Spaghetti Bridge Competition
Role
Team Member · Structural Design
Location
Ankara, Türkiye
Year
2024
Sector
Competition
The 3rd Spaghetti Bridge Competition, organised by the Chamber of Civil Engineers (İMO Ankara Branch) as part of Civil Engineering Week. Ten teams of students and young graduates from five Ankara universities — including Gazi University — were each given eight hours and a limited kit of dry pasta and silicone to design and build the strongest and most elegant model bridge. Competing on the Uluslararası Köprücüler team, the bridge was judged by a jury of sixteen academics on architecture, static analysis, structural efficiency, presentation and teamwork — earning an Honourable Mention.
The Challenge
Turning four packets of pasta and a silicone gun into a genuine load-bearing structure under an eight-hour clock — where a single weak joint or misjudged load path means failure on the public load test.
The Outcome
The bridge was completed within the time limit and held through the load test at Ankara Kent Kütüphanesi, earning the team an Honourable Mention among ten competing university teams.
The Lesson
Severe constraints are the purest test of an engineer. With a fragile material and a fixed deadline, intuition for load paths, triangulation and efficiency matters more than resources — the same instinct that scales up to real bridges.
Next Project
GreenPark Hotel Transformation
Bad Soden, Germany · 2025