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Nic Goldsmith, FAIA, is the founding director of FTL Design and Engineering Studio, now the Lightweight Structures Group of Silman, a TYLin Company. He was the former Chairman of the Lightweight Structures Association of the Americas and has been featured in many publications including an Architectural Monograph titled, “FTL: SOFTNESS, MOVEMENT” and his recent book, “MASS to MEMBRANE.”
STRUCTURE: How did you originally get into focusing on “lightweight structures?” Was there a chance pivotal moment, or had it been something you wanted to pursue?
Goldsmith: As a child of the 1960s, going to Woodstock, living through the landing on the Moon and all that, I was interested in alternative architecture just like I was interested in alternative lifestyles and alternative pretty much everything. And you know, I was looking at alternative architecture and seeing the work of Archigram, the work of Pier Luigi Nervi, Felix Candela, and Frei Otto. I was also reading books about Native Americans, where the square is seen just as a symbol of death: everything in their culture needs to be in a circle with a minimal impact on the land as we don’t own it; we just use it.
I started doing structures in college at Cornell for the Arts Quad with a couple of classmates. We designed festival structures that we would build ourselves after hours, joining seams together with details purchased from the local hardware store. I was amazed how easy it was; we were just kids learning architecture, and there was a lot we could do with minimal resources. We even did a concert structure for Deep Purple in Schoellkopf Field, Cornell’s football field.
Remember, in those days there weren’t computers to do analysis, so we had to do form finding and analysis by physical modeling. When I was working for Frei Otto in Europe, early in my career, we had to create patterns quickly by hand so we would basically allow the fabricator to sew all the panel pieces together while we just patterned the edges in a physical model to create an efficient warped shape. By starting with the fabric, creating curved elements like humps, then patterning the edge based on the model, soon enough a structural shape emerged and patterns could proceed.
STRUCTURE: As you are describing, you studied architecture and you are licensed as an architect. Do you consider yourself an architect or an engineer, or some percentage of each?
Goldsmith: Yeah, that’s a good question. Sometimes I think of myself as an artist, acting as an engineer, trained as an architect. I think there’s a structural poetry in this lightweight technology which pulls all these qualities together. I’m a great admirer of the French, but when Louis XIV created the L’École Royale des Ponts et Chaussées—i.e. the engineering school, so they could build the roads for the military and then also created L’École des Beaux-Arts for sculpture, painting and architecture as another separate school, he inadvertently created a problem. It’s one of the reasons why on many campuses in America, the engineering school is not directly tied into the architecture school. And I find that a real mistake as it’s one practice, and they didn’t realize what they were doing. It is weird that we just continued this tradition from the 17th century on, but that’s where we are today: one practice but two professions.
And so on the design side in America, engineers often wait for the architect to say this is what it is and let’s figure it out. OK: how big are the W sections going to be, and what type of bolts, and what is the foundation, and so forth. But I think engineers can actually have a larger role to say: Is this really what we want the design to do? How can we optimize it? How can we look early on at a project and—this is what I talk about a lot—the difference between form finding versus shape making. I think form finding is a more ethical approach to building today, especially with such limited resources. Yes, you can do 50-foot cantilevers; engineers can do anything, right? But do you really need it? There’s a lot of extra material captured in there in order to make that cantilever work and we call it out.
STRUCTURE: Like Bob Silman would often say: “Yes, we CAN build it, but OUGHT we build it?”
Goldsmith: Exactly. Bob was really good that way. He understood structures and had a disarming way to enroll the architect to think about these ideas.
STRUCTURE: What overall project would you say you’re most proud of having worked on?
Goldsmith: It’s of course hard to pick one because they’re all so different, with such different programs and different budgets. But one of the projects that I’m most proud of was in 1992 we designed a folding Opera House that could be transported on seven semi-trailer trucks. It was the Carlos Moseley Pavilion for the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. It provided for 20 concerts a year, in all the New York City parks, and it set up in three and a half hours, so that each day it could be used in a different park.
We actually ended up pouring the concrete foundations inside the trailers to get the maximum weight without special permits, and we worked backwards from that to develop the size of the fabric and everything else.
It was a very interesting process. One funny thing was when we went to the building department, they said, “Look, we’re not going to review this, because it’s not a building.” The Metropolitan Opera said, “Well we have to get somebody to say they approve us doing this; we don’t care who it is, but it has to be somebody with authority.” So, we finally got the Department of Cranes and Derricks to give us an annual renewable permit as a stiff legged (Chicago) derrick. It is basically three trusses that self-connect, using hydraulics and they subsequently lift up the fabric, which is the membrane roof that covers the performance area. It’s interesting when you no longer fit into standard check boxes.
STRUCTURE: I imagine that happens a lot with your work. So, where do you find inspiration for your design? From architecture, from nature, from somewhere else?
Goldsmith: Certainly, from nature. You know, every time I watch an Andy Goldsworthy movie, showing how you tie things of nature together, I’m always impressed, understanding natural forces and how nature works and transmits loads, is always fascinating.
I worked once with an artist, Aleksandra Kasuba, who’s passed away now, but she was really one of the first artists who did stretch fabric structures in the ‘60s. She always said she had no engineering sense at all and no architecture background, that she was just a pure artist. But she looked at tension as if it was a liquid on the surface. She designed these structures, and they were always efficient with an unconscious structural logic, looking at it as if the surface itself was just this liquid. So how do you attach the liquid, how you bring it down, and so forth. It was really an interesting, a completely different approach than what I had training with Frei Otto, Peter Rice, and Ted Happold.
Just like one of the things we love about Antoni Gaudi is, as well as his buildings are pretty incredible visually, the design process is amazing. He would make these physical models with element nets and sacks of flour tied to them, and hang the whole thing in suspension. But then you take a photograph and flip it upside down and voila, it’s a model for the catenoid building where everything is in pure compression. That’s great process, simultaneously intuitive, visual, and analytical.
The engineering profession today has every year more and more powerful tools; we need to take enough time to look at what we are designing and engineering so we can achieve structural poetry. Arthur Mellen Wellington is famous for saying that “an engineer can do for a dollar what any fool can do for two.” I think lightness in construction can help in this endeavor as it’s cost effective, but as important is to be aware of your building’s legacy and how it contributes to a more sustainable world. ■