Thursday, May 18, 2006

View from the another bank of river Maas in Rotterdam

View from the another bank of river Maas in Rotterdam, the Netherlands 4-5 years ago. The bridge was designed by one of the well known Dutch architect Ben van Berkel with his team UN Studio. The bridge is one of the reasons made me interested in Holland since I was study architecture on the 3rd year. At that moment his work was preculiar but interesting for me in a sense. I always got confuse this bridge to another one by Calatrava in Spain since the form are alike but Calatrava's was build with concrete with no supporting columns. A freind (Tajima Masayuki) told me that when it is first opened the bridge had the problem according to the lateral force of Rotterdam's strong wind had caused the bridge structrally unstable, UN Studio (or Ben) had to quickly fixed that problem which later charged them (UN Studio) a lot of money. Anyway, it's a story I heard from a freind which maybe not 100% correct but as I had faced it myself, it's so shakey when it has storm that when I was on the bridge I thought I was fainting but found out later that it came from the haking bridge itself. So the story is prooved!

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