Editors: Ana Tostões, Ivan Blasi
Guest editors: Kyo Takenouchi, Ola Wedebrunn
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Modern bridges, Modern infrastructures, Modern engineering.
The search on Bridges and Infrastructures has to do with a matter of connecting. To launch bridges seems to be a kind of life requirement, as far as it is the way to connect sides, which means improving relations and energies, desire and intelligence. Bridges and Infrastructures have the function of connecting pieces of land and the role of creating a connected world. The matter is to make links and establish a network. In fact, it is a global network made of works of art, which have a physical and material presence balancing between values such as economy and elegance and providing a better life for every man. Seeking audaciously for innovation, research contributes to these large scale structures as it has been improving material capacities and technical creation. It is a huge field that lay infinite possibilities for art and science to perceive changes of social, aesthetic, technical standards and norms.
Published:
2011-12-01
Book Reviews
Documentation Issues
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Docomomo Japan became an official national chapter of docomomo International in 2000. In keeping with the other principal international chapter members, docomomo Japan registered the first list of 20 significant buildings and sites in Japan. Then, in 2003, the list expanded to 100, and subsequently in 2011, the list increased further to present the docomomo Japan 150 Selections.
Editorial
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The search on Bridges and Infrastructures has to do with a matter of connecting. To launch bridges seems to be a kind of life requirement, as far as it is the way to connect sides, which means improving relations and energies, desire and intelligence. Bridges and Infrastructures have the function of connecting pieces of land and the role of creating a connected world. The matter is to make links and establish a network. In fact, it is a global network made of works of art, which have a physical and material presence balancing between values such as economy and elegance and providing a...
Essays
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At present, it is by no means an exaggeration to say that innumerable bridges and infrastructures are able to bring us to the end of the earth, whether these are monuments, scattered in a remote area, recognized or not. situated where mankind intensively has made its effort to extend daily circles of life till the present day. Humans have always been on the move, in primitive ages they went up the hill and down the dale, over and beyond mountains, across streams and wherever obstacles had to be crossed, bridges and roads skilfully came into their hands. Emerging directly on the ground,...
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The engineer is an inseparable part of the Modern Movement. He has fulfilled its request of working unprejudiced. But he was driven to his most magnificent works by a mental concentration on technique excluding many other influences. Therefore, John Ruskin called the engineer a human beaver. Rarely the ambition of synthetic Modernism to suspend the difference between culture and civilization was converted. In the writer’s opinion, this is no reason to abandon this ambition and engineers should keep up the Modern tradition and continue to work on it.
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Robert Maillart’s innovative views concerning the use of concrete come within the scope of the history of structures, structural materials and concrete as a material of structure. It will even lead us far beyond these issues. At the end, the point of view expressed in this article will be the view of a structural designer. When preparing this reflection, I realise that there is no straightforward answer to the question: “What is in fact Maillart’s real innovation considering all the contributions he made to the art of engineering?” Putting forward the different aspects mentioned above as...
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The General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge spanning over Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela (1958–1962), designed by Ing. Professor Riccardo Morandi, a masterpiece of Modern engineering, is now a Modern Landmark at Risk. The remarkable and little known story of the construction of this structure “could not be accomplished by a handful of men. From planning to financing, from design to construction, a great number of Venezuelan and European engineers worked jointly in Wiesbaden, Caracas, Rome, Maracaibo, Zürich, Paris, and Lisbon. In this way, one of the most outstanding structures of our time was...
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From 1904, when his career began, until 1962, when he died, Eugène Freyssinet did not stop building or advising on all aspects related with his work. To give an idea of his interest in the field of bridges, we selected the following: the Veurdre and Plougastel bridges as reinforced concrete examples and the Luzancy, the Marne and the Caracas La Guaira highway bridges as prestressed concrete works. In these brief descriptions, rather than the technical nature of the design, we have focused on intuition and innovation which made these works models and which inspired many engineers to...
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Eduardo Torroja Miret graduated as an engineer in 1923. That same year, after a bloodless coup d’état, General Primo de Rivera assumed the control of government in Spain and launched a modernizing economic program clearly based on infrastructure: development of the telephone network, modernization of ports, tramway system expansion, creation of 800 km of railroads, extension and paving of over 15,000 km of roads...
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Sergio Musmeci occupies a very important position in the history of late 20th century Italian engineering. Born in Rome in 1926, he initially graduated in civil engineering and later in aeronautical engineering. Following an apprenticeship with Pier Luigi Nervi, in whose office he worked from 1949 to 1951, and with Riccardo Morandi, he later opened his own engineering and architecture office together with his wife, the architect Zenaide Zanini. He taught at the University of Rome, initially as an assistant to the course in Rational Mechanics and Graphic Statics, and later as professor of...
