Museum exhibit honors Swiss design

Although the relationship between engineering and art may seem tenuous at best, the current exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum, "The Art of Structural Design: A Swiss Legacy," celebrates the connection between the two seemingly disparate fields.

A collaboration between the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Princeton University art museum, the exhibition focuses on the aesthetic achievements of four Swiss engineers: Robert Maillart, Othmar Ammann, Hans Isler, and Christian Menn. The exhibit also includes the work of their teachers, Wilhelm Ritter and Pierre Lardy, who educated them at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and were responsible for initiating the flourishing of structural art that took place in Switzerland in the 20th century.

The exhibition was developed out of David P. Billington's popular course "CEE 262: Structures and the Urban Environment," which examines the scientific, social, and artistic aspects of bridges, towers, and other large-scale structures. As guest curator of "Swiss Legacy," Billington further illuminates the concept of "structural art," an art form parallel to but independent of architecture that began with the industrial revolution when iron became a dominant building material.

"All [the works] are structural art, not architectural art, and come from the engineer's imagination," Billington explained.

"The Princeton University Art Museum is proud to honor Professor Billington and the artistic tradition of these preeminent structural designers," said Museum Director Susan M. Taylor in the exhibition's press release.

"By examining the merits of their work as artists and the educational philosophy behind this practice, 'Swiss Legacy' exemplifies a key focus of the museum's mission—to push the limits of the definition of art and to incorporate design investigation into its program."

Billington expressed similar sentiments, stating that a main objective of the exhibition is "to reach out in the University and to have the Art Museum serve more than its traditional role."

In only one room, the exhibition clearly demonstrates the artistic value of correct form through photographs, paintings, models designed and constructed by students and staff, computer terminals with access to the exhibition's website, a video form the PBS series "Great Projects: The Building of America", and 3-dimensional photographic images.

This innovative, diverse, and interactive approach of the exhibition helps to emphasize the intrinsic correlation between aesthetic value and beneficial technology.

Among the structures represented are Ammann's George Washington, Bayonne, Bronx-Whitestone, and Verrazano-Narrows bridges, Menn's Felsenau and Sunniberg bridges, Maillart's Salginatobel and Vessy bridges, and Isler's elegant concrete shells. What all the structures share in common is the fulfillment of the goals of structural art: a balance between economy, efficiency, and elegance.

The goal of the exhibition, though, is not just to encourage non-engineers to appreciate the beauty of well-designed structures. More precisely, the exhibition proposes that the relationship between artists and engineers be mutual.

In that respect, a main component of the exhibition is pedagogical, as it urges engineers to be more conscious of their potential for artistic expression. The exhibition thus serves as model for revolutionizing engineering education and the practice of structural engineering in the United States.

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For this reason, Billington explained, the exhibition focuses on the connection between the two teachers and their students in order to stress "the idea of the relationship between teaching and design," the idea that is at the heart of Billington's course.

The construction of the exhibition itself was an educational process, as students in the Architecture and Engineering program were responsible for creating technically correct and aesthetically pleasing models for the exhibition. The building of the models was overseen by Joseph Vocaturo, lab manager of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering since 1999.

Maria Janaro, who is currently completing her Masters of Science and Engineering in Structural Engineering at Princeton and is also teaching CEE 262 for Prof. Billington for the second time, was responsible for constructing the models of Isler's Grötzingen outdoor theater and sections of Heimberg Indoor tennis center.

Janaro wanted to make the forms in the same way that Isler originally did, so she experimented all summer long with various types of fabrics until she settled upon burlap. "It was fun to experiment," Janaro said, "because we don't get to very much here. It's a very theoretical school."

For Janaro, this experimentation with form and creative approach to engineering is what makes the exhibition so momentous.

"[The exhibition] typifies Prof. Billington and his motives in his coursework, his bringing awareness to people of the beauty of structural form," Janaro said. "The idea that you can find the aesthetically pleasing in the most efficient form is a good concept that the non-engineer, or sometimes even the engineer, doesn't understand."