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"Inevitably Translated:" Pier Luigi Nervi's Work in Australia

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“Inevitably Translated:”
Pier Luigi Nervi’s Work in Australia
Thomas Leslie, AIA
Iowa State University

Abstract
This paper focuses on four structures designed by Sydney architect Harry Seidler with
Pier Luigi Nervi’s consultation—Australia Square and the MLC Tower in Sydney, the
Trade Group Offices in Canberra, and the Australian Embassy, Paris. It compares these
with less acclaimed multi-story projects by the two with other consultants in Montreal,
Milan, and Hong Kong, relying on correspondence and drawings from the Nervi archives
to show how their agreement on principles of economics and fabrication created a
uniquely productive collaboration.

Pier Luigi Nervi and Harry Seidler

‘I have often not only gained more beautiful forms from our collaboration but also
construction techniques and systems which were easily, almost inevitably,
translated into reality.’
--Harry Seidler on Pier Luigi Nervi, 1977.1

Pier Luigi Nervi’s designs for Rome’s 1960 Olympics—two sports arenas, a football
stadium, and an elegant freeway overpass—made him into an international celebrity. An
invitation to deliver the 1961 Norton Lectures in Poetry at Harvard was just the most
prestigious of many opportunities in North America, Africa, Asia, and Australia that
occupied the final decades of his career. He collaborated on skyscrapers in Sydney and
Montreal, a Cathedral in San Francisco, arenas in New England and South Africa, and
government offices in Canberra.

While Nervi’s buildings in his native Italy had won praise for their elegance, his record in
these overseas projects was mixed. Nervi’s not only designed his Italian structures; his
contracting firm built them. Nervi kept the design and contracting wings of his enterprise
small; his designs focused on economy of means on the job site but also on minimizing
design and documentation time in the office. As a result, his best work was based on
patterns that were economical to document in the office and to execute in the field. This
gave him an intimacy with Italy’s economics of materials, labor, and production, leading to
patented concrete techniques that allowed his company to underbid other firms. These
included prefabricated structural elements, traveling scaffolding, and simple, repetitive
processes that allowed him to take advantage of postwar Italy’s surplus of unskilled labor.
As Nervi’s reputation grew, clients throughout the world sought the elegant forms that these
artisanal techniques had produced. Translating his processes into other economies, labor
markets, and building cultures proved difficult, however. Overseas clients and
collaborators did not always understand or appreciate Nervi’s integration of fabrication or
construction processes, often desiring the appearance of his nuanced patterning without
recognizing that these had emerged from very specific regional conditions.

Most notable among Nervi’s collaborations—for their visibility and for their mixed record—
were his skyscraper projects. High rises require coordination of vertical services such as
elevators, fire stairs, toilets, and environmental systems that are less pressing in long span
buildings such as arenas or exhibition halls. Structural engineering must be balanced with,
and is often compromised by, architectural and mechanical requirements of skyscraper
design. While Nervi enjoyed a singular role on his arenas, his high-rise work required him
to balance his structural and fabricational ideas with the messier realities of these other
disciplines. “Where there is a complexity of functions,” engineer Guy Nordenson wrote in
2008, “Nervi’s art is compromised.”2

Nervi’s first high rise collaborations—with Gio Ponti on the Pirelli Tower, Milan (1955-56)
and Luigi Moretti on the Place Victoria Tower, Montreal (1961-62)—showed the potential
and the pitfalls of applying long-span lessons to high rises. Pirelli is a thin blade of concrete
and glass. Its tapering plan and exposed concrete walls at its ends articulate its elegant
proportions. But these were achieved only by hidden Vierendeel truss piers— “pilo-pilastri,”
or “wall-columns,” in Nervi’s words—that run the full height of the building, tapering to offer
ductility and additional space on the building’s upper floors.3 More troubling was Nervi’s
work on the Montreal tower. Plagued by a volatile real estate market and an error in
elevator calculations, another clever structural scheme by Nervi was submerged within a
bulky, inarticulate skyscraper form. Four piers and a core provide the bulk of the Place
Victoria’s compressive strength, while smaller interstitial columns providing a tighter grain
of support. These are paired with an efficient wind bracing scheme that relies on diagonal
trusses at regular intervals to brace the tower’s outer piers against its central core. Such
‘outrigger’ configurations steady numerous concrete towers of around 300 meters today,
but Nervi’s was the first to employ this ‘ski-pole’ principle. Again, this structure is invisible,
and Nervi’s ability to express structural forms was lost within Moretti’s formalist conception.4
These two skyscrapers suggest that Nervi was not well-suited as a consulting engineer,
and that his work was at its best when architectural or functional considerations could be
subsidiary to his fluency in construction and static performance. But one collaboration that
occupied him intermittently for the last two decades of his career suggests that Nervi’s
consultancy could in fact flourish with a collaborator who understood the mechanical
aspects of Nervi’s best work and the aesthetic potential contained within these elements’
articulation. Harry Seidler’s emigration to Australia in 1948 began a career of second-
generation modernism that incorporated influences from his education under Walter
Gropius at Harvard and his work for Marcel Breuer and Oscar Niemeyer in 1946-1948.
Breuer would, in the 1950s, collaborate with Nervi on the UNESCO building in Paris, a
pairing that would change both designers’ careers and philosophies. Seidler was,
therefore, well-prepared for Nervi’s influence, even from across the globe, having been in
contact with figures who were sympathetic to Nervi’s static intuition.

