Floating footbridge in Mantua, Italy

The present paper describes the design of a footbridge that should be located in the city of Mantova and that is part of a thesis whose title is “Il progetto del limite: valorizzazione di un confine. Attraverso i laghi di Mantova”.

The thesis theme is the meaning of “border and limit” and the area of the project is the so-called “ponte dei mulini” (mills bridge) that is not exhactly a bridge, but a soil dam built in the 1190 with military and civil purposes.

The interest thing about this dam is the large amount of functions that it solves, actually it is a dam, a green water-front, a car bridge, a train bridge and a part of the Mincio river natural park.

The main project looks at all these functions with a “perceptive/analytic approach”, that brings to the evidence the need of a larger street on the top of the dam, but most of all the need of a better definition of the riversides looking with attention to the relation between man and water.

Concerning theese considerations a very important section of the whole project is an experimental floating footbridge composed by 29 elements forming a sort of kinematic chain that can move in a range of possibilities determined by a system of ropes.

The whole thesis looks at the bridge theme as a pretext to think over the landscape design and over the dialogue between nature and structures.