Proudhon, writing of the Halles Centrales markets in

his Du principe de f'art et de sa destination sociale of1865, said: «for a market where perishable products

are stocked, the ideal would be to be situated in theopen air. Since the uncertainties of our climate do not

permit this, it would be better for the roof to be in

some way suspended from a hook, high overhead,like a lamp from the ceiling; . . . the columns that holdeverything up should occupy as little space aspossible.»

Proudhon' s remarks point to at least twocircumstances. The first concerns the growingdemand throughout the 19thcentury for buildings withlarge covered spaces, freed from bulky verticalsupports to permit the new functions that had come to

enrich the urban panorama to proceed unimpeded:from exposition halls to warehouses and coveredmarkets, from railway stations to commercialarcades, from museums to libraries. The second ismore specifically concerned with a method -and onewhich was certainly alternative to those in current

use- for covering large spans: the technique ofsuspending roofing framework directly from straight

ties or cable-stays. First used for bridges, thistechnique was then successfully extended to roofing,though the number of examples constructed up to the

1940s was fairly limited (Zordan, Morganti, 1996,9-67).

In Italy, it was not until the second half of the '40sthat the first suspended cable roofs appeared, first for

temporary pavilions erected for national trade fairs,

Large roofs, large spaces.Suspended cable roofing

in Italy 1948-1970

Luigi ZordanRenato Morganti

and later for buildings that were intended to be farmore durable, as they were designed to house aircraft.Indeed, both the restrictions imposed by the Fascist

regime' s policies of economic self-sufficiencybetween 1935 and 1943 and a cultural climate which

was anything but well-disposed towards attempts topush too far beyond the familiar ensured that this

particular type of roofing was able to strike root inItaly only after the end of the Second World War.

The Milano trade fair in particular was one of themost active proving grounds for new departures inmodern architecture, which was only rarely able lo tryits hand at such highly specialized enterprises.Almost all of the Rationalist architects then workingin Lombardy made several appearances at this venue,where the pre-war group that included such names asNizzoli, Albini and Carboni was joined from 1946onwards by the young De Carlo, Gardella, Figini andPollini, and Zavanella.

At the 1948 fair, one of the most noteworthy of themodern buildings was the Officine Meccanichepavilion, designed by Renzo Zavanella following an

earlier study carried out together with Bruno Negriand constructed by the contractors Feal of Milano.The pavilion provided a splendid setting for thefuturistic «Belvedere» railcar, a brilliant newconception that set new standards for speed andcomfort, and whose interiors were also designed byZavanella.

Years later, in a letter of March 6, 1978, Zavanella

wrote as follows to Roberto Zannotti, author together

Proceedings of the First International Congress on Construction History, Madrid, 20th-24th January 2003, ed. S. Huerta, Madrid: I. Juan de Herrera, SEdHC, ETSAM, A. E. Benvenuto, COAM, F. Dragados, 2003.

2140 1. Zordán, R, Morganti

with Marcello Cruciani of a monograph dedicatedentirely to the railcar: «OM contacted me direct]y,appointing me to design and oversee the work

involved in outfitting the railcar in question, as mywork at the time had already earned me a certainreputation among the architects of the Rationalistavant-garde». As the Rationalist architect he sawhimself as being, ZavaneJla thus designed theinteriors of the railcar that was said at the time topracticalJy fly above the rails. But his assignment also

included designing the pavi]ion that wou]d protect therailcar from the elements. For this pavilion, Zavanellaopted for a type of roofing that was at once agile,lightweight and permeable to light, with a designcentering entirely on the interplay between elements

in tension: a design that conveys the idea of a rarefiedmas s entrusted entirely to a singular «poetics of thefiliform» that takes its cue from RationaJism«explodes in the kind of plastic exuberance that finds

a welcome stimulus to compositiona] freedom in thepromotional nature 01' the advertising message.»(Irace, 1987,64-73).

Six tubular lattice steel masts with removableconnections of the same kind used for temporaryscaffolding, positioned to one side of the longitudinal

axis of the pavilion's rectangular footprint, angleupwards above the wooden decking, which is

likewise inclined and interrupted by six circular hoJesthrough which the masts pass. Converging at the topof the masts are the thin cable-stays -two mainsuspension cables and one backstay- whoseunsymmetrical fan arrangement further reinforces theintentiona] dissonances that mark the structure as a

whole. An angled tie closes the main directsuspension system used for the roof. The spindJe-shaped masts are connected to each other by a three-dimensional framed truss Jocated on the outer side of

the roof deck. The braces that assist in suspending theroof framing and in stabilizing the entirc structure aresecured lO this truss.