Seidler’s philosophy, like Nervi’s, was one of economically-minded integration. He kept a

small office in Sydney, which favored clear solutions that required minimal documentation.
Experience and a disciplined approach, he said, allowed his firm to “hit the nail on the
head,” producing “straightforward and simple” schemes that could be documented by a
small staff and executed efficiently by contractors. His early houses were transplanted
versions of postwar International Style designs that realized clear functional diagrams with
expressive but logical constructive techniques. In 1958, he began work on his first high-
rise, the controversial Blues Point Tower, which drew criticism for its lackluster aesthetics
but proved to be a financial success for its client, the contractor and developer Civil and
Civic, led by the Dutch businessman, Dirk Dusseldorp.

Figure 1. Australia Square, Sydney. Harry Seidler, architect.

Miller, Milston and Ferris, structural engineers.
Pier Luigi Nervi, structural consultant
(Photo by the author).
Australia Square
As Blues Point neared completion, its client, Civil and Civic, engaged Seidler on a more
ambitious, 58-story commercial project for central Sydney. Taking advantage of a new,
pro-growth political environment, Civil and Civic sought a statement that would affirm
Sydney’s primacy in Australia’s economy while also making an international impression to
potential investors in the city. Seidler turned to his Harvard classmate, I.M. Pei, for
consultation, but ultimately proceeded alone. Property owners on Hunter Street limited the
project’s ambition, and with the resulting narrow site Seidler proposed a circular plan that
avoided the ‘canyon effect’ of parallel skyscraper walls looking at one another across
narrow streets. The shape also allowed the project to take advantage of a loophole in the
city’s zoning code that calculated building height from the ‘average’ setback of irregular
facades, nearly doubling the allowable height on the block from that of a simple, square
scheme.5

In December, 1961, Seidler’s scheme was made public, and while it showed some lessons
learned from the aesthetic shortcomings of Blues Point, it also showed his continuing
struggle with the skyscraper form. Thick, radial columns around the circular plan’s
perimeter would have sat, inarticulately, on an open plaza below. The resulting cylindrical
form was both graceless and over-engineered. The project’s original structural engineers,
Miller, Milston and Ferris, struggled with the unusual planform and with Civil and Civic’s
insistence on column-free floors. Such an arrangement pushed the columns outside the
building’s skin, maximizing clear floor space but also maximizing the bending moment at
the connection between girder and column. Miller, Milston and Ferris’ scheme relied upon
rigid connections between concrete spandrel panels and the exterior columns to resist
wind, which made for bulky connections heavy with reinforcement. Seidler objected to the
‘drum-like’ appearance of the 1961 scheme, and the team reduced the number of columns
from 26 to 20.6 This neither mediated concerns that the structure remained “unresolved,”
or achieved the “purely organic solution” that Seidler sought. Civil and Civic agreed to hire
an international consultant, and Seidler, impressed by Nervi’s collaboration with Breuer at
UNESCO, traveled to Rome in October, 1963.7

