A rendering of Renzo Piano’s planned bridge, which will replace the collapsed Morandi Bridge. (Image courtesy of Renzo Piano.)
Five months after the deadly Genoa bridge collapse, the city has announced that it will replace the structure with another bridge that its designer claims will “last for a thousand years.”
On December 19, 2018, city mayor Marco Bucci announced a €202 million new bridge ($229 million) over the Polcevera River to replace the collapsed Morandi Bridge. The distinctive concrete bridge collapsed on August 15, killing 43 people and destroying many of the buildings underneath it. The reasons for the bridge’s collapse are still unknown.
The new bridge will be designed by architect Renzo Piano, who got his start as the codesigner of Paris’s CentrePompidou and more recently designed The Shard in London and the Whitney Museum in New York. Piano offered both his concept and his supervision on the project for free, calling it “an act of civic duty.”
Finishing the new bridge quickly is important for both residents and businesses in the city. Before its collapse, the Morandi was part of Genoa’s A10 motorway, an important link between Italy and France. In the wake of the collapse, the route has been closed off, and the city has been cut in half. “We want to solve a problem of infrastructure and mobility important not only for the city but also for the region, for this part of northern Italy, and I dare say, also for Switzerland and…