02.16
Do you like Bridge Competitions? If yes, keep reading as we come to the real question. What makes a good bridge competition? A student contacted the Happy Pontist essentially asking that question. (go there and share your ideas!)
I like bridge competitions, I like seeing the creativity of designers of all abilities (and heights!) trying to incorporate their vision into a buildable bridge.
What I hate is the way competitions are run in the United States. Most competitions are safe affairs, typically with prequalification requirements that keep out the individual designer.
This makes sense for the owners who are deathly afraid of public disapproval. Bridge projects are usually funded with public money and the last thing you want is your tax dollars going towards an “extravagant” design. The feeling is the government should only produce practical, non-descript grey structures. Don’t spend my money on frills! (or teachers for that matter, snark.)
When I work with communities I often hear the opposite, please design something that enhances our neighborhood instead of the standard bridge. So in a perfect world, how would I run bridge design competition?
I would like a competition to be broad enough to include the unknown designer. Give a chance to ideas that come out of left field. Give a chance to designers from small firms to get noticed. Create some Calatravas in America. Allow engineers the opportunity to enter, show their work to the world, and defend their ideas from critics. Allow the public a chance to see good and bad designs, so we can encourage them in the right direction when they have to pick a design.
(I think the competition for the second Calgary pedestrian bridge was a fair competition and a pretty good model for future contests. (I will nit-pick how the judging was set up, but that is another story.))
Look how this helped Maya Lin become famous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Lin
“Lin believes that if the competition had not been “blind”, with designs submitted by number instead of name, she “never would have won”. (Because she was an unknown, obviously, won out of 1400+ entrants AND a student. But a brilliant design!) And don’t get me started on Linsanity….
All I am saying, is give (bridge designers) a chance. (with apologies to John Lennon.)
Look I’m inspecting bridges under water! (Hey I had/have a scuba license.)
Similar Posts:
- Judging a bridge concept
- Innovation for Engineers
You might like to read.
Dear “cee.student.2012”,
I’ve read both the Happy Pontist and Tall Bridge Guy posts on your thesis topic. You are obviously an ardent reader of their blogs so I imagine that their recent posts. and delving into their various posts over many years has already supplied you with food for thought for your thesis.
Here’s some other ideas.
Bridge competition organisers and design people could look a little further beyond their own bridge community and include other categories of designers as TBG has already suggested?
1) TBG is a big fan of Santiago Calatrava who is qualified as both an architect and an engineer. Not everyone can afford to do a double amount of study like that, but maybe engineers and architects could follow common or combined courses during their university studies. This is a long term item and up to USA university authorities to consider but it could boost the creativity of engineers and the same time provide architects with a better understanding of structural behaviour, and also share teaching resources.
2) Although we civil engineers often consider architects or other unclassifiable designers like Thomas Heatherwick to be a little too “airy-fairy” and impractical for our likes, I think that we could try to work together with them a little more. It might give us plenty of big headaches but sometimes they do manage to incite more creativity amongst engineers. Multi-disciplinary collaboration with other professions including architects or even artists, (perish the thought!) can help us to think outside the box and result in very original landmark structures. A few examples come to mind of such projects (there are many more): the Sydney Opera House, Australia; The Millennium Bridge, London; and the Normandy Bridge, the Millau Viaduct, and the Terenez Bridge in France.
David