That meeting was brief but productive. Nervi provided feedback on the lateral stability of
the structure, disagreeing with Miller, Milston and Ferris’ reliance on transverse
connections between spandrels and columns, instead suggesting that the inner core itself
provide all of the structure’s resistance to wind, reducing in size the connections between
columns and girders and thinning both spandrels and columns.8
In May, 1964, Civil and Civic sent one of its engineers to Rome for two days of meetings,
during which Nervi’s son, Mario, explained the finer points of the firm’s lightweight
ferrocemento system.9 This system was an efficient method of production, breaking down
the fabrication of often-complex shapes into an assembly-line process. Workers bent
layers of wire mesh around earthen or brick molds, after which they troweled lightweight
concrete into the resulting matrix. When cured, the resulting element was thin and
lightweight; it was also tough, with a reliable finish. Leaving these formwork elements in
place after casting against them eliminated the time and expense of disarming timber forms
and provided a consistent surface and shape. Nervi had used such a system on his best-
known works, in particular the spiral ceiling of Rome’s Palazetto dello Sport. For Australia
Square, Nervi recommended such a system to form the exterior columns. The repetitive
nature of the circular plan allowed great efficiency in production, and Nervi proposed that
each floor be molded to different dimensions so that the columns would trace a tapering,
curved surface over their full 170m height. Such a graceful, subtle shape was the sort of
nuance that Seidler had missed in the 1961 scheme, and the supple adaptability of
ferrocemento to such complex shapes was a major influence on his subsequent designs.

Figure 2. Australia Square, Sydney. Harry Seidler, architect.

Miller, Milston and Ferris, structural engineers.
Pier Luigi Nervi, structural consultant. Axonometric showing
columns, lobby ceiling, and core structure.
(Drawing by Ben Kruse for Beauty’s Rigor).

More striking was Nervi’s contribution to the design of two exhibition floors near the base
of Australia Square. These were to host changing exhibits that could include heavy objects
such as automobiles or sculptures. There was, therefore, a need for more robust floor
structures than the precast girders and slabs that formed the offices above. At the same
time, the undersides of these floors were, in Seidler’s view, promising locations for
expressive details, as they would become the ceilings of the lobby, on the lower level, and
one of the exhibition floors above. Seidler had in mind the expressive, interlocking ribs that
had been on such clear display in the 1960 Olympics in the Palazetto, but which Nervi had
also deployed to great visual effect in a small restaurant in the seaside resort town of Ostia
and in a ballroom in the spa complex of Chianciano. By fabricating hat-shaped
ferrocemento pans to tile the curved surfaces of these spaces, Nervi created his famous
networks of spiral patterns, but these had important structural advantages, as well. In
particular, they served as coffering, allowing these roofs to perform like thick shells but with
a fraction of the weight (a similar technique, as many commentators noted, to that used in
the dome of the Pantheon), The ribs they formed can also be understood as stiffening
elements that held the roofs’ doubly-curved geometry, allowing eggshell-thin proportions
without fear of buckling in compressive areas. The loads and spans at Sydney were hardly
as daunting as those for the Palazetto, and the flat geometry of the ceilings made their
layout and fabrication far simpler. But Seidler was interested in the visual effects of the
system, and a good portion of the June, 1964 meeting was given over to discussing the
production of these ferrocemento elements, in particular how to layer aggregate in the
forms such that the brightest, highest quality finishes would be on their visible undersides,
and how sprinklers might best be incorporated into the resulting ceiling.10

Figure 3. Australia Square, Sydney. Harry Seidler, architect.

Miller, Milston and Ferris, structural engineers.
Pier Luigi Nervi, structural consultant. View of lobby ceiling.
(Photo by Matthew Darmour-Paul, for Beauty’s Rigor).
Nervi’s system relied on the surplus of unskilled labor in postwar Italy, and its manual
production did not always travel well to markets where the balance between material and
labor costs was different. Seidler’s communication with Nervi in 1965, when construction
was underway and Civil and Civic were beginning to mockup the slab, reflects their learning
process. But it also reveals a small but telling detail. Each pan in Nervi’s system met its
neighbors at the centerline of a rib—the ‘brim’ of each formwork hat formed one-half of its
surrounding ribs. The handmade nature of these elements left gaps at their bases, which
Nervi minimized by detailing the edge of each pan with a significant chamfer that was later
filled with plaster and painted. This left the impression of monolithic ribs, but in Seidler’s
view this ignored the importance of the fabrication and assembly to the finished form. While
acknowledging that the mockup looked “very well,” Seidler prodded Nervi about this detail:
“I presume,” he wrote, “that you intend for this groove to remain so in the final installation
and that you do not intend for it to be filled up as I know you have done in some of your
floors.”11 Nervi, through his office, replied that he agreed with leaving the joint unfilled and
this is how, ultimately, the ceiling in these areas was formed.12 The result is that each rib
has a shadow gap along its centerline, emphasizing the geometry of the ribs themselves,
as well as the diamond-shape pans that form them; attesting to the structural performance
of the rib and to the importance of the fabrication and assembly process in realizing the
geometry. Nervi, in fact, took Seidler’s implicit criticism on board in subsequent work; in
the spiral patterns of the Norfolk Scope, an arena in Virginia that relied on the same
construction system as the Palazetto, Nervi insisted on leaving this joint unfilled, producing
the same shadow gap effect as Seidler had noticed and encouraged at Australia Square.

