Original scientific paper
Secessionits Reinforced Concrete Bridges on the Chanel Voćinska — Drava Designed by the Architect Fran Funtak
Dragan Damjanović
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Abstract
Reinforced concrete bridges constructed over a canal linking the little Voćinska river and the Drava in the Drava River Valley of Slavonia between 1911 and 1913, are among the most interesting examples of Secession engineering in Croatia. Commissioned by the Cooperative for the Regulation of the Vućica and Karašica, they were designed by architect Fran Funtak of Vukovar, an alumnus of the Polytechnics in Graz and Budapest, for the firm of Josip Banheyer and Son. The entire value of the project reached 100,000 crowns being thus financially the biggest such undertaking in Croatia before the First World War. So most of the firms invited to bid gladly participated. The Funtak firm won in, what appears to have been, a clean and fair competition. The controversy between the Zagreb architect Amedeo Carnelutti and the Director of the Cooperative, Stjepan Belle in the Viesti društva inžinira i arhitekata (The News of the Association of Engineers and Architects) concerning the outcome of the competition, throw an interesting light upon the state of affairs in construction industry in Croatia at the time. Besides corruption, it was greatly affected by imprecise laws, so Carnelutti called for introducing German construction laws for the construction profession to grow. The architectural treatment of the bridges is fully in harmony with the contemporary repertoire of Central European Secession. They were built by state-of-the-arts technique, the main element being a web of longitudinal and transversal reinforced concrete beams carrying the pavement. Only one of the eight bridges has been preserved, on the Dravska Kopitnica near Croatian-Hungarian border (and even this one not completely), as well as one third of the bridge on the road between Donja Bazija and Suhomlaka.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
151888
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2004.
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