From the librarian:

This monograph on Nervi by Ada Huxtable, published in 1960, is a contemporaneous account of Pier Luigi Nervi's work was written with the cooperation with Nervi himself. As such, the descriptions of his work and process, as given by Huxtable, are likely to be very accurately describing the engineer's own thoughts. Being a contemporaneous record, Huxtable features many photographs (132 plates), not just of completed structures, but also some of the form work and construction process for some of these structures. These details give key insight to the engineer of today who may look at Nervi's structures and ask, "How could these possibly be built today?"

Huxtable writes the monograph in three parts and which describe Nervi's education and early career, development of Ferro-Cemento, and reflections on "art" vs. "engineering" vs "architecture", pre-dating David P. Billington's own exploration into the establishment of "structural art" as a unique art form.

Nervi's forms may suggest to the contemporary reader the use of computerized or parametric design. However, Nervi's structures were all built and formed by hand and calculated without computers. For the engineer who is interested in exploring ways that reinforced concrete construction can be pushed to new heights, this exploration of Nervi's work, can give insight into what is possible even without our current level of design and modelling technology.