Skating Musmeci

A comment for the post on Sergio Musmeci's bridge over Basento river in the Italian town of Potenza, included the link to the cover shot for skateboarding culture magazine 6:00 am. Since I really like the bridge, this offers a chance to post a few more images of it.

[Daniele Galli on the cover of 6:00 am magazine, photo by Fede Romanello, via]

The blogger Lorenzo Bini (Lorebini) had previously discovered this amazing concrete landscape and wondered on the Bastard Blog whether anybody had used it to skate. Skater Daniele Galli picked up on the post and drove south to do it, as shown on the dare devil cover shot above. via

[Image by Lorenzo Bini - follow the link to more images of Sergio Musmeci's viaduct]

I'd love to see more images of skaters using concrete - perhaps discovering new cool concrete 'landscapes' discovered and appreciated from the perspective of the skating culture.

Material Culture - Pour day

[Image of a team after successful pour of one of their fabric formed concrete shell elements]

Just finished an exciting pour day in the Erasmus workshop I also wrote about here. The four formwork pieces constructed by students were filled with concrete from our sponsor, the local concrete factory.

Below are a few images from the stormy, yet sunny day.

[Team working on a 5 meter long fabric formed concrete wall. Only 5 cm at the most narrow point made pouring directly out of the truck impossible - in stead the wall was poured by hand]

[Image of fabric formed concrete wall after the pour. The turf pieces on top are from the lawn. Their function is to weigh down folded down fabric flaps on the top from flying away...]

[Team working down reinforcement into their concrete bridge, poured on site - the fabric formwork was constructed in sections off site and moved to the site]

[This an image of the last group's concept model - a 'wood shelter' in which the wood forms the interior space cast directly into the fabric form. Wedges placed between the logs makes it easier to remove the wood after the pour - or when it is to be used]

Material Culture - fabric formwork workshop

I've been busy the past week with an Erasmus summer school in the 'Material Culture' series, which has included workshops dealing with catalan vaults (Barcelona); bricks (Netherlands); wood (Norway) and stone masonry (Ireland). In Denmark the choice of a 'cultural' material was concrete - and I have been fortunate to be part of the planning of a workshop dealing with fabric formed concrete structures.

Tomorrow is the big pour day - and everything is wonderfully hectic and many things still to be resolved in the making - quite in the nature of the workshops. That you learn a lot of the material nature as you go along and do things.

The image above is from a crit. One team has the site of a ditch and is assigned to make a crossing. The installation is wonderful, discussing the spatial qualities to be obtained by placing objects that affords crossing and invites for actually inhabiting a space.

Of course we've done a lot of pouring as well - more pictures to come.

Best regards from Bornholm

Sergio Musmeci's funky concrete bridge

While at the library at the RDAFA and browsing Paolo Portoghesi's book Nature and Architecture, I bumbed into a picture of the Basento viaduct in Potenza, Italy, by Italian structural engineer Sergio Musmeci (1926-81) whom I had never heard of - shame on me

Portoghesi's book is full of references and comparisons between natural and built structures - the image of the bridge (1967-69) really caught my attention because of its striking sculptural and modern appearance and obvious organic, efficient-looking design. 

"Graduated in Rome with a degree in Civil Engineering (1948) and Aeronautical Engineering (1953), Sergio Musmeci (Rome, 1926-1981) is considered one of the most daring structural engineers of the 20th century. The years of his training in the offices of Riccardo Morandi and Pier Luigi Nervi had a significant influence on his work and personal interests; in 1953 he began working with Zenaide Zanini, a collaboration that would last the rest of his life. Professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Rome, he is the author of scientific publications on structures with minimum absolute weight and other topics related to the investigation of forms derived from incomplete structural solutions."

From the biography on the The Sergio Musmeci and Zenaide Zanini Archive at MAXXI_National museum of 21st century arts, Rome web page: 

[Image of a neoprene model of the Basento bridge by Sergio Musmeci]

[Image of the structural principles for the bridge]

Bloggers at core.form-ula write: "Sergio Musmeci’s very cultured and refined activity is the answer to those who believe that the studies concerning the relationship between architecture and mathematics are much too theoretical. Musmeci is one of the most daring and transgress engineers born in the twentieth century; he was master equally of music, astronomy, aeronautics, mathematics, and philosophy, all of which informed his structures, whose shape was determined by the spatial distribution of static actions. Musmeci thought that he could reach the expression of “modernity” through science. He is the designer of a project for the bridge on the Strait of Messina that has been only recently understood and appreciated, more than twenty years after its conception."

[I think this must be a sketch of the bridge over the Strait of Messina: a single-span bridge with an unsupported length of 3 km]

Below are a number of images of the bridge in Potenza and it's design. I'll have to dig a bit into the work of this fellow - hopefully more to come!

[Image of railroad tracks under the bridge - I wouldn't mind experiencing the bridge sitting in a train going through in the Italian countryside... ]

[Image of random guy with camera on - or in the bridge structure - just for scale]