Expressive Structure: The Life and Work of Matthew Nowicki

Abstract

Matthew Nowicki (1910-1950) developed an approach to architecture that negotiated the architectural and engineering fields through his use of expressive structural forms. As more than an optimized materialist exploration, Nowicki's approach was a reasoned response to the technical and societal challenges facing Modern architecture, and the broader conditions of the postwar world of which he was a part. Through his work, Nowicki broadened the array of possible Modern design solutions available to architects in the postwar period. Widely respected and well published, Nowicki's work is significant because it embraced both engineering and architectural concerns, and opened the door to an expanded field of expressive structural systems within Modern architecture. Matthew Nowicki's structurally expressive Modern architecture set the stage for many other formally expressive structures in the years that followed.