help he gave to inner-city the correct answer.” he made a unique and wide-ranging con- kids who have so much going against them,” Among Salvadori’s other most well-read tribution to both the University and to stated Matthys Levy, a Weidlinger colleague technical books were Numerical Methods in society at large,” said Kenneth Frampton, a of 40 years. “He treated them like intelligent Engineering, Structural Design in Architecture fellow professor at Columbia. people and they responded with intelligence. (co-authored with Levy) and Structure in Over the decades, Salvadori became a tire- That’s his greatest legacy.” Architecture (co-authored with Robert Heller). less ringleader in getting architects to under- Another notable gift he handed down was About Structure in Architecture, the famous stand and appreciate structure and structural his clarity of words. Salvadori wrote more Italian structural engineer/architect Pier Luigi engineers, and structural engineers to un- Nervi (1891-1979) wrote, “Future architects derstand and appreciate architecture and ar- will find it particularly useful to study this chitects. He said, “Lucky is the client whose book in depth and to meditate upon it, since architect understands structure and whose even if they can entrust the final calculation of structural engineer appreciates the aesthetics a structure to a specialist, they themselves must of architecture.”STRUCTUREfirst be able to invent it and to give it correct While teaching at universities on two con- proportions. Only then will a structure be tinents, he inspired countless college-aged born healthy, vital and, possibly, beautiful.” students to reach formagazine greatness. “His office As a teacher and practitioner, Salvadori was considered an ideal training ground for was constantly motivating architects and en- young engineers,” reported Frampton. And, gineers to work together more closely, point- in time, his inspirational guidance – and fa- ing out that when they don’t, building design therly advice – extended even further, into suffers. He wrote, “There can be structure the elementary and junior high school levels. without architecture, as in any machine, but In the early 1970s, while still a partner no architecture without structure. There can with the consulting engineering firm of be aesthetics without architecture, as in any Weidlinger Associates in New York City, painting, but no architecture without aesthet- Salvadori began volunteering to educate ics.” And he was not one to hold back on is- disadvantaged junior high students in suing an unfavorable critiquing of building Harlem, mainly about science and en- designs if the architecture was forced. gineering. Ultimately these experiences Said James Yao from Texas A&M, “Profes- led to the creation of the Salvadori Center, sor Salvadori criticized the TWA Terminal a nonprofit center that supports modern at Kennedy International Airport because school reform, trains teachers and educates those shell structures were designed by ‘bru- youngsters. Dozens of inner-city schools in tal force.’ They’re ‘monumental’ rather than New York continue to use Salvadori’s curri- functional structures, and thus are ‘ugly.’ culum. By the late 1990s more than 100,000 Mario Salvadori with an eight-by-twenty-foot display How much better they would have been if minority students in NYC had been exposed of cardboard models of Manhattan Island structures the architects involved would have better to, and benefited from, his no-nonsense – 265 buildings in scale – made by Salvadori Center understood structural shell analysis.” students. Photo credit: Salvadori Center continued on next page 62 STRUCTURE magazine • November 2005 It did not take much pressure from my loving parents to convince me of the total imprac- ticality of my musical aspirations; I entered engineering school.” In 1925, he earned his engineering under- graduate degree in Rome, finishing first in his class. The same year, Salvadori established the first student jazz band in Italy. He en- rolled in graduate school and, between his band and university studies, filled in his time with mountain climbing, becoming an avid and highly skilled climber. He opened 27 new routes in the Dolomites, in the process- barely surviving a serious fall, and became known in the mountaineering press as the “Lion of the Mountain.” By 1932, Salvadori had received two doc- torial degrees from the University of Rome, one in engineering (1930) and the other© in pure Copyright mathematics (1932). Following graduation, he took a position with the University, where he taught until 1938. During that time, he spent a year in London studying photo-elasticity, where he came in contact with refuges from Nazi Germany. He began to realize that Mussolini’s fascism was not far behind Hitler’s and that it would be wise to consider leaving Italy, which he and his first wife Giuseppina did in 1939, emigrating to the U.S. After serving in a number of temporary jobs, including serving as a production effi- ciency engineer for the Lionel Model Train Company, he was offered a substitute-teach- ing job at Columbia University in the me- chanical engineering department. This was soon followed with a permanent position as an instructor in civil engineering. By then the U.S. had entered World War II. Being a STRUCTUREfaculty member of Columbia’s well-respected School of Engineering and Applied Science, Salvadori was enlisted to work on the secret magazineManhattan project, which he did from 1942 to 1945. In 1959, Mario was appointed to Columbia’s School of Architecture, Planning CBS Building, New York City (1962). Photo credit: Richard Weingardt Consultants, Inc. and Preservation. In all, his involvement with Salvadori wrote in Why Buildings Stand family moved to Spain for five years. By the the University would span five decades. Up, “The separation of technology and art is time he entered junior high school back in In 1945, Salvadori began a long-lasting both unnecessary and incorrect; one is not an Italy, Mario was fluent in French, Italian collaboration with Paul Weidlinger and his enemy of the other. Instead it is essential to and Spanish. Although his engineer father, New York-based structural engineering firm. understand that technology is often a neces- who early on instructed him in science and There, he rose to the positions of partner, sary component of art and that art helps tech- mathematics, encouraged him to become an chairman of the board, and finally, in 1991, nology to serve man better. Nowhere is this engineer, young Salvadori favored music. honorary chairman. At Weidlinger’s, Mario more true than in architecture and structure, Before he reached his teens, Mario was fairly became recognized as a world-class expert in a marriage in which science and beauty com- proficient at playing concert-level music, like thin-shell concrete structures. His work with bine to fulfill some of the most basic physical Beethoven sonatas on the piano. He had high the Weidlinger group allowed him to extend and spiritual needs of humanity.” hopes of becoming a orchestra conductor. His his classroom design reputation to the real Born in Rome, Italy, on March 19th, 1907, parents, especially his father, however, were world of construction. Mario spent his early years in Genoa where totally against him pursing a musical career. Among the significant Weidlinger projects his father, who had been a professor of ele- Said Salvadori, “Most if not all of the male worked on with renowned architects were ar- ctrical engineering at the University of members of my family were engineers and chitect Walter Gropius’s University of Baghdad Rome, was the city engineer. Later, his father since my early childhood I had been condi- (1957) and architect Eero Saarinen’s Colum- took a job with a French company and the tioned to say, ‘I want to become an engineer.’ bia Broadcasting System (CBS) Building in 64 STRUCTURE magazine • November 2005 Copyright © North Academic Center, City College of New York (1984).