RIBA bridge design competitions - any better?

Last August, I asked the question: do RIBA bridge design competitions work? At the time, my conclusion was that they offered a mixed bag: out of six competitions I considered, two ended going nowhere; one appeared to be going well; and three were impossible to tell. None of them had actually resulted in a bridge being built, which you might have thought was the aim of the promoters in each case.

One reason for asking the question was that at the time, RIBA-run bridge competitions were proving controversial in the engineering press. This was largely because of RIBA's insistence that entrants to their competitions must include an architect on the team, a ridiculous requirement in the bridge design field (to be clear: architects can help design great bridges; they're just not essential). However, behind the scenes, there was greater discontent, with a number of prominent designers concerned that RIBA (and other) design competitions were producing designs that were structurally bonkers, and expensive to both build and maintain.

Since then, RIBA has agreed with the ICE and IStructE to allow engineers to enter such competitions without an architect (the recent architects-only ideas contest for an inhabited London Bridge notwithstanding), and to include knowledgeable bridge engineers on all bridge design competition juries. So, the question is, have things improved?

I'll cover the same six schemes as last time, to see how they've moved on, plus the one other RIBA bridge competition held since then.

River Wear Crossing

An invitation-only competition was held in 2005, with the winner announced in September of that year as Techniker and Spence Associates (pictured right). Last August, there were moves to secure government funding, but the bridge design itself hadn't been made public. Things moved on rapidly, though. Wraps were taken off the design in September, it was subject to public consultation, and then confirmed as the preferred option, subject to further feasibility study and cost review. Sunderland Council has never made public the losing entries, but I showed two of them here in March.

Since the end of 2008, things have gone quiet, although I understand preparatory work on the Sunderland Strategic Transport Corridor, the grandly named road scheme that the bridge forms part of, is continuing. However, as it stands, Sunderland Council's support for the Techniker design is subject to further assessment of its affordability, and central government have not yet given unconditional agreement to fund the scheme. My own view is that the present cost estimates for the iconic bridge are too low (given its profoundly unusual structural behaviour) and that it will never be built.

Is that the fault of the RIBA competition process?

I think so. The design was chosen on aesthetic merit before it was subject to a technical review by engineers with appropriate expertise, and has been allowed to gather public support before any serious attempt to review its cost or feasibility has been completed. The risks inherent in the design should have been challenged robustly before a winner was chosen.

River Avon Footbridge

No change here: the competition winner (pictured left) was announced in January 2007, and the scheme cancelled in July 2008 due to rising costs. It won't be resurrected. I've covered the losing entries for this one as well.

I don't think the competition process is especially to blame - the winning design (by Schlaich Bergermann and Ian Ritchie) is attractive and the engineering risks should have been low. Lack of strong local commitment to the scheme seems to have been the main problem, although I have to say the increased scheme costs are a puzzle - they don't seem to be merited by such a simple bridge.

Leeds-Liverpool Canal Footbridge

This one was looking good last time around. The competition for a bridge in Bootle was won in February 2007 by Eckersley O'Callaghan and Softroom (pictured right), who went on to secure planning permission by May 2008, despite a near doubling of the project budget. An August 2008 start date was reported, but as far as I can find out, construction has still not started. Competition entries here.

The cost rise here seems largely attributable to the low initial budget of £400k, which is very low for a landmark structure, however short the span. It's not clear at all why this scheme has stopped. I think the competition organisers must take some of the blame - if funding is the issue, as seems most likely, they should be telling promoters upfront when their budgets and aspirations don't match. There's also a need to discourage competitions from being run when funding isn't secure, as the cost to unsuccessful competitors is an unfair burden - people compete in the expectation that the winning bridge will be built. Where that's not the case, prize money should be greater to reflect the greater fee risk.

New Islington Footbridge

Last year, it was too early to tell if this Manchester footbridge would go ahead. A winner, by Michael Hadi Associates and Gollifer Langston (pictured left) had been announced in July 2007. Since then, it became apparent that funding was no longer available to build the winning design (if it ever was). The local regeneration company has had staff budgets slashed, which means they will have little money for the bridge. However, the very latest news is that the design has been submitted for planning consent, and that efforts to secure funding are still ongoing.

