Drawing Bridges - Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering - page 54

to the city of Annapolis, and the western approach of the bridge is on the grounds of the U.S. Naval
Academy. The city is of historic significance and contains numerous fine examples of Georgian
and Victorian architecture. The bridge site is within view of residential communities located on the
bluffs above the waterway, and it is not far from the mouth of the Severn River, which empties into
scenic Chesapeake Bay, a body of water often crowded with recreational sailboat traffic. In short, a
new bridge across the Severn would be seen in many different ways by many different groups, and
the challenge to engineers was “to develop a design for a bridge which will respect, enhance, and
encompass these components.”
It was decided to conduct the first international engineering-design competition held in the Un-
ited States in almost a century, in order “to bring to this important site those people who know the
most about bridge engineering, and to encourage them to think technically, economically and aes-
thetically about how best to bridge it.” The language echoes that found in David Billington's The
Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering, which emphasizes “efficiency, eco-
nomy, and elegance” in bridge building. Billington, a professor of civil engineering at Princeton
University who has served as a consultant to the Maryland Department of Transportation on bridge
aesthetics, has long been a strong advocate of design competitions. His ideas no doubt had a major
influence on the decision to seek a new bridge design through such means. It was believed that the
resulting bridge would be “a work of structural art which will make all of Maryland proud.” As
firm evidence that the bridge should be considered as more than just a state-highway project, the
competition was cosponsored by the Maryland State Highway Administration and the Governor's
Office of Art and Culture.
The program and rules of the Severn River Bridge Design Competition were developed during a
project-planning study, which included a public hearing. The program and rules were issued early
in 1989, and advertisements announcing the competition were placed in local newspapers and in the
engineering press, including Engineering News-Record. The new bridge was to be a fixed, high-
level crossing, thus eliminating traffic delays caused by the raising of the old drawbridge. Also, the
new structure was to be constructed immediately south of the existing bridge, which would be re-
moved once the new one was in service. The number and width of traffic lanes, shoulders, and side-
walks were specified, as was the clearance for shipping (about seventy feet over a channel width of
140 feet) and the minimum main-channel span (three hundred feet). The cost of the new bridge was
estimated to be between twenty-five and thirty million dollars, and prospective competition entrants
were advised that designs with higher estimated costs would be evaluated but penalized on econom-
ic grounds.
Evaluation criteria for the judging of entries were encapsulated into the following statement,
which appeared in the program and rules: “This is an engineering design competition, meant to in-
tegrate the best state of the art thinking about economy, aesthetics and technology in a single struc-
ture. High quality in one factor must be matched by high quality in the other two. The bridge as a
work of structural art must enhance its environment.”
The process for selecting a winner of the competition occurred in two stages. In the first stage,
“any interested qualified party” could submit a letter of interest and qualifications, a list of joint-
venture constituents, proposed subconsultants and subcontractors, and the résumés of the lead and