Hannskarl Bandel
Life
Hanns Karl Bandels father was an architect and had a design office and his mother came from the Brechtel family, which operated a well-known German construction company of the same name. This was founded in 1883 by John Brechtel. So Bandel was pre-embossed for his career choice. He earned a doctoral degree in engineering at the Technical University of Berlin. After having been employed in the German steel industry, he came after the Second World War without money and with two suitcases full of books in the U.S. and hoping to build suspension bridges. Three years after he had joined the New York firm of engineer Fred Severud, he was his equal partner.
Together with Severud he delivered some significant contributions and constructive innovations to various construction projects such as:
- The cylindrical Marina Towers in Chicago
- The Toronto City Hall
- The Ford Foundation Headquarters in New York City ( The Jungle building)
- The suspended on ropes roof of Madison Square Garden in New York
- The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC
- Philip Johnson's Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California
- The old Sunshine Skyway Bridge in St. Petersburg, Florida ( demolished)
In 1978 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering. After retirement Severuds the company was sold to a Hungary. Bandel went to DRC Consultants and worked, among others, rope bridges. In 1980 he was offered a professorship at the University of Graz, but he canceled because he was working in the U.S. and more important.
Bandel was also involved in the planning, design and execution of the new Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Thereby prestressed concrete has been used not only for the road, but also as a support member. In 1972 he was a consultant with the renovation of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York. Later Bandel also designed a study for the three-dimensional assembly of rod structures without tools in zero gravity for the NASA Mars Pathfinder Project.