Dome

View of about half the wall as reinstalled in the Science Center; Constantino Nivola came from a Sardinian family of stonemasons and served an apprenticeship as a stonemason. In 1936 he entered the graphics' division of Olivetti in Italy, later emigrating to the US. In time he became a close friend of Le Corbusier and with his influence, Nivola defined his technique of sand-casting. He created a 'negative image' of his work in the sand on the beach, poured cement into the resultant mold and removed the cement block once it had dried. A 75-foot-long wall relief was made for the Olivetti showroom on Fifth Avenue, which opened to great acclaim in 1954, the same year Nivola became a professor and the director of the "Design Workshop" at Harvard. When the Olivetti showroom closed in 1970, the panels went to the Science Center at Harvard and have been on view since 1973. Restoration of the relief's colors took place in 2005. Source: Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (accessed 5/2/2013)