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 ...

Bridges news roundup

Derby, swing footbridge, delayed, over budget
£3.8m design now £4.3m, 11 months late, not yet open (pictured below, click image for larger version)


Calatrava knock-off at Achill Sound now open
€5m swing highway bridge opens 7 months late, and looks a little odd too (best photo I can find online is on flickr, showing what looks like a steel arch bridge with curved hangers) Update 6th January 2009: better photo now available

Genuine Calatrava opens in Valencia
€35m Serreria Bridge opens, 11% over budget, designers everywhere murmur in surprise at the sight of an iconic cable-stayed bridge which actually uses back-stays, lots of photos here

Bridge opens on time, on budget
No link for that one, couldn't find an appropriate story!

River Soar shortlist announced

RIBA have announced the shortlist for the £1.5m River Soar footbridge competition in Leicester. Six entrants have been selected from over 150 expressions of interest:

• Allies and Morrison with Price and Myers
• Explorations Architecture, Paris with Buro Happold
• Knight Architects with Gifford Bridge Designers
• McDowell & Benedetti with Arup
• Moxon Architects with Arup
• Ramboll Whitbybird

Some interesting choices there, with a number of firms who are not the better known architects and consultants. I think that's a good thing, as one of the problems with a closed competition such as this one is the risk that it may just feature "the usual suspects".

The entrants have to submit their designs in February, and a winner should be announced in March 2009. A preliminary briefing paper for the project is available online [PDF].

More Calgary shenanigans

Ah, Calgary, oh Calgary. As Happy Pontist readers may recall, this Canadian city is looking to build two new "iconic" footbridges, at a staggering combined cost of US$50m. And they want both of them to be designed by Santiago Calatrava, probably the most famous bridge designer in the world.

Back in September, there was controversy as to why Calgary City Council wanted to directly appoint Calatrava, rather than selecting a designer for the bridges by means of a juried competition. The bridge proposal had been rejected by a local committee, and moves to appoint Calatrava only approved by the full council because two members of the opposition had been away that day.

Mayor Dave Bronconnier appears to be keen to get a Calatrava-branded crossing, and has plenty of money available in the forms of a no-strings-attached grant from the provincial Government of Alberta. He's trying to finalise a contract with Calatrava in partnership with a single local firm.

The latest controversy is because a small group of councillors are trying every available route to get the Calatrava appointment rejected, and the scheme opened up to other bidders. They've failed in a direct proposal to get the council to reconsider, and their attempts to get Alberta to intervene have also been turned down. The rebels even tried to get Alberta to stall other funding as punishment for Calgary daring to single-source the Calatrava design. The rebels are still moving ahead with an attempt to review the council's legal policy on single sourcing.

Their efforts have been furiously rejected by the council's powers-that-be, accusing them of betraying Calgary's democratic decision. The Mayor argues that the council is following provincial funding guidelines carefully, and that even if the design is single-sourced, competitive bids will be sought for the construction.

From my perspective, over 4,000 miles away, all of this is pretty incomprehensible. I have no idea what the local legal aspects are (there are few if any public bodies in the UK who could appoint a design consultant for a project of this size in this way without putting the job out to competition). But it's fundamentally unfair to the design market, and the people of Calgary, not to seek out a designer who will offer the best bridge at the lowest price - a consideration of value that Calgary seems to entirely ignore.

Writing in the Calgary Herald, Paula Arab clearly agrees:

"River crossings should be beautiful, but there are better ways of getting it designed than to go to the best-known architect who charges the most money.

"The assertion that only Calatrava can give us 'extraordinary' bridges is utterly false.

"It's also typical of the nouveau-riche attitude that continues to believe style and class can be bought by paying the highest price. Not so."

Well said.

Is there an engineer in the house?

The good people of Portland, Oregon have been busy discussing a new light rail bridge over the Williamette River. The new bridge would carry the proposed Portland - Milwaukie light rail line as well as foot traffic, and is promoted by local transit body TriMet.




There seems to be considerable interest in which bridge option will be chosen. The three initial options were an arch bridge, a cable-stayed bridge (shown top), and a structure described as a "wave frame" (shown bottom) but which is essentially a somewhat dubious cross between a Vierendeel truss and a suspension bridge. Of those, they seem to have whittled the choice down to several variations on the cable-stayed and "wave frame" options.

The somewhat unconventional "wave" option seems popular with the natives, if a poll at BlueOregon is to be believed. The Portland Spaces blog is sufficiently keen that they interview the designer, architect Miguel Rosales.

You might think that Rosales would know his stuff: he worked on the US$115m cable-stayed Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge in Boston, as well as the Liberty Bridge in Greenville, South Carolina, a curved suspension bridge. It may seem somewhat odd, however, that his website doesn't so much as mention the engineers who played key roles in these structures (Christian Menn in Boston - who returns the favour by making no mention of Rosales; and Schlaich Bergermann in Greenville).

Reading the interview with Rosales at Portland Spaces, there's still no mention of an engineer, and I came away with the distinct impression that this is a bridge promoted by an architect who doesn't really understand bridge design. In the comments at the foot of the interview, Rosales says:

"The flowing top chord follows the flow of forces and moment diagram resulting in a slender and elongated structure. The clean design avoids the visual confusion often found in steel trusses with their multiple layers of diagonal and vertical members."

