MILAN, November 4, 2019 – Genoa’s annual science festival embraced the “Spazio Ponte” for its latest edition, bringing more than 3,000 visitors to the exhibition space and promoting 12 BridgeLab and SuperBridge workshops dedicated to the new bridge being built by PERGENOVA, a joint-venture formed by Salini Impregilo and Fincantieri. The visits and workshops were organised between October 24 and November 3 during the 2019 edition of the port city’s Festival della Scienza, which promotes the discipline by bringing together researchers, enthusiasts, schools and families.

“Spazio Ponte” played an important role in the festival by showing how bridges are built and displaying the technical features of the new bridge being erected for Genoa. It had a model tested in a wind tunnel, showed digital representations of the structure, workshops, and images taken by drones and webcams that immersed viewers in the construction site.

Older children, teenagers and their parents were able to become familiar with engineering thanks to two workshops. BridgeLab taught children aged eight to 13 a brief history of bridges and how they were built with displays, stories told by experts, learning materials, models and other activities. SuperBridge, meanwhile, stimulated the curiosity and skills of observation of teenagers aged 14 to 18.

The visits, led by engineers working on the new bridge, described the various stages of the project by providing immersive and multi-sensory experiences and virtual visits to a large construction site in order to emphasise the importance of teamwork on major projects.

Located in the historic heart of Genoa near Porta Siberia, “Spazio Ponte” was inaugurated on October 1, the day of the posing of the first part of the deck of the new bridge. Open to the public, it has since received some 8,000 visitors. “Spazio Ponte” also serves as a meeting place to discuss the future of infrastructure and sustainable mobility, the core business of the Salini Impregilo Group, which develops projects of this kind throughout the world. With more than 7,500 kilometres of railway and underground lines built to date, the Group is committed to innovative and sustainable projects that can improve mobility in cities. They include Cityringen, a metro line recently opened in Copenhagen, the Grand Paris Express, Riyadh Metro Line 3, the M4 Line in Milan, the Perth light rail line and the the first high-speed rail line in Texas.