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The heart of the famous Düsseldorf Bridge Family are the three cable-stayed bridges built between the late 50s and early 70s of the last century. They mark the beginning of the development of Modern cable-stayed bridges, but not only from a technological point of view. Instead they develop the aesthetical potential once the new structural type has become favorable all over the world.
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After the earthquake of 1923 which devastated Tokyo, Japanese engineers worked on reconstruction to generate a new Modern landscape in the capital, taking into account various arguments ranging from science to culture. The construction process of the Eïtai and Kiyosu bridges over the Sumida River are indicative of this development. This paper will describe this process to better understand Japanese bridge design in 1920s in terms of technology and aesthetics.
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In Japan where many earthquakes occur there is a certain standpoint about long–life architecture and bridges The relation between material and form is important for this standpoint. The reason is not only that materials have their own character, for example, physical and chemical properties, but also that form has its own individual character as load–bearing system. Without the relation between material and form, long–life architecture and bridges can’t be realized.
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The Jylland (Jutland) peninsula and the approximately 278 islands that form Denmark have had bridge connections since the Middle Ages. The most notable bridges of the 20th century are the high level bridges such as the Lillebælt Bridge from 1935 and the Storstrøm Bridge from 1937. Cable supported bridges and cable-stayed bridges have been making up the most significant infrastructural aspects which cross the seaways of the Baltic Sea.
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Over Arup (1895-1988) once said in a BBC interview that the two structures that had given him most satisfaction were the Highpoint flats in North London (1935) and the Kingsgate footbridge, Durham, Yorkshire (1963), as “both are rather perfect examples of the complete integration of architecture, structure and method of construction”.
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The Penguin Pool at London Zoo 1934, designed by Berthold Lubetkin & Tecton is one of the iconic landmarks of modern architecture. This article tells the story of its creation, the structural secrets of its audacious spiral ramps and its varying fortunes in the evolution of the zoo as an institution for the display of captive animals. The Penguin Pool, visited and admired by thousands over the 75 years since its completion, also stands as a poignant emblem of the dreams and disappointments of modern architecture.
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In 1935–36, the English writer and design critic Philip Morton Shand (1888-1960), proponent of Modernism, translator of Walter Gropius and founder of MARS group (Modern Architectural Research Group) published two articles in the magazine “The Concrete Way”. The first one was entitled “Concrete´s furthest north”, highlighting the advanced and wide–ranging use of concrete construction in Iceland. With the second article were photographs of newly built public buildings by architect Sigurdur Gudmundsson (1885-1958) as well as bridges designed in the 1920s and 1930s by the engineers of the...
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The period around the year 1930 could be termed the culminating point with respect to the Modern architectural avant-garde in Slovakia. It was then that the concepts emerged from the most important works, the first Slovak architectural journals began to be published, the School of Applied Arts opened, as a Slovak variant of the German Bauhaus, and an entire range of other artistic and social initiatives indicated that Slovakia’s cultural environment could not only absorb avant-garde impulses, but develop them in a unique way. It was precisely at this moment that the history of one of the...
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As seen by approaching motorists on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, the “Rainbow Bridge” appears as if it’s crossing the 6–lane roadway with a graceful leap worthy of a ballet dancer. To people crossing the bridge, its gentle rise provides comfortable access to a popular beach and recreational parkland at edge of Lake Michigan.
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Mizen Head Footbridge in County Cork is a reinforced concrete through-arch structure spanning 50 m. The original structure was demolished and rebuilt 2009-2011, 100 years after its completion. This article describes the construction challenges of safely reconstructing a bridge in a difficult site location. The bridge provides access to a lighthouse on the tiny island of Cloghán, at the tip of Mizen Head in Southwest Cork. It is the result of a design competition held in the early 1900’s. The winning entry was by Mr. Noel Ridley of Westminster, London. It had the form of a pair of...
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On July 30, 1870, a visitor to the Niagara Falls noted glumly in his diary that “the impression of the waterfall was gripping, but not what I had expected”. Having traveled from Northern Europe to reach this scenic spot, the traveler - a railway engineer - was frankly disappointed. The landscape was flat and dreary, and only seen from very particular angles did the falls live up to their sublime reputation. What consoled the disillusioned tourist, however, were the many beautiful bridges built to accommodate traffic, commerce, and sightseeing around the falls: “The proud Clifton...
