"Casa Saldarini built in 1961 and also known as "The Whale" is a house designed by Vittorio Giorgini, born in Florence in 1926, an architect interested in the relationship between architecture and nature. Giorgini studied in Florence and from 1969 to 1996 lived and worked in NYC, where he taught at the Pratt Institute. The first building in the world based on an iso-elastic membrane made of concrete and wire netting, architects say it anticipated Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain by 25 years." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet