Ouch weblog: individual blog entry
18 Jan 07, 1:21 PM - A Venice menace
Over now to Ouch's Italian Crippled Monkey counterpart, Scimmia Paralizzata (and no, please don't write in if that's wrong!), for some late-breaking news from the magnificent city of rivers and bridges, Venice.
For the first time in more than 70 years, : Il ponte di Calatrava. It's a splendid design by all accounts, a modern structure but one which fits in with the local environment. In fact, there's really only one problem.
It's not accessible.
That's right. Somewhat incredibly, a bridge being designed and built in the 21st century for one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world has been made inaccessible to disabled people. The structure is approached by glass steps, thereby making it useless for people in wheelchairs or those with mobility difficulties.
Both the local Venice council and the architect's company have been overwhelmed by letters of protest, and so there has been some talk of solutions - such as proposals to give disabled people free ferry passes so that they wouldn't need to use the bridge at all (because, of course, we wouldn't want to, would we?) Another suggestion has been to install platform lifts that would travel along the span of the bridge, but the architect Santiago Calatrava is not happy about this, and his reputation is such - he's big in the world of bridge-building, apparently - that no one seems to have the nerve to ask him to think again. Because it's a work of art, innit, not just a bridge.
How it got to the stage where the bridge is on the point of being built without access needs having been taken into consideration is beyond me. That's Venice off the Monkey's tourist itinerary, then.
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At 06:15 PM on 19 Jan 2007, wrote:
Heh ... europe does not have anything like the US ADA, do they?
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At 12:01 PM on 20 Jan 2007, eldwicky wrote:
That answers on of my ideas for a holiday. THAT IS IT I will boycott Venice and NOT GO TO ITALY until all this is sorted out.Cancel the bottle of chianti and thank goodness that more pizza is made in England than Italy asIn this country they will be boycotted too . This worked when we all stopped eating franch apples and is our best weapon. The political correctness police would sweep into action and have Venice Council behind bars; and as for the European Commision...
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At 10:19 PM on 20 Jan 2007, Maria wrote:
As an Italian myself I'm not surprised at the self-importance and arrogance of some of my compatriots, but please do not assume all Italians are insensitive to disability issues. Rather than quitting bottles of Chianti, please write tons of protests by emailing the mayor of Venice, Massimo Cacciari, using the form here:
I think this will be much more effective! Thank you!
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At 06:55 AM on 24 Jan 2007, wrote:
As someone who has designed, drawn and detailed bridges for 17 or so years, I am surprised that the authorities in venice have allowed this to happen. We certainly wouldn't be able (or want) to get away with it in this country.
I appreciate how difficult it can be sometime to make a bridge accessible, especially when you want it to look 'pretty' but there is always a way and the architect involved should get back to the drawing board.
It is often the case that architects design overly-fancy, impossible to build bridges and the problem of how to actually construct them gets left to us poor old civil engineers.
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