¶ Pneumatic-hydraulic Structures
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Index Entry
Pneumatic-hydraulic Structures:
"Hydraulics and aerodynamics and pneumatics-- Nature is using them in making trees and everything else, but we’re just beginning to use them in buildings. This is the reason great trees can go through hurricanes. Nature uses the crystals only for tension; all the compression she uses hydraulics for. In between the molecules of liquids of the tree are the gases, so the branches away-- five tons, ten tons-- waving in the wind. And it’s doing so because the hydraulics holds its shape under pressure in compression, with the very high tensile strength of the fibers, and the pneumatics there, taking all that shock.
“No man has built any buildings like that yet. That’s the truth. That’s the way nature does it. That’s the way she designs you. You’re a beautiful piece of design, and what a contrast you are to a stone fortress! Can you imagine architects saying I am unaesthetic because I didn’t want to work with stone? Yes, Italy is beautiful: every stone laid by a prisoner. The reason you don’t have stone buildings now is that a man has to earn a wage. If you pay him so he can live decently you can’t afford to lay stone.”
