Art: Nature Study

Some architects have gone back to nature—and more should. So argues Manhattan Engineer Fred M. Severud in the current ARCHITECTURAL FORUM. Says he: "[There are] few problems in structural design which Nature has not already met and solved. By our own standards, her designs are structurally more efficient and esthetically more satisfactory than ours." Some examples:

¶ Morning glories do not split open when bees make crash landings on them because five vertical ribs reinforce the blossom, and its overhanging lip holds it together. Frank Lloyd Wright "consciously duplicates" the principle in...

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