The Norwegian Leonardo Bridge Project makes history as the first of Leonardo's civil engineering designs to be constructed for public use.
Norwegian painter and public art creator, Vebjørn Sand, has made another bold project a reality: he took Leonardo da Vinci's simple drawing of a graceful bridge to the Norwegian Public Roads Administration and proposed to build it. Though hardly a visionary organization, when Sand presented the project the reaction was unanimous. "Everyone on the project knew we would be making something more than another boring bridge," Sand says of his meetings with government officials, "We would be making history."
Da Vinci had intended his bridge to span the Golden Horn, an inlet at the mouth of the Bosphorus River in what is now Turkey.
The Bridge was never built. The bridge design was part of a civil engineering project for Sultan Bajazet II of Constantinople (Istanbul.) The "Golden Horn" Bridge is a perfect "pressed-bow." Leonardo surmised correctly that the classic keystone arch could be stretched narrow and substantially widened without losing integrity by using a flared foothold, or pier, and the terrain to anchor each end of the span.
It was conceived 300 years prior to its engineering principals being generally accepted. It was to be 72 feet-wide (24 meters), 1080-foot total length (360 meters) and 120 feet (40 meters) above the sea level at the highest point of the span.
Numerous sites were considered all over Norway until the right one was found in the township of Ås spanning E-18, the highway linking Oslo and Stockholm.
Related links:
Leonardo Bridge Project web site
Ad Fontes: The Art and Projects of Vebjorn Sand. This book about Vebjørn Sand and his projects is usually available on Amazon from Marketplace Sellers (used condition).
Unknown Binding: 152 pages, Publisher: Forlaget Geelmuyden Kiese (1998), Language: English.
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