- 16 Dec 2004 12:45
#532003
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/st ... ory=593199
The Millau Viaduct is the latest example of one of mankind's noblest traditions: the creation of breathtaking structures to span hitherto unbridgeable divides. John Lichfield reports
The stunningly beautiful Millau Viaduct, opened by President Jacques Chirac yesterday, is a bridge to the future. Built in only three years, using construction and design techniques and materials which did not exist a decade ago, it is the highest and the heaviest bridge ever built.
Seen from a distance, and even from the foot of one of its colossal split, curving piers, it has a deceptive fragility.
The bridge, in the southern Massif Central, designed by the British architect Lord Foster, and constructed by French engineers, has pioneered techniques which will open the way to even bigger structures. The first may be a span across the straits of Messina from Calabria in southern Italy to Sicily.
Lord Foster and French engineers believe the Millau Viaduct - 2.4 km long (1.5 miles) and 270m (885 ft) above the river Tarn at its highest point, and several metres taller than the Eiffel Tower - will mark the beginning of a new era in mankind's 2,000-year-old love affair with bridge building.
Each age has seen the creation of new techniques which have made possible the bridging of seemingly unbridgeable chasms. One of the great bridges of ancient times - the Pont du Gard, near Nîmes - is only 70 miles away from Millau as the eagle flies. Its Roman builders pushed the discovery of the principle of the arch to daring new levels by piling three arched viaducts one on top of the other, to allow water to flow into the Roman city of Nîmes.
The discovery of steel and the bold, sweeping new application of the ancient principles of suspension bridges allowed the creation of the Menai road bridge and Tamar and Forth railway bridges in the 19th century and their bigger cousins at the Golden Gate in San Francisco and Sydney Harbour. Other famous bridges have been significant less for pushing back the frontiers of engineering than for the metaphorical divides they spanned. The world's great bridges have a value that is moral and aesthetic as much as mechanical.
In the Millau Viaduct, computer-design methods, global satellite positioning and high-tech steels and concretes have come together with an aesthetic overall plan conceived by an architect, not an engineer. The result is a bridge of enormous beauty, built in record time, for a relatively cheap €400m (£275m), entirely financed by private investment, which will be refunded by tolls over 75 years.
The gently curving deck of the bridge - on which the four-lane road rests - has been constructed from a new high grade of steel, rather than the more usual concrete.
The French construction company Eiffage devised a method for pre-constructing the 32m-wide road-deck in 2,000 pieces at its factory in Alsace. They were welded together on the hills on either side of the valley and then shoved out like giant planks over the abyss, 60cms at a time. Satellite positioning technology was used to ensure the curving road connected correctly.
Lord Foster says the choices that shaped the Millau bridge were practical but also aesthetic and even spiritual. "Infrastructure is fundamental to our civilisation. Public spaces, boulevards, bridges ... they connect people and shape our quality of life. But mankind also has more spiritual needs. Crossing a bridge should give you a sense of spiritual elevation. Looking at a bridge should be a moving experience."
President Chirac, while paying tribute to Lord Foster, yesterday saluted the Millau bridge as a tribute to a "modern France, a conquering France ... an entrepreneurial France, a France which succeeds" .
The Millau Viaduct will eventually be part of a new motorway route from Paris to the Languedoc coast and Barcelona. It will remove a bottle-neck around the town of Millau. But political arguments and bureaucratic delays mean the motorway links further south will not be completed until 2010 at the earliest.
http://viaduc.midilibre.com/ for pictures etc.
---------------------------------------------------------
i think it's beautiful. did it get any media coverage at all in the US?
The Millau Viaduct is the latest example of one of mankind's noblest traditions: the creation of breathtaking structures to span hitherto unbridgeable divides. John Lichfield reports
The stunningly beautiful Millau Viaduct, opened by President Jacques Chirac yesterday, is a bridge to the future. Built in only three years, using construction and design techniques and materials which did not exist a decade ago, it is the highest and the heaviest bridge ever built.