At the 1950 Trade Fair, Zavane1la topped his J948exp]oit with an even more daring and imaginative

roof design, where indirect suspension replaces thedirect suspcnsion system. The expressive force ofZavane1la' s second design contrasts strongly with thewood and stee] cable-stayed roof which the architectScoccimarro -author together with Sironi of thecityscapes produced for Fiat at the J936 and 1949

trade fairs- covered the open areas of the Turin

automaker' s pavilion, whose icily schematicapproach prevails over any ineffective cravings for

formo

Zavane1la's architecture embodies a playfu]structuralism, entirely foreign to the technologically-minded «vernacular Esperanto» exto1led in the 1946Manuale dell'Architettu and to the culture thatproduced it (Tafuri, 1985, 18). In completed andhighly original form, this is an architecture that

expresses a degree of technological eminence that

does not cut itself off from the subjectivity of thedesign act, and whose power would secm to spring

fram the desire to liberate itself from the geometricrigors of the new objectivity, undallnted by thellnresolved isslles that might be seen as a denial of

one' s cultural identity.By its very nature, the context in which Zavanella

was called upon to work -city of spectacle andwe1lspring of modern complexity- spurred the

architect to marshal, with bold aplomb, the new signsof Italy' s industrial society on the threshold of post-war reconstruction: in giving formal shape to his«tension machines», a personal re-reading 01' theRationalist penchant for rigor, his creativity seems to

Figure 1Officine Meccaniche Pavilion at the 26'h Milano Trade Fair(R. Zavanella 1948): Sketch (Domlls 229: 7)

Large roofs, large spaces, Suspended cable roofing in Italy 1948-1970 2141

'J

Figure2Officine Meccaniche Pavilion at the 26'h Milano Trade Fair(R. Zavanella 1948): General view (historical archives of the

Milano Trade Fair)

draw new strength from the wark of the RussianConstructivists of the Twenties -Victar Vesnin andAnatole Ludwig paramount among them- and fromthat done in the Thirties by Le Courbusier who,though on a different scale, suggests using a cable-stayed roof far the stadium of a national sports and

recreation center capable of accommodating up to100,000 people,

In 1957, Officine Meccaniche participated in the35th Milano Trade Fair with an open-sided pavilion

constructed entirely of steel tubing which once againfeatured cable-stayed roofing. This time, however,

Figure 4

Officine Meccaniche Pavilion at the 28th Milano Trade Fair(R, Zavanella 1950): General view (historical archives of the

Milano Trade Fair)

Figure 3

Officine Meccanichc Pavilion at the 28'h Milano Trade Fair (R. Zavanella 1950): Elevation (l'architecturc d'aujourd'hui: 48:

77)

2142 1. Zordán, R. Morganti

Figure 5

Fiat Pavilion at the 28'" Milano Trade Fair (A. Scoccimarro1950): General view (Costrllzioni Metalliehe 1950.3: 6)

there seems to be liule room for the witty andimaginative exercises that distinguished Zavanella' swork: here, we have an inextricable tangle of steelpipes for the piers and trusses, with a roof deck

suspended from the slenderest of cables and whose

structural members are all located on the exteriorside. As a promotional statement. the pavilion stillmanages to hold its own, but its communicativepower no longer springs from in the originality of the

roof design, but from its sheer size and exuberance asa showplace.

01"the proposals advanced at the Trade Fair, city ofspeclacle and chosen stage for al] that was most

modern in Italian culture and architecture, few indeedwere taken up by the real city. Thus, the suspendedcable rool"s of the early Fifties, including that by anunknown hand thal protecls the parking area andbuildings of a gas station on the extreme outskirts ofMilan, now look like alien fragments, meteors comeerashing down from some other world.

«On the international architeclural scene of the lateFifties, the idea of the large structure took on a new

and unaccustomed prominence. Experimentatíon instruclural engineering, which, though by no meansabandoned, had remained on lhe margins ofarchitectural debate belween the two wars, returned tocenter stage, thrust back into the limelighl by theenormous growth of infrastructures . . . Underlying

this widespread move to a new slructuralism, we can

Figure 6

Officine Meecaniche Pavilion at the 35'" Milano Trade Fair(llnknown dcsigner): General view (hislorieal archives of the

Milano Trade Fair)

OM

Figure 7

Gas station in Milano (llnknown designel): General view

(I'archilecture d'aujourd'hlli. 55: 74)

see a renewed demand for internationality . . . In theinternational setting of the Fifties, in fact, while theoverall backwardness of lhe construction induslry isall too apparent . . . , and while architectural culture

stands accused of «retreating from the modernmovement», Italian structural engineering assumes aleading role.

