Robert Maillart’s essential contribution to structural design with concrete: Morphogenesis for architectural structures

Zastavni, Denis [UCL]

Swiss engineer Robert Maillart (1872-1940) designed visually striking structures remarkable for their efficiency. For many years though his methods were considered fanciful and approximate. Following work initiated by David Billington in the 1970s, current research shows that his approach is to be considered as an elaborate method leading to exceptional designs. By first examining the clues of the structural problem, Maillart devised the adapted structural response (behaviours) and then studied how to implement it, resulting in concrete being considered differently depending on the structural mechanisms used. As a tool, Maillart turned to Graphic Statics first to define the typology, then to adjust the load path and subsequently to control behaviour by localised dimensioning. In parallel, he went on to assemble the various constituent structural mechanisms into the final arrangement, it being obvious that the choice of appropriate mechanisms depends on the context of the structural problem, particularly the site, leading to differentiated and contextualised designs each time.