Riccardo Morandi

Personal

Vocation

Italian civil engineer best known for his innovative use of reinforced concrete. Riccardo Morandi died on 25 December 1989, aged 87, in Rome. Amongst his best known works were the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge in Venezuela, an 8 km crossing of Lake Maracaibo incorporating seven cable-stayed bridge spans with unusual piers, and the Subterranean Automobile Showroom in Turin. Another of his major works, Ponte Morandi (1967) in Genoa, Italy, a bridge with four cable-stayed spans (maximum 280 m), partially collapsed on 14 August 2018, killing at least 41 people. Morandi's cable-stayed bridges are characterised by very few stays, often as few as two per span, and often with the stays constructed from prestressed concrete rather than the more usual steel cables. Although these bridges are often impressive, they are less economic than bridges with multiple stays and have therefore been of little influence on other engineers. Bridges by Morandi proved to require extensive maintenance and repairs over the years to pass bridge safety inspections. The third span of Ponte Morandi collapsed on the 14th of August 2018, causing at least 41 fatalities. The other two main spans remained standing. The cause of the collapse remains unknown. In 2016, Ponte Morandi had been described as a "failure of engineering", with escalating maintenance costs to keep it safe. Link to Wikipedia biography