That this should be so is one of lhe paradoxes thathave dogged Italy in this cenlury. And there can beliule doubt that it is a paradox that can be explained,at least in part, by the massive investments that were

Large roofs, large spaces. Suspended cable roofing in Ilaly 1948-1970 2143

poured into infrastructures (the sector hardest hit by

the war), and by the presence of designers of largestructures of the caliber of Nervi, Morandi andMusmeci» (Poretti, 1997-1998.96-1(2).

These are the contexts that gave rise to the firstimportant uses 01' the directly suspended roofingtechnique in ltaly, which not surprisingly took place

between the end of the Fifties and the early years 01'the next decade. In our country as elsewhere, theseapplications were linked to the enormous growth 01'

air transport.With the construction of the Fiumicino

international airport in Rome at the time of the 1960Olympics. ltaly's first aircraft hangers were built.

This was an opportunity to propose the firstsuspended cable roofs capable of covering largespans without obstacles on the interior or at the

aircraft entrance, and which could be extended ifnecessary along their major dimension. UmbertoVenanzi and Gianfranco Vannacci, followedsomewhat later by Riccardo Morandi, used this type

of roofing in their designs, selecting the simplecantilever static layout that had been in common usein the United States for several decades as the moststraightforward approach.

The first tender competition was announced by theMinistry of Public Works in 1958. The tender was

awarded to Castelli Costruzioni Edili S. p. a. ofRome, who subcontracted design amI fabrication to

the Centro Carpenteria Tubolare Dalmine, whereVenanzi and Vannacci worked as structuralengineers. Once initial uncertainties concerningwhich type of solution was most appropriate had beenovercome, a roofing design was chosen that made useof cable-stayed three-dimensional framed maintrusses of various heights, all 52 meters long.Fabricated from tubular structural sections. thetrusses rest on a stee] laUice piel' and are suspendedfrom a rigid rod, whence forces are transferred to theground via a mast and a bottom braceo Venanzi andVannacci, howeve.., did not go beyond a purelyengineering approach to the project: once they had

decided on steeL they were able to avoid wasting toomuch time on the details of the structural members,allowing the full constructional rationality of abuilding that was required to be both functional andeconomical to surface. The two Italian engineers'extremely pragmatic approach is in line with that

which their American counterparts had been using for

some years in dealing with the same constructionalissues applied to similar types 01' buildings,employing highly sophisticated steel load-bearing

systems and modi1'ying them according to the size of

the aircraft involved.The second tender competition, announced in

1960, concerned a complex of hangers, storage

facilities and office buildings for an Alitalia aircraft

maintenance center to be located on a site adjacent tothat occupied by the recently complcted hanger.While Castelli submitted a bid for a design which wasconsiderably less daring than that constructed twoyears earlier, the tender contract was awarded toAstaldi-Lodigiani-Salvi (A. Lo. Sa.), who hadpresented a design by the Roman engineer Riccardo

Morandi.Morandi approached thc project in the belief that,

as he wrote after the work was completed, « . . . themost modern advances in the art 01' building withreinforced or prestressed concrete are weli able to riseto the challenges posed by the enormous mass offormal, technical and executive problems involved in

this area» (Morandi, 1964, 695-71 O). In the finaldesign, two symmetricaIJy paired hangers surround

the office buildings. and the central space is occupiedby the maintenance shops. For the roofs of the two

hangers, Morandi brings all of the design intuition he

showed in his cable-stay bridges into play, showing amasterly balance between boldness and rigorousdesign control that is nowhere more evident than in

the spatial arrangement amI configuration of thestructural members.

The challenge of covering spaces of over 12.000square meters with no structural obstructions 01' anykind was brilliantly solved through the use of curvingbeams of prestressed reinforced concrete divided intothree e1ements linked by articulations and suspendedfrom stays consisting ofbundled steel cables protectedby concrete sheaths, which are also prestressed. As in

the earlier American examples -which Morandiappears to have drawn on to some extent- the gap

between the beams is spanned by ribbed reinforcedconcrete panels prefabricated on site in a workshopwhich also produced the beams and paired masts thatwere 10cated on the firewall in order to transfer cableloads from the tops of the internal columns.

