ABSTRACT
Konrad Wachsmann’s work was not only definitive for large span engineering in the twentieth century, creating optimal spaces of flexibility, but also for his poetic vision, which appealed to those that imagined his spaces as a never-ending twisting vortex. His observations were about spatial dreams rather than spatial realities and it was these unrealities that persuaded designers to think beyond the boundaries of conventional space. The attraction for me was through one defining comment and that was an observation about the catenary cables of Brooklyn Bridge that were, according to him, the perfect definition of space: they were simply lines, not on paper but in space itself. One imagines that the purity of the object appealed to the tectonic mind but for an architect his description was a mnemonic to be completed in the imagination. Brooklyn Bridge is not enigmatic; it is technically specific but it shares some language with early Piranesi drawings, where the linear construction of the drawing had an evocative quality – both have qualities that attract further thought.
