ROBERT MAILLART (1872-1940)

Salginatobel bridge, 1929/30 in Switzerland built in two years vs Owachomo natural bridge formed by erosion in USA. Built in thousands of years and it will collapse in another few thousand of years.

The design job of the structural engineer is always a question of organising the forces that act upon a structure in a way that is both economic and appropriate to the give, of the flux of the forces from the very inception of a stress down to the building’s foundations. The engineer who most emblematically personifies these qualities is Robert Maillart.

Maillart's structures were economical, but also that Maillart received many of his important design commissions for the very reason that he was able to deliver structures that were more economical than those designed by his peers. Maillart created economical designs by using materials efficiently. Using materials efficiently meant eliminating that which was not needed and unnecessary structural components. In Maillart's day, the standard solution for arches with proportions of the Salginatobel Bridge was to fill in the entire spandrel area between the girder and the arch beyond the quarterpoints. Maillart's logic, illustrated above, clearly shows that this material is not needed.

“ The resistant virtues of the structures that we seek depend on their form; it is through their form that they are stable, not because of awkward accumulation of material. There is nothing more noble and elegant from an intellectual viewpoint than this: to resist through form."

Eladio Dieste
La Estructura Ceramica