As for RIBA's role, I think it's the same as at Bootle - the competition simply shouldn't have gone ahead if there was a high risk that entrants would go unrewarded. Competition entries here.

Sheffield Parkway Footbridge

In January 2008, Norlund Architects and Ramboll Whitbybird won this footbridge contest. Since then, there's been complete silence, although on the Norlund Architects website it says the bridge is due to be built in 2010. I don't really believe that, but let's be kind, give it the benefit of the doubt, and assume this bridge is still undergoing design development. Competition entries here.

River Douglas Footbridge

The proposal to span the River Douglas, near Preston, was always on the optimistic side. It was clear even at the time of the competition that there was no funding in place to actually build the bridge, and that the organisers intended to use the winning design (by Arup and JDA Architects, pictured left) to try and drum up some cash. Quite how many entrants actually realised that is a different matter, as the contest had a ridiculous 110 submissions.

So far as I can tell, the project has yet to secure funding, and once again designers have been very poorly rewarded for a scheme which seems to be going nowhere. I've previously discussed both the shortlisted designs, and shown some of the other unsuccessful entries.

River Soar Footbridge

Here's a case where it really is too soon to judge - the winner (Buro Happold with Explorations Architecture, pictured right) was only announced at the end of February. Other entries here. I don't know whether design is progressing yet, and it would be rather unfair to speculate how well it will go just yet. Compared to other recent RIBA competitions, this one seems to have been run well, with only six firms invited to submit entries, and each of them paid £6,000, which will cover a reasonable proportion of their costs.

So, what are the scores on the doors? I make it: one bridge cancelled for definite (Stratford); three stranded without funds (Bootle, New Islington, River Douglas); one still trying to prove its feasibility (River Wear); and two don't knows / too early to tell (Sheffield, River Soar).

Looked at another way, only three out of the seven have made it as far as planning consent stage (Bootle, New Islington, Stratford). None have made it as far as putting a spade in the ground. By those measures, the RIBA design competition seems a pretty good way to get lots of publicity, but not a great way to actually get a bridge built. To be fair to RIBA, past competitions prior to these seven have not always been so unlucky - they have led to bridges being built (e.g. the Infinity Bridge, although in that case only at a cost three times what was allowed for in the competition). It's also important to understand that the process of getting any bridge built can be subject to lengthy hiatuses and false starts, so some of these bridges may yet get there in the end.

The cost to the bridge design sector of these seven competitions is substantial, and certainly well in excess of £1m. The customers don't seem to worry about that: if you could get dozens of concept designs and still pay peanuts, why wouldn't you? However, the cost to the taxpayer will also be considerable, particularly on schemes like River Wear and Stratford where substantial investment has been made in the designs.

The real question is whether there's a better way to procure a landmark bridge design. Bridges at Stirling, Brisbane and Glasgow have recently been built through the Design-and-Build route, with no evident loss of design quality, and although a risky design was chosen, the Rhyl opening footbridge may well prove to be similarly successful. Other fine bridges have resulted from the promoter going it alone and organising their own competition.

Keys to success? A clear political will, with public support. Funding in place. Inviting a small number of designers and rewarding them sufficiently to spend time optioneering rather than just being obliged to draw up their first idea in order to meet the contest's deadline. Giving engineers a strong role (design-and-build normally forces this to happen, because no sensible contractor will put forward a design they aren't confident they can build for a known sum of money).

There's no reason why all of these can't be in place for a RIBA competition, but the evidence suggests that when any one of them isn't there, the scheme will fail.

Update 15 July 2009: I'm told by Prospect Leicestershire that the next stage of design of River Soar Footbridge is about to start, progressing towards a planning application.

When bridge design competitions go bad (and good, sometimes)

I recently went to a very interesting talk in Preston by architect Cezary Bednarski, billed as "River Douglas Bridge - architects and engineers in competition", but which turned out to be a far wider journey through the murky waters of bridge design competitions past and present.

