Renzo Piano offered to design a new bridge in Genoa

Genoa - Renowned architect Renzo Piano, who contributed to the design of the Paris museum Centre Pompidou among other projects, has offered his help in building a new bridge in Genoa. This was reported today by the news server BBC. A section of the Morandi Bridge collapsed on August 14, resulting in 43 fatalities. The hypothesis that the bridge could collapse was already voiced by its creator in the 1980s, wrote the newspaper La Stampa.

The Genoa-born Piano has already designed a new appearance for a two-kilometer stretch of the waterfront in the city. "We gratefully accepted the offer of help, and (Piano) has already come up with some proposals," said the governor of the Liguria region, Giovanni Toti, about the architect's involvement in the construction of the new bridge.

According to the 80-year-old architect, the bridge should be built "soon, but not in haste" and with regard to the "true nature and characteristics of the Genoese." On the day the bridge collapsed, Piano had a meeting in Genoa and since then he reportedly hasn't thought of anything else.

According to Italian media, the architect delivered sketches to the city officials of Genoa, where the roadway rests on pillars shaped like a ship's bow. Another significant feature of Piano's design is 43 tall masts - one for each victim, whose night lighting will resemble sails, wrote the newspaper Corriere della Sera.

On the list of works by the Genoa native is, for example, the Kansai International Airport terminal in Osaka, Japan, from 1994, or the Science and Technology Center in Amsterdam, Netherlands (1997), which resembles the bow of a gigantic tilted ship, as well as the dreamlike buildings of the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in New Caledonia in Nouméa (1998).

In 2007, his fifty-two-story skyscraper The New York Times was completed in New York. For London, Piano designed the distinctive pointed building London Bridge Town Skyscraper, nicknamed The Shard, completed in 2013.

It is still unclear who will oversee the construction of the new bridge. The Italian government accuses the bridge operator, Autostrade per l'Italia, of inadequate investment in the maintenance of the bridge.

The Italian Ministry of Transport has proposed that the operator pay for the new bridge, but leave the construction to the government. The company's executive board has already allocated 500 million euros (12.9 billion CZK) for construction, compensation for the victims' families, and for those who lost their homes due to the collapse of the structure. The government is considering awarding the construction to the state-controlled company Fincatieri.

Responsibility for the bridge's collapse is under investigation. Today, the newspaper La Stampa reported that among the documents secured by prosecutors during the investigation is a report from the bridge's creator, Riccardo Morandi, from the 1980s. The architect states that the ninth pillar, which collapsed on August 14, and particularly its suspension system, are in worse condition than expected.

He attributed this to external factors, such as the marine environment that accelerated corrosion. In the 37-year-old report, the bridge's creator warned that the structure could collapse. The report was requested from the architect by Autostrade per l'Italia, which was still state-owned at that time.