of DRC Consultants, working on cable-stayed bridges and various other structures. He was offered the chair of structural engineering at the University of Graz, Austria, in 1980, but turned down the offer, saying that his challenging assignments in America were more important to him than a prestigious professorship in Europe. When the current Sunshine Skyway Bridge was constructed, Bandel was in charge of providing the construction engineering, planning, and management for the project. This bridge was constructed using pre-stressed concrete, which not only served as the roadway but as the structural support for the bridge, and featured a single span of supporting cables which incorporated his work in cable stayed bridge systems. Bandel was also an expert on creative structural renovation and retrofitting. According to Benjamin Horace Weese, Bandel personally saved the deteriorating Guastavino tile dome at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine by New York City in 1972 by recommending that its supporting granite piers be insulated. In later years Bandel produced an innovative study for three-dimensional trusses to be assembled without tools in zero gravity, for the NASA Mars Pathfinder project. Death Bandel died of heart failure while skiing at Aspen Highlands in Aspen, Colorado. In popular culture James Franco's character in the 2008 movie Pineapple Express refers to Hannskarl when discussing his favorite civil engineers. In Jonathan Franzen's The Twenty-Seventh City protagonist Martin Probst clearly refers to Bandel as constructor of the Gateway Arch and puts him in the middle of a political conspiracy that finally unravels both, his professional life and his family. References 1925 births 1993 deaths German emigrants to the United States Structural engineers German civil engineers American civil engineers 20th-century American engineers People from Dessau-Roßlau Engineers from Saxony-Anhalt