Pier Luigi Nervi, bridge designerud

摘要

“A bridge is for an engineer what a dome is for an architect”.udThe construction of a bridge is a central event in a professional life of an engineer. The symbolic value ofudsuch a structure, at the same time functional and iconic, is one reason. Moreover, bridge represent theudperfect construction to test technological innovations, this can be seen by the fact that many pioneeringudengineers linked their names to ground-breaking bridges: Maillart, Hennebique and in recent times,udCalatrava.udPier Luigi Nervi, one of the most acknowledged engineer of the twentieth century, famously built manyuddomes but only one bridge, in Verona in 1965, he was 74. However, his interest for bridges was a constantudin his professional life. Furthermore, other Nervi’s structures, like the elevated motorway in Rome, La ViaudOlimpica (1960) or even the suspended roof of the Burgo paper mill (1961) can be considered structurallyudsimilar to bridges. This paper presents some of Nervi projects of bridges, from the early designs to the whatudis generally considered his last effort, the Messina bridge. Particularly interesting are the discovery of twoudprojects for such structures recently discovered in the Archivio Nervi in Rome. Two images of these projectsudare presented in this paper for the first time. They are just another evidence of the continuous investigationudon suspended structures of the Italian engineer.