Maillart, Robert

Maillart, Robert (mīyär`), 1872–1940, Swiss engineer, renowned for his inventive and beautiful reinforced-concrete bridges. Maillart's basic structural principles—integration of the supporting arch, the stiffening wall, and the traffic platform into one cohesive unit—were applied as early as 1901 in a bridge at Zuoz, Switzerland. These ideas were further refined in Maillart's later works. The Schwandbach Bridge (1933) is constructed on a curving plan to facilitate traffic movement over a mountain gorge. Maillart was also an innovator in the development of reinforced-concrete beamless floor slab (mushroom-column) construction, which has been used in warehouses, factories, and other multistoried buildings.