Venice will dismantle the controversial Calatrava glass bridge to remake it with different supplies | Culture | EUROtoday

The Venice City Council has begun the method to dismantle the glass bridge designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava over the Grand Canal, the topic of a lot criticism as a result of sliding ground, and is learning new supplies to exchange the glass slabs.

The Venetian Consistory confirmed this Thursday the hiring of a non-public architectural studio to seek out essentially the most applicable answer for the bridge and put together the related feasibility, execution and upkeep tasks, with an estimated price of between 1.5 and a pair of million euros.

The Constitution Bridge, the official identify of the construction, was inaugurated in 2008 and since then it has been the epicenter of complaints in regards to the insecurity of pedestrians when strolling on it, a standard drawback in different works by Calatrava that in cities like Bilbao. They solved it with a protracted rug to keep away from slipping.

“The objective of the intervention is the replacement of all the glass steps of the bridge with another material, which may be stone, synthetic or natural, but that is compatible with the architectural decisions and with the intended use,” explains the manager decision devoted by the City Council to this venture within the Public Works space.

The doc additionally mentions the necessity for the brand new materials to ensure “adequate anti-slip performance” after years of pedestrian falls, particularly on wet days.

This won’t be the primary intervention by the municipal authorities on the Calatrava bridge, since different alternate options have been beforehand tried to make sure the passage of pedestrians – from adhesive strips to non-slip materials – which by no means labored, forcing the passage to be reduce off when the ground was slippery. The City Council explains that the intervention provides the chance to “improve the accessibility of the bridge”, with the development of ramps, and the elimination of the glass steps might be used to hold out normal upkeep of the steel elements.

In preliminary calculations revealed by the town’s Public Works space, the substitute of the 284 glass steps that the bridge has will price round 1.2 million euros, about 4,200 euros per unit.

The price range for the motion additionally consists of 85,000 euros for the modification of steel lodging and about 37,000 euros for the upkeep of the steel construction, to that are added safety prices that may quantity to a different 40,000 euros.

In August 2019, the Venice Court of Auditors already sentenced Calatrava to pay virtually 78,000 euros to the City Council for the elevated price of the development and upkeep of the Constitution Bridge as a consequence of a collection of errors within the venture that represented a “ “macroscopic negligence” of the Spanish architect, based on his opinion.

The ruling indicated that the work lastly price 11.6 million euros, in comparison with the 7 million initially deliberate.

It shouldn’t be the primary time {that a} Calatrava constructing has had issues. In 2023, structural failures within the dome triggered the closure of the Athens Stadium. The cell roof of the Oviedo Congress Palace (often known as the Centollo) by no means moved. The Loiu airport, often known as La Paloma, in Bilbao, was inaugurated eight years later than deliberate, with an additional price of 35 million. The Ysios vineyard, in Álava, sued the architect for leaks and humidity. The City of Arts and Sciences of Valencia had an additional price of greater than 600 million and it was obligatory to exchange your complete ceramic overlaying of the Palau de les Arts. Among many others.