Giovanni Lombardi (engineer)

Giovanni Lombardi (born May 28, 1926 in Lugano ; † May 22, 2017 in Monte Carlo ) was a Swiss civil engineer , known for tunnel and dam projects.

biography

Lombardi spent his early childhood in the French Pyrenees , where his father emigrated from Airolo in 1916 , and went to school in Lugano, St. Gallen and Basel , where he graduated from high school in 1944 . From 1944 to 1948 he studied civil engineering at the ETH Zurich . From 1950 to 1952 he worked there on his dissertation on slim arches , after having previously worked in Bern.

Verzasca dam

In 1955 he founded the engineering office Giovanni Lombardi Ph. D. Consulting Engineers in Lugano with the engineer G. Gellera (from 1965 a registered company), from 1989 converted into a stock corporation and renamed Lombardi AG Consulting Engineers in Minusio .

His office's projects include numerous tunnels, such as the Gotthard road tunnel (the design from the 1960s was also known for the fact that Lombardi did not choose the straightest line, but a curved route, which was more economical) and the Gotthard base tunnel , which New railway-alpine transversal (NEAT), the bypasses of Neuchâtel and Locarno , a tunnel in Luxembourg , the tunnel on the Lucerne - Stans line , the Mont-d'Ambin railway tunnel for the planned Lyon - Turin line and the planned Gibraltar railway tunnel between Spain and Morocco, for which he won the 2006 design competition. The tunnel is to run between Tarifa and Tangier over a length of 40 km in three tubes at a depth of up to 300 m. He was also involved in the studies for the Eurotunnel and for a tunnel under the Strait of Messina . In addition to project planning for buildings, he is also in demand as an expert, works for the World Bank and regularly inspects dams in Argentina, for example. For example, the engineering office also tested the fire safety of the Mont Blanc tunnel (after the fire in 1999).

Other projects were the underground CERN systems for the LEP ring and the particle physics test laboratories in Gran Sasso or the dams in the Verzasca Valley (1965, also known as the Contra dam, with Lago di Vogorno ) and in the Valle Morobbia ( Lago di Carmena ), dams in Austria ( Kops , Kölnbrein reservoir ), Italy ( Diga di Ridracoli dam in Emilia-Romagna , dams on Flumendosa in Sardinia ) and Mexico (e.g. the 210 m high Zimapán dam in northern Mexico). He was on the commission to investigate the subsidence that occurred in 1978 during a water drainage at the Lac de Tseuzier (Zeusier) dam , according to Lombardi, caused by the neighboring construction of an exploratory tunnel for a road tunnel, where water ingress occurred.

From 1979 to 1985 he was President of the Swiss Dam Committee. He was the first Swiss President of the International Commission of Large Dams (ICOLD). In 2005 he received the SwissAward . He holds honorary doctorates from EPFL in Lausanne (1986) and from the Technical University of Milan (2004).

In 2005 he founded the Fondazione Lombardi Ingegneria , a foundation that promotes the work of young Ticino engineers.

As a hobby, he collected old company shares and played chess. He was married (his wife Christiane was at times the French honorary consul in Ticino) and had three children, including the later politician and entrepreneur Filippo Lombardi . His official residence was in Monaco . He spoke five languages ​​(German, French, Italian, Spanish, English) and read Romanian and Catalan.

literature

• Thomas Isler: Obituary. Engineer for the gigantic. In: NZZ am Sonntag of June 4, 2017, p. 19. ( online version)
• Christina Lombardi (Ed.): Giovanni Lombardi, Ingegnere: Studi e opere 1950–2005. Skira editore, Milan 2005, ISBN 88-7624-001-2 .
• Bruno Meyer: Giovanni Lombardi. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . October 24, 2017 , accessed January 27, 2020 .

Web links

• Markus Kamber: In conversation with Dr. Giovanni Lombardi. In: Website of the Swiss Association of Consulting Engineering Companies (USIC), No. 3 / October 2008 (interview, PDF file).
• Giovanni Lombardi (Italian) in oltreconfiniti
• Giovanni Lombardi dies (Italian) on ticinonews.ch/ticino (accessed on May 23, 2017)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ liberatv.ch , accessed on May 22, 2017
2. ↑ Entry of "Lombardi AG Consulting Engineers" in the commercial register of the Canton of Ticino  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ My biggest challenge. Giovanni Lombardi plans the railway tunnel from Europe to Africa. In: swissinfo . September 22, 2007
4. ↑ Entry of the "Fondazione Lombardi Ingegneria" in the commercial register of the Canton of Ticino  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.