Bridge: The Latest Architecture and News

Swedish studio Urban Nouveau has created a plan to save Stockholm's Gamla Lidingöbron bridge by transforming it into a linear park and housing. Built in the 1920s, the rail and pedestrian bridge features a lattice structure and arched steel trusses that would frame 50 new apartments and a pedestrian park above. While the local council has made plans to demolish the Lidingö bridge, Urban Nouveau launched a petition with the aim of saving the bridge and re-purposing it for the city.

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The Panama Canal is to soon celebrate another milestone in its long history, with the imminent completion of the what will be the longest concrete four-lane cable-stayed structure in the world. With a 1750-foot (530-meter) central span, the Atlantic Bridge will connect the banks of the canal’s Atlantic Ocean entrance when it opens in early 2019.

Construction of the bridge began in 2013, in an effort to connect the seaport of Colon to communities west of the Canal. The bride was designed by the China Communication Construction Company consisting of HPDI and Louis Berger Group.

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Renzo Piano has offered to donate the design of a bridge to replace the one which tragically collapsed in Genoa on 14th August. Piano, who was born in Genoa, said he has been deeply affected by the tragedy which claimed the lives of 43 people.

The project, reported by Reuters, was announced following a discussion between the architect and the governor of Liguria, who accepted Piano’s offer.

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39 people are now reported to have died following the collapse of the Morandi motorway bridge in Genoa, Italy. The incident happened on Tuesday 14th August, when one of the bridge’s structural components, comprising of pre-stressed concrete stays and trestles, collapsed onto a railway line and warehouse 150 feet (45 meters) below.

The cause of the collapse is not yet known, however, attention is now turning to the bridge’s maintenance record, concerns of its integrity stretching back decades, and how the collapse sits within the broader context of aging Italian infrastructure.

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In the mountains above Da Nang, Vietnam sits a unique piece of bridge design. Winding its way around a 150-meter course lined with flowers, a golden bridge shimmers against the Ba Na Hills, supported by a pair of giant hands.

The Golden Bridge opened to visitors in early June, in the tourist retreat of Thien Thai Garden. The bridge sits 1,400 meters above sea level, an altitude which creates the illusion of a silk strip hiding in the clouds above Da Nang.

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If you stand in Manhattan Avenue Park in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, you’ll see the Long Island City skyline across a small creek. On the Greenpoint side of the creek, a historic neighborhood of row houses and industrial sites is rapidly growing. On the Long Island City side, high-rise apartments and hundreds of art galleries and studios line the East River. Just a stone’s throw away, Long Island City can feel like a world apart from Greenpoint. That’s in large part due to the fact that only one bridge connects the neighborhoods—and it’s meant more for cars than pedestrians or cyclists. Isn’t there a better way? Architect Jun Aizaki thinks so. For the past few years, he and his team at CRÈME Architecture and Design have been working on the so-called “Timber Bridge at Longpoint Corridor."

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UNStudio, in collaboration with Buro Happold Engineering, has won an international competition for the design of a new bridge spanning the River Danube in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Their scheme will serve as a blueprint for the "Galvani Bridge" connecting South Buda and Csepel, balancing graceful aesthetics with strong performance.

The competition for the bridge was conceived with the goal of decreasing the 600,000-strong daily traffic load on existing bridges across the Danube by 40,000. As well as easing traffic congestion, the bridge is intended to embody a liveable, loveable, healthy image of 21st-century Budapest.

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Late last year, we reported on the progress of world’s first 3D printed steel bridge designed by Netherlands-based MX3D. With the design now finalized, the start-up company has announced that the span of the bridge is now complete.

The final round of structural tests is expected to take place this summer, just three years after the project was first announced. After the structural integrity has been tested, the final design will be modified and the completion of the bridge will follow only a few months after. MX3D hopes to showcase the potential of their multi-axis 3D printer during the Dutch Design Week, and the first of its kind bridge is planned to be installed into its final location in a canal in Amsterdam sometime next year.

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Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas have released images of their competition-winning “Capo Grande Tower,” a tower and bridge situated on the Slovenian coastline linking Giusterna Beach to Monte San Marco. Designed in collaboration with Slovenian architect Sandi Pirš, the scheme consists of a 365-foot-high (111-meter-high) double-ellipse structure inclined slightly towards the sea, seeking to “immediately become a new symbolic element of the city.”

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A post shared by M. N. Yelle (@m.n.yellephotography) on Nov 29, 2017 at 4:57pm PST

The office of Santiago Calatrava, known for their incredible feats of architecture and engineering, has come under scrutiny for the failures of three cable connectors on their Margaret McDermott Bridge in Dallas, Texas, which has been delayed in opening due to the failures that occurred in Spring of 2016. However, while the office has taken heat for the malfunction, as the Dallas Observer reported, a newly released set of documents show that Calatrava’s team tried to insist on testing the strength of the cables, even going so far as offering to loan money for these tests, but these offers were declined by the city.

The long-awaited replacement for New York City’s longest bridge, the Tappan Zee, is set to open to the public on Friday, announced Governor Andrew Cuomo. After four years of construction, the first of the $4 billion dollar project’s twin two-span cable-stayed structures will welcome automobile as well as pedestrian and bicycle traffic for the first time.

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