¶ Octet Truss in Yale Art Gallery
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RBF Definitions
"When a Yale Professor of architecture, Louis Kahn, employed my octet truss in a design for the floor structuring throughout the new Art Gallery at Yale University, that truss, in economic compliance with the building code, had to be fabricated in reinforced concrete. But the Yale Engineering Department and its consulting engineers refused to credit my three-way beam for the task on the grounds of the invalidity of two xxxxx crisscross beams, ‘because,’ they said, ‘three were even more redundant.’ Yale, therefore, built the floors on the basis that only one axis of the truss could carry the load. They called it a ‘slanting beam construction.’ Result: the octet truss was reduced to a role of aesthetic nonsense-- a fantastically expensive set of lampshades.
“Fallacy here was that the architect should not have employed a system which he could not defend structurally before the ignorance of the engineers. Result: relegation of an important new development to submergence in ignorance.”
¶ Citations
- RBF Ltr. to Donald W. Robertson, Pp.3-4, 8 Jan’55
