“A panel of know-alls”
Stuttgart – Excerpts from various newspapers…
As a responsible planner of the statics the Stuttgart engineer Werner Sobek knows the construction project of the deep station to the smallest detail. In an interview Sobek increasingly objects to the reasons to which the project must be stopped because of safety concerns.
Mr. Sobek, your colleague Frei Otto calls the freeze of Stuttgart21 as threatened due to the construction site “danger to life and limb.” If the warning justified?
The warning is not justified in any way. I am shocked that Mr. Otto now expressed in this form – after many, many years has been involved in the project as an active planner and Stuttgart21 has known this for a long time so also the advice on the nature of the subsoil. These opinions do not say, that the project threatens or endangers life.
Mr. Otto warns of new underground station could be flooded by ground water or by the pressure of groundwater squeezed out of the ground uncontrollably. If you build in the groundwater, creating lift. It is known since Archimedes. The new Stuttgart main train station is between six and eight meters in groundwater. This is technically not a problem and the conditions of the city, if you go to the many parking garages, think light rail or commuter train tunnel, sensational in any way. On the contrary: The tubes of the S-and U-Bahn are for nearly 35 years in peace some six feet lower than the new station in the groundwater. And nothing has happened.
As a layman I would say that the subway station developed because of its size, a much higher lift than a narrow tube train. Is that correct?
Yes. But even the weight of the main station construction is sufficient to compensate for the buoyancy almost. It includes hundreds of stakes that anchor the station ten to 16 meters deep underground. This is an additional security. Overall, to the problem which Mr. Otto fears.
Mr. Otto said that he spoke his warning also of “moral obligation” of. Can you do with this concept in this context something?
I will not comment on that.
Try it.
At the Stuttgart 21 project some of the best and most prestigious Ingenierbüros are actually involved. This fellow can not just assume this way – even indirectly – that they would act irresponsibly or immorally. This is simply an absurdity.
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Stuttgart 21
co-creator of the station questioned
Michael Schmidt, 08/19/2010 17:28 clock
The 85-year-old Frei Otto does not currently mainly technical incalculable risks sufficiently into account.
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| Photo: Zweygarth |
“If a design takes long to realize, then, the plan has become obsolete. “
Frei Otto on one of the problems of the low station
One of two designers of the deep station for Stuttgart 21 suggests a new beginning of the planning. The 85-year-old Frei Otto, who for more than 13 years has together with the Düsseldorf architect Christoph Ingenhoven designed the characteristic “light eyes” and the shape of the new Stuttgart station, does not currently particularly unpredictable technical risks sufficiently into account. Above all, the Safety concerns the architect and engineer and complains that the current criticism is based primarily on the costs: “If we had had in designing the current level of information, I would be dominated by the idea of a low station moved away.” For a compelling reason why one would put the Stuttgart main station underground. Instead Otto is tinkering with the the idea of a high station in order to cross the Nesenbachtal. “A new plan could be mad to go fast, since there are now so much more information there than in the architectural competition in 1997.” The current hard-fought were on the side wings of the other option and this has ever been an issue for the architectural competition.
Geological factors affecting work
“The purpose of the wings, which are for a station with steam locomotives because of the soot and smoke make it an absolutely necessity. Bonatz ‘grand gesture to the east has seen hardly anyone,” said Otto. . What made him much more strongly for a rethink, are the sum of the geological adversities and also insights and new and terrible experience of the behavior of crowds in the tunnel , “The main problem still remains: we sit down with the underground station in the groundwater, and it rises up. How is the 400-meter long and 100 meter wide concrete trough in which sits the underground station, to be held then, so that it floats not.
But can they be securely anchored? “asks the emeritus of the University of Stuttgart and founder of the Institute for Lightweight Structures in the face of the clay subsoil at Castle Garden. Also on another level, there are other problems with his creation: “Each design has its time has when it is not realized for long, then the plan becomes outdated and is flogged to death. Big projects who have no completion date, there is no psychological support” says Otto, who attained World fame for the design for the Munich Olympic roofs in collaboration with his colleagues in Stuttgart Gunter Behnisch 1972 .