The tower opened in 1968 to excellent reviews. As late as 1972 it remained the city’s
default icon while the Opera House staggered toward completion.13 Publicists for the
project saw that it received press for being the tallest “lightweight reinforced concrete
building in the world” at 170m, but this was a fine distinction—Nervi’s Montreal tower, of
heavier construction, cleared 190m.14 Australia Square’s success inspired Seidler to ask
for Nervi’s input on two further projects—a government office building in Canberra and the
MLC Centre tower in Sydney.

Canberra
The Canberra project was designed to house open-plan offices for 3000 employees in
various trade-related departments. The site, on Kings Avenue facing Lutyens’ Old
Parliament Building, was flat and rectilinear, and Seidler’s scheme took advantage of this
regularity by laying out seven 16-meter wide office blocks around two rectangular
courtyards, with service cores at the resulting intersections. By corralling elevators,
plumbing, and ductwork into these cores, Seidler was able to provide clear, unobstructed
office space; this arrangement also lent itself to a simple system of construction that relied
on prefabricated elements, built both off-site and on, to realize Seidler’s lucid diagram. To
maintain column free space for the full 16-meter width of the wings, Nervi advised post-
tensioned elements—a rare application of this technology in his work. This technique used
stainless steel cables, draped through the lower, tensile areas of prefabricated beams at
their mid-spans, to absorb the enormous bending stresses involved in such long elements.
Nervi and Seidler together came up with a curving form for these that provided a deep tee-
shape at its middle and a thick, block at the ends, which together tuned the amount of
cross-sectional area and—as importantly—the shape of this area, providing the most shear
resistance, measured in pure area, at the ends where this internal stress was highest, and
the most bending resistance, measured in section modulus, at mid-span where that stress
reached its peak. Such geometric subtlety was only economical in prefabricated elements,
where—as Nervi knew from his extensive contracting experience—the expense of a
complex mold could be amortized over the material costs of dozens, or even hundreds of
elements. These t-beams rested on edge girders that were similarly shaped, although here
the transition was between similar shear blocks and an even stronger mid-span section
similar to a steel I-beam, though with thicker flanges reflecting the bulkier proportions
required to form concrete. Stainless steel cover plates conceal and protect the ends of the
beams’ post-tensioning cables, forming the building’s only ornament. The girders, in turn,
were supported by paired precast columns, post-tensioned through the ends of the girders
to provide a stiff set of internal connections. Seidler’s simple diagram and the efficiency of
its fabrication allowed the contractors to build it using a traveling gantry crane that recalled
Nervi’s experiments in traveling scaffolding.

Figure 4. Government Trade Offices, Canberra. Harry Seidler,

architect. Miller, Milston and Ferris, structural engineers.
Pier Luigi Nervi, structural consultant
(Pier Luigi Nervi Archives, MAXXI, Rome).
These nuanced details—curved surfaces that eliminate weight while expressing structural
principles—lend a quiet articulation to a building that is otherwise purely functional. Some
found the relentlessness of the structure’s expressive system numbing—"Within the terms
this building offers, a finer design can hardly be imagined,” wrote critic David Saunders.
“Where, however, do people stand in relation to those terms? …. The emphasis is on
structure, not occupation.”15 But to Nervi and Seidler, the ability of the building to speak
the ‘terms’ of its structural performance and its sequential assembly made it a summary
statement of their shared philosophy. Writing for his father in 1973, Antonio Nervi wrote
Seidler that “the project creates that perfect synthesis between statical and aesthetical
aspects which, as you well know, is the basis of my father’s design philosophy.”16 Seidler,
for his part, told the Architectural Review that “I really think it is the best building we have
done so far.” Further, he credited Nervi with the refinements that gave the building its
expressive character—and made possible its economical realization. “I have…not only
gained more beautiful forms from our collaboration but also construction techniques and
systems which were easily, almost inevitably, translated into reality.”17

