Miracles in Concrete

The first comprehensive tribute to Louis Kahn's and Moshe Safdie's structural engineer

The Estonian-American civil engineer August Komendant (1906-1992) worked with numerous famous architects and engineers on several of the 20th century's most iconic buildings.

Concrete was Komendant's passion through decades. He used his expertise in designing structures as different as the Kadriorg Stadium grandstand in Tallinn, Estonia (Elmar Lohk, 1938), the Habitat '67 experimental housing complex in Montréal, Canada (Moshe Safdie, 1967) and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, USA (Louis I. Kahn, 1972).

Komendant combined technical expertise with a keen sense of aesthetics: as an engineer, he valued the timeless and enduring qualities of architecture. He knew that miracles require more than spreadsheets and a budget - the creative impulse is essential.

• One of the most innovative civil engineers of the 20th century.
• Specialized in the use of reinforced concrete and various other concrete technologies
• Structural engineer to architects such as Louis I. Kahn, Moshe Safdie, and Eero Saarinen

Auteur

Carl-Dag Lige (ed.), architecture critic and historian, curator at the Estonian Museum of Architecture