The Life of Eduardo Torroja
In 1957 Eduardo Torroja published Razón y ser de los tipos estructurales, and the next year it appeared in the United States as Philosophy of Structures. That it was immediately translated – by Jaroslav Josef Polívka, structural engineer of Wright’s Guggenheim, and his son Milos – reflects the enormous international reach of Torroja’s work at the time, and its continued global importance perhaps justifies the decision of Pepa Cassinello, director of the Eduardo Torroja Foundation, to publish this biography directly in English.
It was José Antonio Torroja, the master’s son, who in 2021 tasked her to write it. The author’s trajectory has since birth been intimately linked to the Torroja family. Her father, the architect Fernando Cassinello, was a friend and a collaborator in both the magazine Informes de la Construcción and what is now the Eduardo Torroja Institute. The narrative is chronological, profusely illustrated with photos relating building works to personal and family contexts. Completing it are sections devoted to writings, unfinished projects, and the Eduardo Torroja Museum, tucked under the Zarzuela Racecourse’s north stand. The engineer’s ties to the arts is echoed in an uninhibited book layout, with color codes oozing modernity and page edges flashing orange.
Torroja was a giant, a radical innovator. His constructions looked simple but were very complex in concept and calculation. His designs showed a rare power of synthesis, materialized in audacious, gorgeous structures with no precedent. May his legacy continue.