But Morandi' s experience with suspended cableroofing did not end herc. Al the end of the Sixtics, he

worked with the same contractor in designing and

2144 1. Zordán, R. Morganti

constructing Alitalia's Boeing 747 MaintenanceCenter, again at the Fiumicino-Leonardo da Vinciintercontinental airport. This time, the two hangers donot face each other to form a symmetrical organism,but are placed side by side: together, they form twolarge spaces, each around 6000 square meters,

covered by a reinforced concrete cable-stayed tensionstructure with workshops and service buildings at theend. Morandi made the most of this new professionalopportunity: rather than limiting himself to re-proposing the 1960 design, he takes wide-span

reinforced roofing another and even bolder stepforward. Technologically, Morandi's performancehere was so exceptional as to take on al! thesemblance of an «austere monumental archaism»-fruit of a highly distilled reinterpretation of the«neo-Expressionist structuralism» that Morandi had

Figure 8

Fiurnicino IntercontinentaI Airport, Rorne: Plan vicw show

showing the outlines of the new hangcrs to be constructed

(Castclli costruzioni edili S.p. A. archives, Rorne)

espoused so me years earIier with his design for theunderground exhibition hall for the Torino Motor

Show (1958-959)- emphasized by the imposingtapered columns that rise past the horizontal line of

the thick beam crowning the structure. From the topsof these co]umns, the cable-stays extend in a radiuspattern, upholding the roof deck consisting ofreinforced concrete strips ending at two sturdyprecompressed trusses and connected along theirlength by ribbed concrete sheets.

Another of the major achievements made in the

field of suspended cable roofing during the Sixtiescarries the signature of Sergio Musmeci, a Romanengineer who received his training between 1948 and

1953 at the offices of Riccardo Morandi and PierLuigi Nervi, from whom he absorbed the firstrudiments of the structural designer's craft. By theyears between 1963 and 1967, when he designed and

built the Italtubi warehouse in Rome together withLivadiotti, Stegher and Cogliati, he had alreadycollaborated with architects of the stature of Vaccaro,Libera, Vitellozzi, Quaroni, Zevi and De CarIo.Though he was the only prominent figure involved in

the ltaltubi project, the occasion was exceptional, notso much because of the building's importance, butbecause of the material selected and the type ofroofing used. Abandoning concrete for the timebeing, Musmeci discovers the charms of steel and

chooses the direct suspension technique for the roof.The building, now irremediably altered and virtuallyunrecognizable under a cladding of lightweightprefabricated panels, was essentially a simple canopy

of corrugated fibercement sheet s in a hexagonallayout using triangular grid elements, supported by

three massive tape red compound-section centralcolumns placed along the axis of longitudinalsymmetry. Anchored to the top ofthe columns are the

eighteen cables supporting the roof decking, which

consist of formed and prestressed wire rope.This was to be the only structure where Musmeci

applied the direct suspension technique: the eable-stay bridge s which he designed for Rwanda in 1978,

in faet, were never built. It is nevertheless a buildingin which a highly personal view of the teehnologicalside of the ltalian structuralism of the Fifties comes toterms, though perhaps in an over-simplified,

mechanical spirit, with one of the motifs that organicarchitecture in Italy seemed almost duty-bound tofollow in the same decade: the use of the triangular

Large roofs, large spaces. Suspended cable roofing in Italy 1948-1970 2145

-"~-'t

Figure 9

Hanger at Fiumicino Intercontinental Airport, Rome (V. Venanzi, G. Vannacci 1958-60): Installation of the three-

dimensional framed roof trusses (Dalmine S.p.A. archives, Dalminc Bergamo)

Figure 10

DC9 hanger at Fiumicino Intercontinental Airport, Rome (R. Morandi 1960-1962): Positioning the curving beams and

rigging the cable-stays (Morandi archives, Rome)

2146 1. Zordán, R. Morganti

Figure 1]

Boeing 747 hanger at Fiumicino Intercontinental Airport. Rome (R. Morandi 1969-1970): General view (Morandi archives,

Romc)

grid as the basis of a structure's layout. There can be

no doubt, however, that constructional functionalityand static efficiency are here expressed in visibleform, so much so that the building exemplifies whatMusmeci himself called «structural architecture»(Nicoletti, 1999).

