Dear staff,
Fabricate is the official student newsletter at the Melbourne School of Design. You are receiving this email as a current student or staff member of the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning.
The image above is of Jiaozhou Bay Bridge (or Qingdao Haiwan Bridge).
The bridge is a 26.7 km (16.6 mi) long roadway bridge in eastern China's Shandong province, which is part of the 41.58 km (25.84 mi) Jiaozhou Bay Connection Project. As of December 2012, Guinness World Records lists the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge as the world's "longest bridge over water (aggregate length)" at 41.58 km.
The bridge was the idea of a local official in the Chinese Communist Party who since has been dismissed for corruption. It was designed by the Shandong Gaosu Group. It took four years to build, and employed at least 10,000 people. It opened on 30 June 2011 for traffic.
Concerns regarding the bridge's safety were raised when Chinese media reported that the bridge was opened with faulty elements, such as incomplete crash-barriers, missing lighting and loose nuts on guard-rails, with workers stating that it would take two months before finishing all of the projects related to the bridge. Shao Xinpeng, the bridge's chief engineer, claimed that in spite of the safety report the bridge was safe and ready for traffic, adding that the problems highlighted in the reports were not major.
A year after opening, the bridge had few users and was described as China's "bridge to nowhere". Built for a projected 30,000 vehicles a day, it was only carrying 10,000
Read on for all the latest MSD news.