How it began
Vladimir Shukhov, born in 1853, studied engineering at the Imperial Moscow Technical School. He built the first hyperboloid structure as a water tower for the 1896 All-Russian Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod. It rose about 120 feet over the exhibition grounds. The tower, designed in 1896, is described as the world's first diagrid hyperboloid structure and it survives today, listed as the Shukhov Tower in Polibino.
How it works
A hyperboloid can be pictured as a long, thin vertical hyperbola rotated about an axis alongside it. The result is a tower that flares at the top and bottom. The shape is very strong because it has double curvature: its sides bend outward while its cross-section bends inward. A surface bent in two directions at once resists further bending through its tensile strength, in the same way that a slice of pizza held with its sides curved upward stops flopping downward.
How it spread
Shukhov used double curvatures in other exhibition pavilions, in giant arches and in factory buildings. During the Russian civil war he proposed a 1,150-foot radio tower for Moscow; Lenin had him scale it back, and the 525-foot tower finished in 1922 stacks six diminishing hyperboloids on top of one another. His original design called for nine. Many such towers have been built since, including China's Canton Tower, which is about 2,000 feet tall.
What lasted
The hyperboloid form became familiar architecture. The cooling towers associated with nuclear reactors are hyperboloids, and the open steel lattice Shukhov used is also described as the first steel diagrid shell. Shukhov himself is remembered as a wide-ranging engineer who also created a cracking process for the oil industry and designed oil pumps, tanks, pipelines and tanker barges. He died in 1939.
Where it stands today
The 1896 tower survives. The 1922 Moscow radio tower fell into disrepair and in 2014 was reported to be facing demolition after engineers judged restoration impractical given the extent of decay, although some four million dollars had been authorized to restore it. The form continues in use for very tall towers such as the Canton Tower.
