August Komendant
After World War II he immigrated to the United States, where he wrote several books on structural engineering and served as a professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.
After his studies in engineering at the Technical Institute in Dresden, Germany, he returned to Estonia where he was responsible for several major bridges and other structures.
Komendant was fond of explaining how pre-stressed concrete works by demonstrating that one can lift a row of books by squeezing them together so tightly that they act as a single strong unit.
[6]: 126 In the early 1960s they collaborated on the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh during its initial design phases, but Komendant walked off the job after a sharp disagreement with Kahn, and they were personally distant for about three years afterwards.
"[5]: 98 For the eight-story Richards Medical Research Laboratories (1957–1965) in Philadelphia, PA, Komendant engineered the structure of pre-cast and pre-stressed concrete columns, beams and trusses that were trucked in from a factory and fitted together with a crane.
Hydraulic tension was then applied to internal post-tensioning cables running in all three dimensions, locking the structural elements into place something like a child's toy that is floppy until its parts are pulled together tightly with a string.
Komendant worked closely with the manufacturer to ensure that outcome, with the result that the largest offset between any two elements in the finished structure was only 1⁄16 inch (1.6 mm).
He also left the ceiling of the entry porch open so the public could inspect the structure there, including the Vierendeel trusses that Komendant engineered to support each floor.
Looking something like ladders turned on their sides, these trusses have large, rectangular openings that make it easy to thread pipes and ductwork into the laboratories.
[13] Architectural historian Vincent Scully said the pioneering work by Kahn and Komendant on this project "was to affect for good the techniques of the whole concrete pre-casting industry from the factory to the site.
"[15] At the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1959–1965) in La Jolla, CA, the need for mechanical services (air ducts, pipes, etc.)
The trusses impose strictly vertical loads on their support columns, to which they are attached not rigidly but with a system of slip plates and tension cables to permit small movements during moderate earthquakes.
[12] At the First Unitarian Church (1959–1969) in Rochester, NY, Kahn faced the challenge of placing a heavy concrete roof structure between four light towers in the corners of the sanctuary without using support columns in the interior of the room.
The contractor feared that the heavy roof structure would collapse when the forms were removed, but Komendant assured him that it would settle no more than 1⁄4 inch (6.4 mm).
Before Komendant's arrival on the project, Kahn had been designing the curved gallery roofs as vaults supported by a series of columns along their edges.
Komendant recognized that the gallery roofs should be engineered not as true vaults but as vault-shaped beams that would require support only at their four corners.
According to professor Leslie, Komendant "almost single-handedly assured the resulting concrete finishes, by far the best on a Kahn building and some of the finest in the world.
"[2] Komendant played a significant role in handling a conflict between Kahn and the local engineering firm that had been given major responsibility for the museum's design and construction.
[12] From 1964 to 1967, during the period when he and Kahn were personally distant, Komendant worked with architect Moshe Safdie on the Habitat 67 project in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Safdie had received the commission to build a housing complex for Montreal's Expo 67 on the basis of his university thesis project although he was only 25 years old and had never built anything before.
