Pier Luigi Nervi: An engineer, an architect and a builder

Abstract

All Nervi's works bear the stamp of his unique qualities as an engineer. At the same time, they were always closely related to the cultural and social conditions both domestically and worldwide, which changed consid-erably during his long working life (from twenties to seventies): from World War One through the Fascist era to the enthusiastic second post-war reconstruction period, and on to the booming years of economic euphoria up to financial crisis of the seventies. For this reason, upon reviewing his works, it seems to us that Pier Luigi Nervi lived not one but three lives in that he was a modern architect, a builder creator of a new building method, and an international star-architect. Three equally intense lives that coexisted, overlapped and interacted but remained independent of each other. This paper tell briefly about the three lives of Nervi.