Constitution of 1812 Bridge, Cadiz, 2015
Javier Manterola always went the extra mile. Mentor to us all, he infected us with his love for bridges, his daring to push farther, his search for new paths, and his aesthetic sensibility. He left us on 11 May at the age of 87, leaving us his ideas, words, and works.
The works of this engineer of bridges are characterized by an exploration of limits: in the magnitude of the spans, setting world records; and in the pressure-withstanding and formal innovation of his structures. His bridges surpassed the premises of structural types, and made design strategies out of such inconveniences as asymmetry and breakage, which became opportunities for new designs.
With over 200 bridges built, Manterola was an international leader in the making and typological maturing of cable-stayed bridges. In 1983 he achieved a 440-meter span over the dam of Barrios de Luna, and in 2015 the 540-meter one – Spain’s largest – over the bay of Cádiz...
