JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

This great pamphlet surfaced today from my mound of surfacing pamphlets–it is a prospectus/advertising/technical publication vehicle for Wayss & Freytag A.G., published in April 1930.  I wanted to share a couple of interesting photos that appear in the publication, which, (as the title states) centers on concrete reinforced smokestacks and breweries, which I guess in its way says a lot about the origin of the country of the company (Ruhr/beer).  Mainly though it is the one photograph (following) that sparked my interest in sharing this pamphlet, though the cross sections of the smokestacks harvest their own interest.  The images of the breweries are also entertaining, in a International Style kind of way, with the structures seeming far more interesting than the product they produced. (It is amazing in many ways that the Wrigley factory with all of its specialized equipment and beautiful plant and for all of the great effort that goes into their construction and maintenance that the end product of the massive engagement is chewing gum.)  The third picture below reveals a semi-Bauhausian project for a beer maker–in its concreteness it isn’t the hyperbolic paraboloids of Xenakis for the Phillips Pavillion of Expo ’58, or the Guggenheim, or (parts of) the Le Crobusier’s Ronchamp, but it is interesting, and was pretty unexpected. 

(That is one long, very skinny ladder there in the middle…I’d prefer to use a ladder that was at least more than half the width of me–this one wouldn’t come close.)

And the cross section and plan:

And the interesting/confusing brewery: