Dry run for Venice's first new bridge in 70 years
Wednesday, 9 May 2007
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Venice's first new bridge in more than 70 years remains a distant apparition this week after engineers decided to erect it first in a hangar in nearby Marghera to reassure themselves that its great weight will not cause the banks of the Grand Canal to sink.
Designed by the Spanish engineer-turned-architect Santiago Calatrava, who is also in the running to build the world's tallest skyscraper in Chicago, the fourth bridge over the Grand Canal has been years in development; its costs have ballooned from €4m (£2.7m) to around €10m. The latest hiccup will add more than €1m to the final bill.
In January, as reported in The Independent, it was predicted that the bridge would be in place by the summer. But engineers began to worry about the weight, which is reported to be equivalent to 75 fully loaded articulated lorries on both sides of the canal. Mara Rumiz, in charge of public works in the city, said: "We have taken these precautions on account of the well-known fragility of the canal's banks, bearing in mind that Venice is not built on rock but on the contrary has a tendency to sink."
Also influencing the decision to have a dry run is the fact that the final installation will entail closure of the Grand Canal, the city's main artery, with a hugely disruptive effect on commercial and tourist life.
The Mayor of the city, Massimo Cacciari, went out of his way to pooh-pooh the more dramatic reports of the bridge's problems. "As usual," he said, "certain parts of the press are particularly seduced by catastrophe and disaster. I am sorry to disappoint in this case, but the delays the bridge has suffered have nothing to do with a need for radical revisions in order to avoid collapse and other various disasters."
The performance of the bridge at its test site will be minutely monitored, he went on, to understand how it will behave when lowered on to the canal's banks. The bridge's latest problem follows hard on a vigorous campaign, with letters and emails arriving from around the world, urging the city to address the fact that, as designed, the bridge is not accessible to the disabled. The Venice authorities tried to dodge the issue by offering free vaporetto passes to the disabled so they would not need to cross, but this was angrily dismissed. Now the city engineers plan to attach lifts to carry the disabled across the span.
The bridge has also been attacked on stylistic grounds, as being dramatically more modern than anything else in the city. This complaint would have more supporters if the bridge were located at the other end of the Grand Canal, by Piazza San Marco, but in fact it will abut the modernist railway station and is close to the grungier, business end of the city.
It will link the station with a car park on the far side and by connecting vaporetto, tram, train and car, is expected to greatly improve mobility in the city. Venice hopes that the main structure will be in place by the end of the summer.
Calatrava, 55, designed the 2004 Olympic Stadium in Athens and is on the shortlist to build a 2,000ft spire in Chicago which would be the world's tallest building. He has also designed the new transport hub for the site of New York's rebuilt World Trade Centre.