In the second half of the Sixties. we see thebeginnings of the extensive research conducted by

Leonardo Savioli at the School of Architecture inFlorence. This research was to lead to the design forthe new Pescia flower market developed togetherwith Danilo Santi and others in 1970 at the time of anational competition sponsored by the municipal

Figure 12Italtubi warehouse, Rome (S. Musmeci 1963-] 967); Planview 01'the suspended cable roof (Musmeci archives, Rome)

administration, though the market was notconstructed unti l eleven years ¡ater. The cable-stayedroof of the main market hall derived from thearchitects' idea of using stecl technology to evokememories of past feats of engineering -the 19thcentury's suspension bridges, greenhouses, railwaystations and exposition pavilions- which wouldblend with the more straightforwardly commercialintention of designing a building capable of standing

Figure 13

Italtuhi warchouse, Romc (S. Musmeci 1963-1967):

Suspended cablc 1'001'seen from above (Aceiaio ]967. 12;

589 )

Large roofs, large spaces, Suspended cable roofing in Italy 1948-1970 2147

:;:,

o, .

Figure 14Pescia t10wer market (L. Savioli et aL, 1970-1981): Cross sectional view submitted for the design competition (Paramctro,lO: 85)

out from its surroundings and achieving landmarkstatus. The careful attention devoted to the conceptsof tlexibility, adaptability and expandability resultedin a roof design featuring five independent portions,each part of a three-dimensional macro-modulewhich is repeated to generate the main market hall.The primary structmal system for carrying verticalloads consists of circular-section columns joined ingroups of four and tapering upwards, while the flat

roof deck, suspended from flexible steel cables withbackstays anchored to the ground, is most noteworthyfor its mixed configuration: the cJadding, in fact, issupported by a space grid at the center and by one-

directional framing at the sides. This is another aspectthat makes the buiJding -which represented years ofpainstaking work by Savioli and Santi, who wereassisted by Cesare Pesenti and Luigi Nusiner inperforming the calculations for the primary structuraJ

system- one of the most exceptional, in size as wellas in design, ever erected in Italy. Elsewhere inEurope, its forerunners included the Soviet Unionpavilion at the Brussels Exposition of 1958, whichcan be said to have contributed a number ofconstruction concepts. For SavioJi, the Pescia flowermarket was an important experience which, as part ofan output dominated by exposed concrete, opened thedoor to further occasions for using steel, as it denoteda new way of looking at this construction material.

This work ended a decade and began another inwhich suspended cable roofing would once again finditself excluded from current design and constructionpractice in Italy, perhaps more than in other countrieso

From the standpoint of engineering calculations in

particular, suspended cable roofing involved a series

Figure 15

Pescia t10wer market (L. Savioli et aL, 1970-1981): Finalstages in the installation of the space grid (Dalmine Sop.k

archives, Dalmine Bergamo)

of unconventionaJ probJems that at first sight made itappear more compJex than the issues engineers were

ordinarily called upon to confront. On the designfront, the calculation difficulties, which have now

be en largely overcome by increasingly sophisticatedinformation technoJogy, were joined by the problemsinvoJved in working out construction details and inpJanning building operations at the drawing board,

which are cJosely linked to them. As regardsoperating practice, uncertainties remained concerning

construction costs, not least because the lack of a

well-established tradition in this area could easily

lead lo cosl overruns.

2148 1. Zordán, R. Morganti

Seemingly, suspended cable roofing is not destined

to become part ofthe modem Italian construction site'srepertoire. Nevertheless, and precisely because of theirexperimental and pioneering nature, the buildings wehave iUustrated exemplify a typical condition ofmodern architecture, freighted with unresolvedproblems, but also with an undeniable Utopianpotential. Those who designed them -engineers or

architects- though differing widely in backgroundand culture, al! worked in the fuI! consciousness ofdevoting their professional energies to a sparselypopulated field, and with the primary goal, not so much

of setting unattainab1e records, but of finding their ownvoice amongst the c1amor of avant-garde rationalism,technica1 pragmatism, organic structuralism orinspirational technology, as the case may be.

As for the future of this type of roofing, there is awidespread awareness that steel has surpassed

reinforced concrete for wide-span roofs. In Italy, itwil! thus be the material of choice for al! those whoare caBed upon to c1eal with design issues of this kindin the coming decac1es (Zordan, 1996, 119-131).

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