15 October 2008

Bridge competition debris part 3: Sheffield Parkway

This is the third in a series of round-ups of RIBA bridge competition entries, following on from ones for New Islington and Pennington Road.

The Sheffield Parkway footbridge competition attracted 109 entries, but nonetheless I found it very difficult to find many of them online.

This scheme offered a fairly open brief with a relatively flat and unrestricted landscape, with the footway carried over a dual carriageway. Judging from the images below, that's again a license for every furniture designer or frustrated sculpture to try their hand at bridge-as-blob. I know that sculptor Richard Serra was a big admirer of bridge designer Robert Maillart, but here we're seeing bridge designers taking their inspiration from the likes of Serra.

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.

Winner
Ramboll Whitbybird + Norlund Architects


Also shortlisted
Satellite Architects + Elliott Wood Partnership


URB Architecture + Ove Arup & Partners


Arup Associates


DLG Architects


Not shortlisted
Edgley Design


Leit-werk [PDF]


Juhana Marttinen + Markus Wikar


David Narro Associates + A+J Burridge

2 comments:

  1. I think 'debris' is an appropriate term by the looks of some of these.

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  2. I didn't intend it to be a derogatory term, but looking over all the various competitions, there are certainly some designs which are pretty horrible, and others it's very hard to imagine a jury panel looking favourably on (e.g. for technical reasons).

    I understand from people who have acted as judges in these open competitions that a significant proportion of the entries are, in their view, very poor. That begs the question of whether the open competition format is a good use of everyone involved's time.

    Equally, however, it's clear that these contests trigger a quite amazing explosion of creativity and ambition. The invited competition format (where often just the "usual suspects" are asked to provide entries) makes it much more difficult for new designers with unusual ideas to get anywhere.

    Quite what the best balance is, I don't know.

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