In the process, many interesting points emerged, not least the astonishing statistic that despite Bednarski's exceptional success rate in winning bridge design competitions, only about 1 in 10 of his competition-winning structures have ever been built. The reasons are many - some competitions have little real support to begin with (e.g. Liverpool Cathedral's Glass Bridge); others are the pet projects of politicians and hence quickly dumped when a new regime is voted in (Carlisle's Hadrian's Bridge); others underestimate the funding required to complete an ambitious landmark structure (e.g. Helsinki, Glasgow). It seems that bridge design competitions are great both for getting some publicity and free optioneering for a promoter, and also to allow designers to flex their creative muscles. But they're perhaps not the best way to get a real bridge built.

Bednarski did discuss the River Douglas footbridge competition, for which he had acted as a juror. This was run by RIBA on behalf of REMADE, a local development agency, and sought to restore a river crossing on the line of a long-disused railway. The contest was initially controversial because of RIBA's absurd insistence that teams could only enter if led by an architect. There were 110 entries altogether, whittled down to a shortlist of seven by the jury. The competition was won by Arup and JDA architects, with a combined stress ribbon and arch design.

It was interesting seeing various examples of Studio Bednarski designs, such as the Kelvin Link competition entry, a stressed ribbon supported by an arch (top). Compare this with the winning entry for River Douglas, another stressed ribbon supported by an arch (bottom):




Spot the difference!

We were told that many of the entries to the competition were very poor, and even the shortlisted ones far from perfect. An open competition such as this avoids the predictability of an invitation-only competition, giving newcomers their fair chance to shine. However, it's also far more likely to bring forward designers who lack the knowledge or resources to actually take a bridge through to being built, and the number of entries (and hence low chance of success) puts off experienced designers who do have those resources.

Bednarski showed several entries to the River Douglas competition which brought smiles to our faces: but these were entries to a childrens' competition, colorful, ambitious, and naive. You can find these online at Remade's website.

Another theme which came up repeatedly in Bednarski's competition examples were the many cases where competitions are won by structures which are either stretching the boundaries of feasibility, or simply not feasible at all. Understandably, losing competitors feel somewhat disgruntled when beaten by something like this (I've been in this position myself). But that's a subject to return to another time ...

River Douglas Bridge competition winner announced

The title says it all: Arup & JDA Architects have won the River Douglas footbridge competition. As predicted here in September, the winning design is a stressed-ribbon footbridge supported on an arch.

The bridge has a structural steel arch, with the deck made from precast concrete segments hung on steel tendons. The competition entry [PDF] suggested that struts between the ends of the ribbon and the arch springings will provide self-anchoring and balance internal load effects, but in this type of design there are still substantial vertical forces at the ends which have to be anchored into the ground.

The £3m bridge's next challenge is for the promoters to actually find the money to build it.

Bridge competition debris part 4: River Douglas

This is the fourth (and, for now, final) post in a series collecting together entries to recent RIBA footbridge design competitions. The other posts have covered New Islington, Leeds-Liverpool Canal, and Sheffield Parkway.

At the time of writing, the winner of the River Douglas competition hasn't yet been chosen (although the announcement is due imminently). Seven entries have been shortlisted from a total of 110. I've discussed the shortlisted entries before, so the present post will only cover entries from designers who didn't make the shortlist.

One thing noticeable about the unsuccessful entries is that they have a less clear idea of structural form than those that were shortlisted. Perhaps this has something to do with the presence of respected bridge engineer Roger Buckby on the jury panel.

As ever, click the image for a larger version, and the name of the designer for a link to any relevant details on their website.

PS: I'm away for a week so won't be posting or moderating comments until I return.

Not shortlisted

A+J Burridge


Architects in Residence


Peter Barber Architects


Designer unknown (image from Realise3d)


Shuichiro Yoshida


Added 22 December 2008
Amenity Space

Burd Haward

Added 27 January 2009
Feix and Merlin

Added 5 May 2009
Frederic Schwartz Architects

River Douglas shortlist available online

The seven shortlisted designs for the River Douglas Footbridge competition are now available online. This begins a public consultation with the bridge designs displayed locally until 26th September. A winner is due to be announced in mid-October.

I should declare an interest from the outset: I was a competition entrant, and didn't make the shortlist.

