Drawings of the Guastavino Company: Innovation and Promotion

Abstract

John Ochsendorf, in his book, Guastavino Vaulting, says that the patents of this valencian builder, settled in the United States during the last decades of the XIX century, are not original contributions. Although some builders may have been using such a system in Spain at the time, "Guastavino appears to have been the first to treat it as a modern, standardized system, using new materials and rigorously detailing the construction methods" (Ochsendorf 2010, 155).