ABSTRACT
Architects were drawn to tensile architecture for no better reason, sometimes, than that it offered an escape from the tyranny of the box. Architects tended to assume that basic prestressed tensile shapes were improved by being enlarged, perhaps because the history of the suspension bridge showed that its stability improved with increasing size once a certain span had been reached. Matthew Nowicki's Arena marks the beginning of tensile architecture based on surface as opposed to planar cable systems. By 1958 the impetus in tensile architecture had shifted from the United States to Europe and to France in particular. The tension idea surfaced in Melbourne, Australia, in 1958 for in that year, Robin Boyd, a noted Australian architect and critic, suspended a simply curved roof over his South Yarra home, and Yuncken and Freeman, with engineer Bill Irwin completed the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.
