[_hbro]

The idea that a "strong focus on aesthetics" contributed to the failure of a bridge doesn't make any logical sense. Employing a strong focus on aesthetics doesn't preclude also having the necessary focus on stability and safety. Bridges fail because they were not designed or engineered properly.

[digging]

I don't agree; to me it states they were so focused on aesthetics that they weren't able to see structural flaws. Like tunnel vision. Seems like the best way to state this phenomenon IMO.

[c048]

It can also easily mean they were willing on taking risks, like using unproven techniques, skirt close to minimum safety requirements or even ignore certain rules, just so it would look prettier.

[akira2501]

> Employing a strong focus on aesthetics doesn't preclude also having the necessary focus on stability and safety

No, you just have to pay a lot more for it, and civil projects don't typically allow for endlessly ballooning budgets.

[SoftTalker]

Are you familiar with Scandinavian civil projects? They tend to be quite attractive, IMO.

[akira2501]

Building pretty things on land is significantly easier than building them over water. Engineering is the art of tradeoffs. You want to pick your "aesthetics" battles somewhat carefully. Which also means you're going to want some _solid_ justifications for incorporating them into a retrofit.

[kevinpet]

If you look at the picture while it's standing, the design has the diagonal braces all running the same way. Any homeowner who has knocked together a wooden gate could recognize that as abnormal. If the bridge were standing, I might think "huh, I guess the did the math and it works fine like this". But since it's scattered across the riverbed, I guess they didn't.

[soneca]

How do you focus in two different things?

You can strongly value two (or more) things, but when you decide to focus on something, as I understand the term, you necessarily preclude focusing on another thing.

[deanresin]

They said "strong focus" which implies there is a spectrum of focus and that everything falls on that spectrum of focus. I disagree that any amount of focus precludes any focus on something else, especially in this context.

On second thought, a camera can only focus on one field. So it would make sense if our language only allowed one focus. But what if we had multiple cameras? Or multiple teams or engineers designing a bridge?

Have we gone too far? lol

[conductr]

What’s odd to me is it wasn’t even too aesthetically pleasing with the wood. Sure it looked a little unusual but I don’t personally think a plain steel bridge looks all that much different, and certainly not much worse.