MLC Centre and the Australian Embassy, Paris

Seidler first contacted Nervi about Sydney’s MLC Centre in early 1971. While he had
already sketched out basic proposals with Civil and Civic, again the client and contractor,
he suggested that Nervi’s “thoughts on structure for such a size building would be very
welcomed.”18 MLC’s site was even more confined than Australia Square’s, with
underground rail tunnels cutting one corner off of its rectangular plan and a program
requirement for underground parking requiring further space for automobile ramps. While
Seidler’s initial plans called for two towers of unequal height, cost considerations forced
the scheme into a single tower, with ground-level pavilions housing a restaurant and a
theater. Miller, Milston & Ferris again provided engineering services, but Seidler asked
Nervi to contribute to the project by considering, again, the tower’s lobby ceiling, where the
structural scheme could be most expressive, and the structure for the two pavilions. The
restaurant pavilion became a cantilevered half-cylinder supported by simple poured-in-
place ribs that lacks the finesse of Nervi’s hand. Drawings from Studio Nervi show a more
dramatic scheme for this stalk-like structure that would have employed ferrocemento pans
to produce a more finely grained structure, similar in conception to his roof at the Kursaal
Ostia. But the theatre foyer, another cylindrical element that houses a circular staircase to
an underground auditorium, is covered by a flat dome of spiraling ferrocemento pans—
each highlighted by the shadow gap detail suggested by Seidler at Australia Square.
The 68-story tower itself borrowed the Canberra project’s girder forms, each one supporting
an edge of an octagonal floor plate, and all supported by tapering poured-in-place corner
piers. The ceiling of the MLC Centre’s lobby includes swooping, pan-formed ribs that
connect each pier with a square central core—a broader structural grain than that at
Australia Square, but one that reflects, in this case, the simpler and less demanding loads
of a mere office floor above. The larger spans between these ribs led Nervi to propose a
different constructive solution from Australia Square’s lobby ceiling. MLC Centre’s
ferrocemento formwork was designed to form the ribs in temporary, removable sections.
The result, Nervi felt, simplified handling and lent “a greater visual integrity to the
structure.”19

Figure 5. MLC Centre, Sydney. Harry Seidler, architect. Miller,

Milston and Ferris, structural engineers.
Pier Luigi Nervi, structural consultant
(Photo by the author).

Nervi would contribute one final consultation to Seidler’s oeuvre—the Australian Embassy
in Paris, just a short walk from UNESCO. Marcel Breuer served as design consultant,
making the Embassy a unique tribute to two of Seidler’s greatest influences. Nervi’s
contribution was even more glancing here than on the projects in Australia, but Seidler
relied on his expertise for the curving surfaces of the apartment block’s fan-shaped
structural piers, and a precast T-beam system similar to those at Canberra and the MLC
Centre but adapted to the Embassy’s curving plan.20
Conclusion: Hong Kong Club, A Posthumous Tribute
The respect that Nervi and Seidler had for one another is evident from a letter written on
Seidler’s behalf in Nervi’s archives. In painstaking translation Nervi noted the congruence
of their design philosophies:

“From the premises which are at the basis of every intervention, Harry Seidler’s
work [is] stimulated towards solutions which are valid both from an economic and
a technical (functional and constructive) point of view.

“The fact that Harry Seidler’s most significant realizations are also valid from an
aesthetic point of view is a consequence, in accordance with an often-repeated
belief of mine, of the elevated degree with which have been satisfied the
functional, technical, and economic requirements.”21

Seidler, for his part, felt that such a “form-oozing structural engineer” who “sort of feels in
their bones almost the way stresses go in a structure” was an invaluable partner.22
Seidler’s work after Nervi’s death, in January, 1979, showed how much he had learned
from their collaboration. “Not only did he give us marvelous structural concepts,” Seidler
noted, “he also taught us how to build.”23