One thing of interest is that the competition brief may have been based on essentially a false premise. The Lancashire Remade website implies that the bridge soffit level specified during the competition may be inadequate to allow the river to remain open to navigation. They may therefore be infringing on a legal requirement, and it's unclear whether any of the shortlisted designs could therefore ever be built. I imagine the 110-0dd competitors would have liked to know this before investing their time in the scheme!

Anyway, here are the entries (designers are not identified):

Design 1 is a combination central arch span with two stressed-ribbon side spans. It's nicely detailed, with the two side-by-side structural sections cleverly done. There's one big disadvantage. The bridge will require substantial foundations within the floodplain, which the competition brief describes as peat, sand and clay tidal flat deposits: to the layman, that means sludge. Bedrock is about 20m down. Access to the site is difficult enough anyway (mostly across fields), and access to build the foundations might be a big problem. The abutment foundations outside the floodplain will also be substantial, as they will have to resist considerable forces from the stressed ribbon, which will be only partly balanced by strut members.

Design 2 is, er, a combination central arch span with two stressed-ribbon side spans. This one is more explicit about what they are (they're strictly catenary box girders in design 1), and it's less of an arch, but really it's just a variation on a theme. This one seems better engineered, but the disadvantages are exactly the same. With both the first two designs, it's unclear to what extent the bridges are "landmarks" - one of the brief's criteria was to create a legible marker to the river's crossing point, which suggests that it perhaps ought to be visible from a distance.

Design 3 is definitely the odd-one out, a puzzling steel truss-frame bridge with a short side span and a large Vierendeel-truss main span. I think this is a pretty surprising choice for the shortlist as visually it's quite out-of-place, not even matching the appearance of the old railway bridge that used to sit at this site. Again, there's a foundation in the floodplain with a high thrust component. It seems a bit arbitrary for this scheme.

Design 4 is one I found hard to like, mainly because of its odd proportions. It consists of two asymmetric cable-stays, when one would be easily enough to carry this span, and they are both unnecessarily tall and with exceptionally short back-spans. The net result (again) would be expensive foundations having to carry substantial thrust loads. Not apparent from the elevation, the cables from each mast carry a different edge of the deck, which again just seems unnecessary.

Design 5 brings with it a remarkable sense of deja vu, for yet again it's another arch-and-stress-ribbon combination. This has several interesting components, although ultimately has the same concerns as the similar designs 1 and 2. The designers knows their structural engineering history, hinting at Eladio Dieste as an inspiration with the arch made from a slender concrete shell with brick facing (Dieste would have done it all in pure brick, of course).


If I said at this point that Design 6 combines an arch and stressed ribbon again, you'd be unsurprised. And so it is. Very similar to the first entry in overall conception, with two side-by-side structures incorporating steps on the arch extrados. I find it hard to choose between the four similar designs: Design 5 has the most interesting engineering, but Design 2 looks like it may be the best engineered.

Luckily, Design 7 is something different, with a very Calatravaesque asymmetric cable-stayed bridge, albeit one where the pylons are properly back-stayed (unlike the notirous Alamillo Bridge). I quite like it: it's visually striking, nicely styled, and certainly a landmark. But the foundations will be amongst the most expensive of any of these designs, and it's not really a bridge that suits its context, a very rural location. It's perhaps too bold for such a place.

None of the bridges manage to keep their muddy footprints out of the ecologically sensitive (and constructionally difficult) floodplain, which seems odd since buildability and sensitivity to the environment were two issues raised in the brief. And I'm amazed that four out of seven are of essentially the same structural form: this will severely limit the judge's options at the next stage of the competition, and given the shortcomings of the three other bridges, I expect a stressed-ribbon option to win. I can't tell whether this represents something-in-the-air, a common solution to the site's particular problems, or is just a reflection of a keen liking for this type of bridge by one or more of the judges.

It will be interesting to see which design wins, and also interesting to see after that whether the winner ever gets built. The uncertain legal issues over the navigation are just one issue: this is also a bridge which as yet has no funding in place.

Do RIBA bridge competitions work?

