Educating Engineers to Create Good Looking Bridges

This article puts forth ideas on how to enhance the engineering curriculum to improve the capacity of engineers to design good looking bridges. Bridges are divided into two groups: premium bridges, for which owners have allocated funds in addition to what is required to perform the required practical function, and practical bridges, for which no such funds have been allocated. The proposed changes to the curriculum focus exclusively on developing ways to improve the visual characteristics of practical bridges, since this will maximize the effectiveness of the proposed changes. New ideas that create additional economic value relative to the status quo are shown to be the primary raw material that can be used by designers to create good looking practical bridges. Recommendations are therefore made to increase the capacity of future engineers to design bridges that embody new ideas that create economic value.