ABSTRACT
The early tensile architecture of the 1950s was afflicted by an inability to match structural form with the appropriate technology in a way which was adequate as architecture. Modern architecture was based on late 19th century technology but it was not until the 1950s that engineers and architects began to take an interest in tensile architecture. Tensile architecture developed late and was preceded by a number of isolated experiments, the work of engineers for the most part, extending as far back as the nineteenth century. The first wave of tensile buildings in the early 1950s was designed not by architects but by engineers, and appeared in the traditional centres of suspension bridge technology-the United States and France. The role of the Second World War in the course of the modern movement in architecture is seldom examined, most often it is seen merely as an unfortunate interruption that delayed cultural advances.
