Total Housing

Page 66

The organization of the towers takes into consideration movement, timing and sequence. Rather than towers as isolated objects or private islands in an increasingly privatized city, the hope of a new type of collective 21st century public urban space is inscribed in the air.

The goal of the bridge structural design was to maximize transparency and create floating hallways of light, traversing 30 to 40 m between the heavy concrete towers. In order to span the great distance required and also achieve the utmost transparency, the bridges utilize a pair of parallel steel trusses. A Pratt truss configuration was chosen to use thin tension only diagonal members, oriented in such a fashion that the sizes of the diagonals have equal stresses, hence equal sizes. The connections between vertical and horizontal truss members were made rigid to form a complete three-dimensional rigid Vierendeel frame. This provides additional stiffness and redundancy to the bridge structure and allows for the removal of the center panel diagonal members.

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