LA NICCA

SWITZERLAND (see also List of Individuals)

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16.8.1794 Tenna/CH - 21.8.1883 Chur/CH

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Richard La Nicca made studies at the University of Tübingen in Germany and received education on the art of construction in Upper Italy. His first contacts with engineering were road constructions of the San Bernardino Pass and in the Swiss Rhine Valley. He was appointed chief engineer of Graubünden Canton in 1823, and there remained for thirty years.

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La Nicca's first large projects in the 1830s involved pass roads. Their importance demanded additional attention in terms of natural disasters that often destroyed certain structures by avalanches or rock slides, such that the integration of the hydraulic considerations into a road project was essential in terms of safety, economy and longevity. The disastrous 1834 flood in the Domleschg Valley required La Nicca's full attention, although the dikes along Rhine River further downstream had resisted the flood. He thus changed the Domleschg plains from a stone desert into a fertile agricultural center of the mountainous Canton. La Nicca thus became a Swiss pioneer of river rehabilitation of the 19th century, and added with his knowledge and political sense also to the rehabilitation of Linth River between the Walensee and Lake of Zurich, which had been initiated shortly after 1800 by Hans Conradin Escher (1767-1823). Once the large project of river rehabilitation in the Swiss Seeland was initiated in 1860, La Nicca served as an expert to this Swiss national project. He proposed to connect Aare River with Lakes of Morat, Neuchâtel and Bienne instead of the natural bypass, to retain floods in these lakes and to improve agricultural conditions for the plain. The first river correction of the Swiss Jura was concluded in 1878, with a monument erected in Nidau remembering the works of La Nicca. La Nicca was also involved in the design of the Saint Gotthard railways project, the important Swiss Alps traverse connecting essentially the Swiss German with the Swiss Italian regions.

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_{Bänziger-La Nicca, A. (1896). Leben und Wirken des schweizerischen Ingenieurs Richard La Nicca. Richter: Davos. P}

_{La Nicca, R., Bridel, G. (1855). Experten-Gutachten über die Juragewässer-Correction. Bern. Metz, P. (1994). Die grossen Werke des Ingenieurs Richard La Nicca. wasser, energie, luft 86(5/6): 137-143. P}

_{Schneider, J.R., La Nicca, R. (1881). Das Seeland der Westschweiz und die Korrektion seiner Gewässer. Krebs: Bern.}

_{Torelli, L. (1884). Commemorazione dell'ingegnere Riccardo La Nicca. Atti della Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Serie 6 2: 525-556.}