Seen from a distance, and even from the foot of one of its colossal split, curving piers, it has a deceptive fragility.
The bridge, in the southern Massif Central, designed by the British architect Lord Foster, and constructed by French engineers, has pioneered techniques which will open the way to even bigger structures. The first may be a span across the straits of Messina from Calabria in southern Italy to Sicily.
Lord Foster and French engineers believe the Millau Viaduct - 2.4 km long (1.5 miles) and 270m (885 ft) above the river Tarn at its highest point, and several metres taller than the Eiffel Tower - will mark the beginning of a new era in mankind's 2,000-year-old love affair with bridge building.
Each age has seen the creation of new techniques which have made possible the bridging of seemingly unbridgeable chasms. One of the great bridges of ancient times - the Pont du Gard, near Nîmes - is only 70 miles away from Millau as the eagle flies. Its Roman builders pushed the discovery of the principle of the arch to daring new levels by piling three arched viaducts one on top of the other, to allow water to flow into the Roman city of Nîmes.
The discovery of steel and the bold, sweeping new application of the ancient principles of suspension bridges allowed the creation of the Menai road bridge and Tamar and Forth railway bridges in the 19th century and their bigger cousins at the Golden Gate in San Francisco and Sydney Harbour. Other famous bridges have been significant less for pushing back the frontiers of engineering than for the metaphorical divides they spanned. The world's great bridges have a value that is moral and aesthetic as much as mechanical.
In the Millau Viaduct, computer-design methods, global satellite positioning and high-tech steels and concretes have come together with an aesthetic overall plan conceived by an architect, not an engineer. The result is a bridge of enormous beauty, built in record time, for a relatively cheap €400m (£275m), entirely financed by private investment, which will be refunded by tolls over 75 years.
The gently curving deck of the bridge - on which the four-lane road rests - has been constructed from a new high grade of steel, rather than the more usual concrete.
The French construction company Eiffage devised a method for pre-constructing the 32m-wide road-deck in 2,000 pieces at its factory in Alsace. They were welded together on the hills on either side of the valley and then shoved out like giant planks over the abyss, 60cms at a time. Satellite positioning technology was used to ensure the curving road connected correctly.
Lord Foster says the choices that shaped the Millau bridge were practical but also aesthetic and even spiritual. "Infrastructure is fundamental to our civilisation. Public spaces, boulevards, bridges ... they connect people and shape our quality of life. But mankind also has more spiritual needs. Crossing a bridge should give you a sense of spiritual elevation. Looking at a bridge should be a moving experience."
President Chirac, while paying tribute to Lord Foster, yesterday saluted the Millau bridge as a tribute to a "modern France, a conquering France ... an entrepreneurial France, a France which succeeds" .
The Millau Viaduct will eventually be part of a new motorway route from Paris to the Languedoc coast and Barcelona. It will remove a bottle-neck around the town of Millau. But political arguments and bureaucratic delays mean the motorway links further south will not be completed until 2010 at the earliest.
http://viaduc.midilibre.com/ for pictures etc.
---------------------------------------------------------
i think it's beautiful. did it get any media coverage at all in the US?
At 343m (1,125 ft), it is taller than the Eiffel Tower; its span of 1.5 miles makes it longer then the Champs Elysées. Lord Foster's £276m viaduct over the Tarn Valley at Millau is designed to end the motorway logjam between Paris and the Spanish border.
Opening to traffic at midnight on Friday, the bridge is expected to carry 10,000 vehicles per day, peaking at 25,000 in the summer. It will form part of the A75 motorway in the Massif Central linking Clermont-Ferrand and Béziers.
Built and funded by Eiffage - the group responsible for the Eiffel Tower - and with a British architect, the bridge is being hailed as the heir to such Anglo-French triumphs as Concorde and the Channel tunnel. It became a tourist attraction almost as soon as work began. Motorists will pay a £3.50 toll.
Ixabert wrote: Why dost thou roll thine eyes at me?
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