<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Ted Zoli, the MacArthur Genius Award\u2013winning structural engineer, is among the nation&amp;#039;s foremost experts on &amp;quot;terror-proofing&amp;quot; bridges and other infrastructure. After 9/11, he developed a composite material now used in construction and bridge retrofitting to protect against damage from explosives. That&amp;#039;s some pretty heavy stuff (meaning the work, not the composite material). So it comes as something of a surprise that Zoli&amp;#039;s vision of new sustainable design is grounded in an old-fashioned material: He sees a great future in building long-lasting, rot-resistant bridges out of wood. His first timber pedestrian bridge design\u2014the 396-foot-long Squibb Park Bridge, which received $4.9 million in city funding last July\u2014is scheduled to open next summer. With two main spans of 120 feet each, the bridge will connect a small, paved park at the north end of the historic Brooklyn Heights Promenade with the acclaimed new Brooklyn Bridge Park, an 85-acre waterfront park designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates featuring sweeping views of New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline. Zoli&amp;#039;s design is expected to receive approval today in a hearing before the New York City Design Commission, according to park president Regina Myer. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a thing of beauty in itself,&amp;quot; Myer says, &amp;quot;and it provides important connectivity to Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is now somewhat isolated because of the barrier formed by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.&amp;quot; Getting around that barrier required some design creativity. From Squibb Park, the bridge will zigzag gracefully through a clutch of tall oaks, between buildings and over a street, descending 30 feet in elevation from its starting point to its endpoint in Brooklyn Bridge Park.  Supported by poured-concrete pillars and suspended by steel cables, the primary construction material will be 6- and 10-inch-diameter pieces of Robinia pseudoacacia, or black locust, a tree found widely in the Southeast but also prevalent in forests of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Black locust is extremely rot-resistant, durable and sustainable, Zoli says. The rough-sawn decking and wooden structural posts will have a natural finish that changes color and even warps slightly with exposure to the elements, a desired effect.  In the case of Brooklyn Bridge Park, black locust isn&amp;#039;t just an excellent building material\u2014black locust fence posts are also a prominent feature of the park&amp;#039;s landscape. &amp;quot;The overall idea was to create a bridge that draws from the language of Brooklyn Bridge Park,&amp;quot; says Zoli, who is vice president of HNTB Corporation, an architecture and engineering firm headquartered in Kansas City, Mo. &amp;quot;I was very taken by the idea of the Robinia fence posts and the wire range fencing [in Brooklyn Bridge Park], and re-imagining these components as part of the footbridge.&amp;quot; Though this project is a pedestrian bridge, Zoli says he sees durable woods like black locust\u2014together with smart design\u2014as the foundation of a new generation of American bridges. &amp;quot;Squibb Park Bridge is a stepping stone to using rot-resistant natural building materials [including Robinia] for new vehicular bridges in rural areas,&amp;quot; he says. And the design is a far cry from a gritty metal bridge: The early renderings of the Squibb Park Bridge show a footpath reminiscent of a boardwalk or wooden bridge from a national park. &amp;quot;Ted&amp;#039;s design riffs on the tension between rural and industrial,&amp;quot; says Matt Urbanski, a principal with Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not like Smokey Bear came in and dreamed it up. It shows a nice balance between elegance and strength.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/design/a6619/a-new-brooklyn-bridge-this-time-made-of-trees-5618483/>