I’ve been reading Michaelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King. He had an interesting footnote on page thirty-three. In the fifteenth centurty Leonardo da Vinci designed a bridge that was to link Europe and Asia. He presented his proposal to the sultan of Constantinople who later rejected it because he thought it too unrealistic, but in 2001 Norwegian artist Vebjorn Sand constructed a scaled-down version of the bridge (220 foot-long) to span a Norwegian motorway, proving the design would have been successful.
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09.03.04 at 20:29:48
Trackback from Muninn - Bridges, Pluperfect Subjunctive, BadgerBadger
10.03.04 at 10:14:53
Duckling
cool
11.03.04 at 09:23:36
Carleen
Thanks for linking me, Mitch!
19.05.05 at 12:37:02
Vedat Cakmak
I live in Istanbul.
I take myself as a colleague of Vebjorn Sand although we never met. I am looking forward to the next 5 days when we shall at last meet in person in Istanbul.
One thing misplaced by Fun Stuff was that the bridge Leonardo designed to was to link Europe and Asia. Actually, the bridge was to link the two sections of Istanbul divided by a river called te Golden Horn in the European side. The strait of seas that divides Europe from Asia is the Bosphorus which is much wider than the bridge Leonardo designed.
However, with the engineering principles he built into that design, I could say that the bridge could even work with a span of 600 m. instead of the 239 m. span it was designed for. So the mistake is not of major issue!
20.05.05 at 19:28:26
Carleen Huxley
Thanks for the correction, Vedat! It’s been a little while since I posted this but if I remember right, the information I provided came directly from a footnote in Kings book.
Sand’s work is quite stunning, paintings and designs.