bRijUNi Essay Traces How CAD and Structural Software Reshaped Avant-Garde Architecture

Key facts

• The essay appeared in the 01/2010 issue of Arquitectos, published by the Consejo Superior de Arquitectos de España in July 2010, under the theme "Formalismos."
• The Sydney Opera House was built between 1959 and 1963; Jørn Utzon's entry was rescued by Eero Saarinen, who died in 1961, and Ove Arup resolved the shell geometry by slicing two mother spheres.
• Saarinen modeled the TWA terminal at New York's JFK airport with the help of a pomelo.
• Zaha Hadid, Schumacher and Arup were selected in 2005 for the Pabellón Puente at Expo Zaragoza 2008 by a jury of three engineers, three architects and three local government and Expo officials.
• Manuela Gatto of Hadid's office told an APTA session at the Confederación Hidrográfica del Ebro in Zaragoza on 3 April 2008 that structural efficiency was not primordial for the team.
• Engineer Hugo Corres of Fhecor said the pavilion had no single structural concept and required combined models, node-by-node solutions and finite-element iterations; the concrete box proposed by Arup was built in steel.
• Peter Eisenman's Aronoff Center for Design and Art (1988–1996) was his first project drawn with a computer.
• The 1988 MoMA exhibition "Deconstructivist Architecture" was organized by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley; Hernán Casciari spoke on the death of blogs at Evento Blog 2008 in Sevilla on 16 November 2008.