Architect 2014-03.pdf

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PAST PROGRESSIVES
ARCHITECT THE AIA MAGAZINE MARCH 2014 WWW.ARCHITECTMAGAZINE.COM
JURY
1979 P/A Awards Jury
Fred Dubin
Barry Elbasani
Jules Gregory
Weiming Lu, Hon. AIA
Anthony Lumsden
Constance Perin
Werner Seligmann
Bernard Spring, FAIA
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1979 P/A FIRST AWARD
Spanning Disciplines
DESIGNED TO CROSS A PLANNED RESERVOIR, THE RUCK-A-CHUCKY BRIDGE
WOULD HAVE BEEN A MARRIAGE OF ARCHITECTURE AND ENGINEERING.
Text by John Morris Dixon, FAIA
THE 1979 P/A AWARDS JURY challenged precedent
by bestowing a rare First Award on a project
in which engineers took the lead. Credit for the
design of the Ruck-a-Chucky bridge was shared
by T.Y. Lin International, Hanson Engineers, and
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Leading the
project, along with the founders of the Lin and
Hanson firms, was SOM’s Myron Goldsmith, renowned
as both an architect and an engineer.
Juror Barry Elbasani praised the project as a reminder
“that architecture is everywhere about
us and not necessarily in a building.”
The bridge was designed to span the American
River in California, about 10 miles upstream
from a planned dam. The challenge was to connect
roads running parallel to the steep valley
walls without requiring the extensive and costly
re-grading required for a straight bridge, and a
curved span with customary vertical supports
was ruled out by the 450-foot depth of the
anticipated reservoir. Hence the “hanging arc”
concept for the bridge, with a curved concrete
deck supported by 80 post-tensioned cables
anchored in the slopes of the gorge.
Although preliminary work at the dam site
was underway when the bridge was designed,
its construction was subsequently halted. The
same thing happened to a very different bridge
that remained unbuilt—another 1979 P/A winner,
Michael Graves’s Fargo-Moorhead Cultural
Center Bridge, which was to span the Red River
between North Dakota and Minnesota.
SOM | © HEDRICH BLESSING