The Hong Kong Club building, designed and built in 1980-1984, reads as a posthumous
tribute to their collaboration, with long-span concrete beams and girders shaped to form
efficient shear blocks at their ends and T- or I-sections at their midpoints, all reflecting the
lessons learnt at Canberra. The Club’s 34m x 17m clear-span floor plates rise, however,
over 18 floors, straddling a four-story club building at the base, a display of structural
bravado that echoes Norman Foster’s adjacent scheme for the Hong Kong Bank building,
constructed almost in parallel. Speaking of the Club’s structural conception in 1993, Seidler
spoke of its expressed structural logic as a tribute to Nervi’s philosophy:

“As I had the privilege of working with people like Nervi, you learn to understand
how stresses and strains really should be ideally expressed in order to use a
minimum amount of material for a maximum amount of result.

“That gives this almost Borromini-esque S-shaped form, in that the top flange of
a t-beam spanning a huge distance should place the maximum amount of
concrete on the top flange. And this will inevitably want to reduce and change
as it becomes shear at the end of the beam. Shear at the end of the beam should
 be a solid rectangle of some kind. So the flange at the top changes from wide
to narrow, the bottom of the T which contains prestressing cables is narrow at
the middle, and becomes a solid rectangle at the end. And by giving this organic
expression to a beam, it becomes a beautiful thing. And that is beyond fashion,
because no one will ever say that this was done for visual reasons. It may give
visual pleasure, but it is eternal. It is a reflection of what the laws of nature make
us do. If only we make it our business to really analyze and understand them
and translate them into plausible means of production.”24

Figure 6. Hong Kong Club, Hong Kong. Harry Seidler, architect.

(Harry Seidler and Associates).

Seidler’s mention of baroque parallels is telling; he was less formally limited than Nervi had
been, to vocabularies of production and static performance, and his buildings show a far
more effusive set of influences. Yet his understanding of Nervi’s process—comprehending
the “laws of nature” and translating these into visual resonance through economic means—
shows the influence that Nervi’s example had. Seidler noted that the Hong Kong Club
reflected the peculiarities of a very different economy and building culture than either
Australia or Italy had; the Club’s beams and girders were cast-in-place with re-usable, flying
forms rather than being precast. Labor in Hong Kong at the time was inexpensive, bamboo
for scaffolding abundant, and space for a precasting yard prohibitively expensive. Re-
usable metal formwork allowed Seidler to match the sculptural but logical forms with a
repetitive, cost-saving process, but the effect is different in its articulation and lack of jointed
demarcations between structural elements.25
Perhaps the most telling tribute to their collaboration was Nervi’s, as he declined to take
any fee from Seidler’s office for either the Canberra or MLC projects. This was due in part
to the bureaucracy that came with Italian taxation of overseas income at the time. But the
work had been, in Nervi’s words, “a pleasant discussion between colleagues, a reciprocal
exchange of opinions and ideas” that had been worth the time and effort spent on its own.26
Nervi hoped, as the MLC Centre neared completion, that their work would “contribute…to
future opportunities in which our collaboration shall not be limited to some parts of the
building, but will concern the whole structure.”27 In this light, Seidler’s Club building in Hong
Kong represents an evocative tribute to a long-running conversation between two
designers from radically different backgrounds, who nonetheless found a shared
philosophy that translated the vocabularies of engineering, construction, and architecture
into one another’s languages to forge a small but resonant body of work.

