Giovanni Lombardi (engineer)
Giovanni Lombardi ( born May 28, 1926 in Lugano ) is a Swiss architect, known for tunnel and dam projects.
Lombardi grew in the French Pyrenees, where his father had emigrated from Ticino in 1916, and went to Lugano, St. Gallen and Basel at the school, where in 1944 he made the Matura. He studied from 1944 to 1948 civil engineering at the ETH Zurich. 1950 to 1952 he worked on his dissertation Slim bow locks after he was practically working in Bern previously.
In 1955 he founded with the engineer G. Gellera the engineering firm Giovanni Lombardi Ph. D. Consulting Engineers in Lugano ( since 1965 a registered company ), from 1989 converted into a public limited company and renamed Lombardi AG Consulting Engineers in Minusio.
Among the projects of his office are numerous tunnels, the Gotthard road tunnel ( known to the design from the 1960s was that Lombardi is not the straightest line is selected, but a curved line, which was more economical ) and the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the New through the Alps ( NEAT), the detours of Neuchâtel and Locarno, tunnel in Luxembourg, the tunnel on the line Luzern- Stans, the Mont d' Ambin railway tunnel for the planned Lyon- Turin and the planned Gibraltar railway tunnel between Spain and Morocco, for which he won the 2006 design competition. The tunnel will run between Tarifa and Tangier to 40 km in length in three tubes, with up to 300 m water depth. He was also involved in the studies for the euro tunnel and a tunnel under the Strait of Messina. In addition to the planning of buildings, he is also in demand as a consultant, working for the World Bank and inspected regularly, for example, the dams in Argentina. The engineering firm tested, for example, the fire safety in the Mont Blanc tunnel ( after the fire in 1999 ).
Other projects included the underground CERN installations for the LEP ring and the particle physics research laboratory at Gran Sasso or the dam in the Valle Verzasca (1965, also known as Contra dam known, with Lago di Vorgorno ) dams in Austria ( Kops, memory Kölnbrein ), Italy ( Dam Diga di Ridracoli in Emilia -Romagna, dams on Flumendosa in Sardinia ) and Mexico (eg, 210 m high Zimapán Dam in northern Mexico ). He was in the commission of inquiry in 1978 occurred at a water drain subsidence at the dam Lac de Tseuzier ( Zeusier ), according to Lombardi caused by the adjacent construction of a tunnel for exploring a road tunnel, raised an intrusion of water.
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 Swiss Award. He holds honorary doctorates from the EPFL in Lausanne (1986 ) and the University of Milan ( 2004).
In 2005 he founded the Fondazione Lombardi Ingegneria, a foundation that promotes the work of young engineers Ticino.
As a hobby, he collects old company stock and playing chess. He is married (his wife Christiane was partly French Honorary Consul in Ticino ) and has three children, including the politician and member of the Council of States Filippo Lombardi. His official residence is in Monaco. He speaks five languages ( German, French, Italian, Spanish, English) and reads Romanian and Catalan.