the art of Spanish Bridge Design

This exhibition The Art of Spanish Bridge Design, is located at the Friend Center Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and it was conceived in the spirit of four preceding projects, The Art of Structural Design: A Swiss Legacy, Félix Candela: Engineer, Builder, Structual Artist, Fazlur Khan: Structural Artist of Urban Building Forms, and Evolution of German Shells: Efficiency in Form. This exhibition features the Spanish tradition of bridge design and is a result of the Fall 2014 term of the course “CEE463: A Social and Multi-Dimensional Exploration of Structures.” Students learned the engineering principles behind bridges, and their social and symbolic dimensions. This integrated perspective was developed through detailed analysis of the bridges, meetings with their engineers, first-hand experiences of the bridges in their context from site visits to Spain, and the process of building the exhibited models. The stimulating experience of model creation challenged students to overcome conceptual problems similar to those encountered in the construction of the bridges in actuality.