"The Key to the Problem is the Section": Pier Luigi Nervis Proposed Copertura for Reynolds Aluminum

In 1960, Pier Luigi Nervi was approached by the Reynolds Aluminium Company to re-imagine a defunct project for an indoor stadium in New York City. Reynolds had been interested in the publicity from the original project, and they sought Nervis help in re-designing it as a demonstration project. Reynolds engineers met with Nervi to develop a scheme for 100,000 spectators that, had it been built, would have been the largest aluminium structure ever. Its 1200 foot span would have been the largest indoor space in the world.Nervi re-imagined the processes his firm had used to build other large span roofs in his trademark ferrocemento. But with aluminium Nervi faced new problems of deflection, creep, and connectivity. Using digital reconstructions this paper examines whether the Reynolds project could have been built, and how it would have performed structurally, using unpublished drawings and correspondence in the Nervi archives.