Endnotes

1
Quoted in “Canberra Criteria,” The Architectural Review. Vol. 156, no. 961. March, 1977. 141-
142.
2
Guy Nordenson, Seven Structural Engineers: The Felix Candela Lectures. (New York: Museum
of Modern Art, 2008). 166.
3
For Ponti’s description of the tower’s conception see Gio Ponti, “Espressioni di Nervi a Milano,”
Domus, n. 352. March, 1959. 1-3. Contemporary criticism recognizing the constrained
expression of Nervi’s brilliant engineering solution includes Reyner Banham, “Criticism: Pirelli
Building, Milan,” The Architectural Review, Vol. 129, no. 769. 194-200. Perhaps the most cogent
recognition of Pirelli’s place in skyscraper history, however, is Edgar Kaufmann, “Scraping the
Skies of Italy,” Art News, vol. 54, no. 10. Feb., 1956. 38-41. Kaufmann notes that the tower
makes nods to Corbusier and Wright, and that its pioneering use of concrete foretold much future
development—a prediction that has largely proven correct.
4
Adrian Sheppard, FRAIC, “Place Victoria: A Joint Venture Between Luigi Moretti and Pier Luigi
Nervi.” Online at https://www.mcgill.ca/architecture/files/architecture/PlaceVictoriaMoretti.pdf.
5
Audio recording, “Harry Seidler interviewed by Hazel de Berg in the Hazel de Berg collection.”
Jan. 13, 1972. Online at: https://catalogue.nla.gov.au
6
“Australia Square Tower Project, Structural Engineer’s Report,” August, 1963. In Folder P60/5,
PLN Archives, MAXXI, Rome.
7
Letter, H. Seidler to PLN, 13 Sept., 1963. In Folder P60/1,
8
Nervi also suggested that a model be built and tested at ISMES, a university laboratory that had
collaborated with him on his two skyscraper projects to date; Seidler agreed, but in January, after
receiving a bid of US$20,000 to carry out the work in Italy, Civil and Civic suggested that the
model testing be done in Australia instead. Nervi balked at this suggestion. While his arrangement
with Seidler dictated that Miller, Milston and Ferris would retain all legal responsibility for the
building’s engineering, he felt that being listed on the project as even a consultant gave him a
‘moral responsibility.’ “The fact that the static research on the model is to be executed by an
Australian laboratory that I do not know and whose results I could not interpret and discuss, makes
it very difficult, if not impossible, for me to be engaged.” Only after a month of careful diplomacy on
Seidler’s part did Nervi agree to the arrangement; his role on the project was officially changed to
“Structural Consultant,” and he and Seidler agreed that his primary responsibility would be not the
engineering of the tower, but its method of construction. Minutes of meeting held at Studio Nervi,
25 Oct. 1963. In Folder P60/1, PLN Archives, MAXXI, Rome, and Letter, PLN to H.L. Hammond,
Civil and Civic. 11 Mar 1964. In Folder P60/1, PLN Archives, MAXXI, Rome.
9
Minutes of meeting held 22 June 1964 at Studio Nervi. In Folder P60/1, PLN Archives, MAXXI,
Rome.
10
Ibid.
 11
Letter, H. Seidler to PLN, 4 Aug 1965. In Folder P60/1, PLN Archives, MAXXI, Rome.
12
Letter, Studio Nervi to H. Seidler, 8 Sept. 1965. In Folder P60/1, PLN Archives, MAXXI, Rome.
13
See, for instance, Horace Sutton. "Sydney: Skyscrapers and 30-Cent Cab Rides." The
Washington Post, Times Herald, Jan 2, 1972. G10. Sutton noted that one could dine in the
tower’s rooftop restaurant and observe construction on the “bold and aggressive” Opera House
that “refuses to get finished.”
14
Albert E Norman, "Australia Goes Up 50 Stories." The Christian Science Monitor, Jul 7, 1967.
13.
15
David Saunders, quoted in “Canberra Criteria,” The Architectural Review. Vol. 156, no. 961.
March, 1977. 143.
16
Letter, A. Nervi to HS, 8 Feb 1973. In Folder P60/1, PLN Archives, MAXXI, Rome.
17
“Canberra Criteria,” The Architectural Review. Vol. 156, no. 961. March, 1977. 141-142.
18
Letter, H. Seidler to A. Nervi, 27 Jan 1971.
19
Letter, Antonio Nervi to H. Seidler, 10 July 1973. In Folder P60/1, PLN Archives, MAXXI, Rome.
20
William Marlin, “A Paris Accord.” Architectural Record, vol. 164, no. 7. Nov., 1978. 103-112.
On the T-beams, Marlin noted “These…show Seidler’s propensity for sticking with a good idea.”
21
Letter, PLN to unknown, 20 Oct 1972. In Folder P60/1, PLN Archives, MAXXI, Rome.
22
Hazel de Berg, op. cit.
23
Hazel de Berg, op. cit.
24
Harry Seidler, “Architecture Responding to Nature,” Lecture, London, U.K., 1993. Online at
https://www.pidgeondigital.com/talks/architecture-responding-to-nature/
25
Ibid.
26
Letter, A. Nervi to H. Seidler, 21 Sept 1971. In Folder P60/1, PLN Archives, MAXXI, Rome.
27
Letter, A. Nervi to H. Seidler, 15 Oct 1973. In Folder P60/1, PLN Archives, MAXXI, Rome.

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