"... all through school had a reputation of working alone and of doing his work in an unusual way. ...in 1950 he graduated with a degree in civil engineering. For his final-year design project, he chose to study thin shells... Following graduation... he helped [Pierre] Lardy with teaching, and also worked on the many cases of structural failure [both at his alma mater, the Federal Technical Institute]... When Isler left his position... he considered... [a] career as a painter, but challenged by shell design problems... while doing free-lance engineering work.. in late 1954, he designed a pneumatic form, thin shell factory for the Trösch Company. It was the first work in which he set the form completely on his own. In 1955, at an international congress in Amsterdam, he presented publicly for the first time his new designs..."