21 June 2011

Footbridge Awards 2011 - technical above 75m span

Right-o, it's time to (briefly) cover the final batch of designs shortlisted for this year's Footbridge 2011 awards, this time the long-span bridges in the technical stream. Thanks once more to Frame and Form for posting all the images, and as on previous posts, you can visit their website to see the pictures, which I won't repeat. You can also now simply click here to see all my posts on the 2011 shortlist.

I've previously commented on four out of the six bridges, as they also featured in the aesthetics category: Center Street Bridge, Des Moines; College Bridge, Kortrijk; Passerelle la Defense, Paris; and Grimburg Harbour, Gelsenkirchen. Of those, the College Bridge and Passerelle la Defense are the technical standouts, I would say.

The other two candidates are the Forthside Bridge, Stirling, and the Kurilpa Bridge, Brisbane. Both are a tangle of masts and cables, and essentially a variation on the classic cable-stayed bridge. Forthside is what is popularly called an "inverted Fink truss", while Kurilpa is a simplified tensegrity structure, but both rely on the successive cantilevering of cables from main support pylons.

I've discussed both Forthside and Kurilpa here before. Both are technically impressive, although to some extent only in how they resolve the problems of their own making, as the architectural concept determines the structural form as much as arising from it.

The winners in each category will be announced on 6th July.

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