There have been a few interesting reports recently on RIBA bridge competitions, whether their rules are fair, and whether the winning bridges are too expensive or never get built.

I thought it might be interesting to review some of their competitions and see whether taken as a whole, they can be seen as a successful path to bridge procurement or not. Their website only holds results from 2005 onwards, so I've limited myself to those - I'm ignoring earlier RIBA-run bridge competitions including the London Millennium Bridge and Butterfly Bridge in Bedford.

Where I can find the information, I've included some key facts, such as the number of entrants, and the cost of the bridge per square metre of deck (a non-iconic footbridge can be built for as little as £1,000 per square metre, and £4,000 - £6,000 should be sufficient for many landmark bridges).

River Wear Crossing

Invitation only, 35 expressions of interest reduced to 6 shortlisted entrants. Winner announced in September 2005 as Techniker with Spence Associates. Budget £43 million. As of today, the winning entry has never been publicly revealed. However, it appears that proposals to build a bridge are moving ahead, with attempts to secure government funding and the more recent announcement that government funding has been secured, albeit for a "bog-standard" bridge. Cost per square metre of deck would have been about £4,000 based on the original budget.

River Avon Footbridge

Invitation only, with 5 shortlisted entrants. Winner announced in January 2007 as Schlaich Bergermann with Ian Ritchie Architects. Budget £2 million. Cancelled in July 2008 when budget reached £3.3 million, having spent £312,000 to get to planning application stage. Cost per square metre of deck would have been about £17,500.

Leeds-Liverpool Canal Footbridge

Open competition, with 88 entrants. Winner announced in February 2007 as Eckersley O'Callaghan with Softroom. Budget £400k. By May 2008, the budget was then stated as £700k, but planning permission had been secured. An August 2008 start on site was forecast. Cost per square metre of deck is £7,000 (based on planning drawings available at http://www.sefton.gov.uk/Default.aspx?page=5297 - search for "Pennington Road").

New Islington Footbridge

Open competition, with 87 entrants. Winner announced in July 2007 as Michael Hadi Associates with Gollifer Langston. Again, I seem to recall an original budget of about £350k. I've been unable to find any evidence of progress since the winner was declared. Does anyone know otherwise?

Sheffield Parkway Footbridge

Open competition, with "over 100" entrants. Winner announced in January 2008 as Ramboll Whitbybird with Tim Norlund. Budget was quoted as £1.5m in the original brief, but has been stated as £2m elsewhere. For the span of 37m and width of 4m stated in the brief, the £1.5m budget gives a cost per square metre of deck of £10,100, but the proposed design looks to be longer than that, so the real figure is probably much lower! Again, I can find no evidence of further progress, but it's still early days for this one.

River Douglas Footbridge

Open competition with 110 entrants, reduced to shortlist of 7. Winner set to be announced later this year. Budget is stated as £2-3 million in the brief, for a bridge about 85m long and 4m wide. That's about £5,880 - £8,820 per square metre of deck.

Conclusions

So, for the last 4 years, we can report 2 competitions that ended by going nowhere (Wear, Avon); 1 that seems to be going well (Liverpool); and 3 where it's too early yet to say (New Islington, Sheffield, River Douglas). Considering the amount of money spent by various parties (particularly for the open competitions, where the combined cost to the economy of all the entrants' time could easily exceed £0.25m per competition), that might not seem to be very good value.

This isn't necessarily a poke at RIBA and their competition office. For the two obvious failures, the key themes seem to be a lack of proper funding, feasibility study, and commitment from the promoters. But any cost-benefit analysis of these competitions would show a considerable loss to the wider economy in wasted professional time, both by unsuccessful entrants, and at Stratford, by the successful ones. The need for proper preparation by a client before running such a competition seems very clear.

River Douglas Footbridge - shortlist announced

RIBA have announced the 7 shortlisted entrants to their River Douglas Footbridge competition:

• Amin Taha Architects, London
• Guy Nordenson & Associates, USA
• JDA with Arup, London
• Nick Hancock Design Studio, London
• NPS North West Ltd, Cumbria
• Ramboll Whitbybird with Priestman Goode, London
• t-hoch-n Architektur, Austria

There were 110 entries in total, which I think may be a new record, excessive even by the crazy standards of other recent RIBA open design competitions. It would be interesting to tot up the total amount of professional time spent on these competitions (at, say, £2k per entrant, that's over £200,000 spent on this single competition already). It might be even more interesting to compare that against what actually gets built and consider the cost/benefit balance to the various parties involved. Certainly, the client gets by far the best deal - loads of ideas for minimal outlay, plus as much publicity as they can squeeze out of it.

