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Stress A nalysis o f H istoric Structures:zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfed M aillart’s W arehouse at C hiasso ROBERT MARK, JAMES K. CHIU, AND JOHN F. ABEL Introduction The s ignificant architecture of any· era is expected to include its large public buildings: the temples and arenas of the classical period, the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, and the transportation terminals and exhibition halls of our own time. Nevertheless, the main lines of architectural development pass through other construction as well: in residence, school, and office buildings, and even in granaries, mills, and warehouses. Early-20th-century examples from this last category often cited as important sources of modern architectural design include the Berlin AEG Turbine Factory of Peter Behrens (1909), the Bauhaus at Dessau of Walter Gropius (1926), and the Mobilier National, Paris, of August Perret (1931). The warehouse of the Magazzini Generali at Chiasso, designed by E. Brenni and Robert Maillart in 1924, is another industrial building that has attracted the interest of architectural historians.1 But, in fact, it is not the warehouse building that is especially significant, although it does provide an excellent example of the mushroom-column and flat-slab floor system in concrete that Maillart originated in 1910. Rather, it is the framing of an attached reinforced-concrete storage shed that has commanded so much attention (fig. 1). This shed, attributed to Maillart, is relatively small (33 x 50 meters in plan) and is, in fact, hidden behind the main building, a peculiarity that seems Pr o f . Ma r k , professor of civil engineering and architecture at Princeton, is the author of many articles on experimental stress analysis as well as on applications of experimental methods for analysis of historic structures. Mr . Ch iu was an under­ graduate engineering student and is now studying architecture at Princeton. Mr . Ab e l , research associate and lecturer in civil engineering and architecture at Princeton, is coauthor of Introduction to the F inite E lem ent M ethod: A N um erical M ethod for E ngineering A nalysis. The authors wish to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for support of this research and Leon Barth, model maker at the Princeton School of Architecture and Urban Planning. ‘Max Bill, in R obert M aillart, 3d ed., Les éditions d’architecture (Zurich, 1969), pp. 170-71, gives the builders of the Magazzini Generali as Bernasconi and Mascetti. Through misinterpretation, Howard (see n. 3 below) has mistakenly referred to this firm as the architects of the building. 49 50 ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIH R . M ark, J. K . C hiu, and J. F . A bel Fig . 1.—Storage shed, warehouse of the Magazzini Generali, Chiasso, Switzerland, 1924. (Photo from R obert M aillart, by Max Bill.) Fig . 2.—Roadway, Salginatobel Bridge of Robert Maillart, Schiers, Switzerland, 1930. The width of the 132-meter-long walled thoroughfare is only 3 meters. (Photo by R. Mark.) almost the rule with the works of Maillart, partly because of their highly utilitarian nature.2 It is possible, for example, to drive over the unprepossessing single-lane crossing shown in hgure 2 in the mountains near Schiers in eastern Switzerland without ever glimpsing the profile of the span one is crossing, Maillart’s Salginatobel Bridge 2Margit Staber, writing in the E ncyclopedia of M odem A rchitecture (New York, 1963), p. 181, apparently found it difficult to accept the shed’s prosaic role, for in the Maillart review article, she referred to an “entrance hall for a warehouse at Chiasso.” Stress A nalysis: M aillart’s W arehousezyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfe 51 Fig . 3.—Elevation, Salginatobel Bridge. Its 90-meter span is the longest and perhaps the most dramatic of Maillart’s many bridges. The concrete arch was constructed on temporary wooden scaffolding built up 75 meters from the valley floor below. (Photo by R. Mark.) (fig. 3). Yet this unique structure, built in 1930, is depicted and dis­ cussed in many surveys of modern architecture and art. The shed frame (fig. 1) is of unusual form. It bears little resem­ blance to a conventional roof truss; rather, it resembles a steel truss bridge except that the frame necks down to very slender sections between the columns. However...

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