Building Bridges

Tortuca, a glass bridge prototype co-created by Joseph Robert Yost, PhD, PE, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has received a number of honors in the past year for its innovative design, including the 2022 DigitalFUTURES Project Award, a Dezeen Award and an R+D Award from Architect magazine. Named after the Latin word for tortoise, the 10.5-foot span bridge is constructed from 13 hollow-glass units that can be assembled without heavy equipment. In the fall, Dr. Yost (left, center) was joined at Villanova’s Richard K. Faris ’69 CE, ’70 MSCE Structural Engineering Teaching and Research Laboratory by two of the project’s co-creators: Masoud Akbarzadeh (left), DSc, director of the Polyhedral Structures Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, and Jens Schneider, PhD, of the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany, one of the world’s foremost experts on the use of structural glass.