There are no pictures of any of the designs yet; apparently there will be public consultation in September.

The only non-shortlisted contender I could find on the web so far is by Architects in Residence. Please post in the comments if you find any others!

[PS: I ought to declare an interest, as I contributed to one of the 103 entries not shortlisted ...]

RIBA bridge design competitions

The big controversy in New Civil Engineer magazine, the weekly magazine for members of the Institution of Civil Engineers, has been a row over bridge design competitions run by RIBA. Although the row might seem on the face of it to be just down to a single person (Expedition Engineering's Chris Wise), this is only the latest instalment in a longer-running battle which shows no signs of nearing a conclusion. The crux of the most recent dispute is RIBA's insistence in its competition rules for a bridge over the River Douglas that entrants must not only include an architect in their team, but that the architect must be the lead designer. Although RIBA have since changed this rule, it came a little late, what with only a week or two to go until the competition deadline.

The underlying problem is that many clients looking for a new bridge see it not as an opportunity to solve a transport problem, but an opportunity to create an architectural landmark, and hence either attract funding (for regeneration), or simply publicity (as a prelude to funding). They see RIBA's competitions office as the right way to achieve this - it takes away the hassle of actually running the thing, and it offers an simple way to gain attention (some recent RIBA bridge competitions have attracted over 80 international entrants, even for comparatively minor structures with a budget under £0.5m). It doesn't just secure a design - it can secure an architect, and everybody knows you can't design a bridge without an architect these days. Wasn't it Norman Foster who designed that bridge over a river in London somewhere? So what if it wobbled - think of the publicity!

It's not clear whether RIBA genuinely believe that the presence of an architect is essential to a great bridge design (while there's little doubt they can make a tremendous contribution, they're equally clearly inessential), or are just protecting their members' commercial interests by insisting on their presence. I supect the latter, as they're joined by their Irish counterparts, the RIAI, who have included a similar requirement for the presence of an architect in two recent bridge design competitions, at River Liffey and Ballsbridge-Dodder. The latter case is particularly egregious, as not only is an architect required, but only architects can enter. To be precise, only Irish architects. To the RIAI's credit, their prizemoney is at least meaningful (50,000 euros for Ballsbridge-Dodder compared to £8,000 for the RIBA's River Douglas), and in the case of the River Liffey competition they've piled on the paperwork at prequalification stage in an attempt to narrow the field and rule out the chancers and no-hopers, thus hopefully avoiding the massive waste of expensive professional effort that RIBA deliberately encourage.

Complaints about RIBA's undesirable dominance of this field are nothing new - they were a key theme of IABSE's 2007 Henderson Colloquium, which debated how to improve the way that bridge design competitions are organised. All that the engineers have so far achieved is the ICE's and IStructE's agreement to field a token bridge engineering expert as one of the judges on RIBA's bridge competition panels. It does seem that more recent RIBA competitions have managed to avoid the fiasco of the 2005 River Wear crossing competition, where a winner was declared, but the "structurally challenging" winning design has never since been publicly revealed.

However, the fact that RIBA still needs to be publicly rebuked before dropping their insistence on the presence of architects for a bridge design competition (and that RIAI still sing exactly the same tune), suggests that they retain a thoroughgoing ignorance of what might actually help achieve a successful design, hence a successful project and ultimately a satisfied client. You would think that a greater focus on the engineer's role in ensuring buildability and maintainability would go some way to assisting in that goal. Given the number of clients complaining that they can't afford to build winning designs, or maintain them once built, it seems we're still a long way from a competition regime that can reliably deliver bridges that lead to satisfied clients. And insisting that bridge engineers play second fiddle (or as with the RIAI, can't take part at all) isn't helping matters.