The architecture of the bridges

Abstract

The 1949 exhibition at MoMA “The Architecture of Bridges” curated by Elizabeth Mock inaugurated a fresh view to the field of collaboration between engineers and architects. Among other reasons, the appearance of new technologies and materials as steel in XIXth century and concrete in XXth provoked a gap that the architects of modern movement detected without really solving the distance between the beauty of honesty and the “intellectual swindle” of certain architectures. Second half of last century deployed technology for massive reconstruction and exponential urban growth and therefore a context of obliged reunion of the two disciplines. The MoMA’s exhibition followed by others in Pompidou centre illustrated the new collaboration between engineers and architects, from Utzon and Arup to Ishigami and Sato, from the mechanical to the green paradigm.

This paper aims to analyse those contributions in both directions through an analysis of the history of the construction of bridges as a specific and pure example of the positive interaction between architects and engineers, beyond any kind of controversy. First, by a prospection of engineering technology transferred to architecture that silently by with no interruption has taken place from the construction of bridges to edification with brilliant examples from Freyssinet to Vierendeel. Secondly putting an eye to their architecture where we will describe some of the most relevant examples designed by architects, from Palladio to Plecnick. Both views, with central examples as Peter Rice or Jean Prouvé, show how those collaborations go beyond the specific to build an intermediate field that today is central for a balanced a sustainable development.