But of course, it doesn't follow the moment diagram at all, which would be cusped above the piers (i.e. "pointy"), in the same manner as a conventional suspension bridge. And it avoids the truss diagonals only at the expense of requiring massive amounts of additional steelwork to provide equivalent stiffness (and it's stiffness that's normally critical on a light-rail bridge).

It's far from clear how the bridge (which spans about 200m) actually works - the very slender depth at midspan provides insufficient moment continuity for it to work as an efficient continous truss, while the weedy vertical members lack the stiffness required for suspension bridge towers. If, as it appears, it's a bizarre hybrid self-anchored suspension bridge relying on Vierendeel action, throughout, it's no surprise that TriMet's cost estimates show it as significantly more expensive than the cable-stayed alternative.

Rosales is keen to promote his design, and suggests that TriMet's engineers have been unreasonable with their cost estimates. From the TriMet website [PDF], it's apparent they have put considerable effort into trying to make the Rosales design work, but still estimate its cost at US$119m, against US$93m for the cable-stay option. That works out at about US$10.5k per square metre of deck for the "wave frame", or about £7,000. That seems about right for an unconventional design like this, but it's easy to suggest it could be more.

Quick! Is there an engineer in the house?

Seemingly not.

"American Bridge Patents: The First Century (1790-1890)" by Emory L Kemp

The nineteenth century saw bridge design worldwide develop at a furious pace. While there was pioneering technical work taking place throughout the world, much of the development in the United States would leave a particularly lasting legacy for future bridge designers. This is because of the invention of a proliferating range of truss forms, some of which are still in use today.

The names of the inventors (Squire Whipple, Theodore Burr, Wendel Bollman, Albert Fink, William Howe) were immortalised by their truss designs. Activity certainly wasn't confined to the USA, with Alfred Henry Neville, Arthur Vierendeel and James Warren amongst the creators elsewhere. Warren's truss remains one of the most popular workhorse designs today, while others receive continued use only through radical reconfiguration (e.g. the use of Fink's truss in inverted form at Royal Victoria Dock Bridge and Forthside Footbridge).

A book covering the history of these designs should therefore make for a very interesting read. "American Bridge Patents: The First Century (1790-1890)" (ISBN 1-933202-06-8, West Virginia University Press, 2005) [Amazon UK] focuses mainly on designs which were recorded by the US patent office, and its main target is the American engineering history community.

Not all the important bridge designs were patented, and exclusion of overseas designs is quite understandable (while the US patent office makes copies of all old patents freely available online, its UK counterpart offers no equivalent access, for example).

The book is in four main sections. The first offers a potted history of American bridge development from 1790 to 1890, focussing on designs which were patented, including catalogue bridges. New bridge types are very rarely (if ever) patented today, but the introduction of new materials during the 19th century saw an explosion of new structural forms which exploited the properties of iron, steel and reinforced concrete. It remains to be seen whether more modern materials (such as fibre-reinforced plastic) hold the same potential to revolutionise not just buildability or durability but also the possibilities of form.

The history covers all the main American designers of the period, and includes copies of some patents, and many patent drawings. Before buying the book, I had expected more of an encyclopaedia of the patents themselves, but I guess this could be somewhat pointless - most of them were unsuccessful, and several heavily flawed. It certainly leaves scope for a far more thorough tome on the subject for an author so inclined.

The second part of the book covers the history of the patent office itself, which wasn't of great interest to me. The third gives a personal view on the joys of bridge patent research, and is accompanied by various reproductions of original watercolour patent drawings. These are rather gorgeous in a way that 21st century CAD renderings rarely are, but printed quite small and it would have been nice to see them at a larger scale.

The final section explains how to find the patents online, with an extensive list of over 600 relevant patents, which is tedious but essential since the patents database can only be searched if you already know the patent number. The list is structured both chronologically and by patent-holder.

There are several topics the book doesn't address, and as a result it's really only a taster for this vast subject. Despite the focus on patent records, it doesn't consider how the patent process affected development of new bridge technologies - whether it facilitated greater commercial competition, or held back the wider adoption of monopolised innovations. There's also little if any explanation in pure structural engineering terms - the reader familiar with bridge design is left to work out for themselves how each structure actually works.

There's nothing here on the fallout from this period: which designs are still used, and why, or which still offer untapped potential for the modern engineer. Essentially, this is a book aimed at the historian, and it doesn't really consider the engineering audience as such.

There's also no index, which is pretty much criminal in a history book!

Overall, I found "American Bridge Patents" a little disappointing, mainly for its lack of depth. The authors acknowledge that its main aim is to document the bridge patent research completed so far, and offer a starting point for future research. Nonetheless, the book's best feature is the large number of original patent illustrations included, featuring many well known bridge designs as well as several which are far more obscure. I'm glad I bought it.

For anyone interested in alternative views, ther are other reviews of the book at the IStructE by Tom Swailes and at the Journal of the Society of Industrial Archaeology by David A Simmons.

Bridges news roundup

Squiggly Bridge gets its final link
Most of Glasgow footbridge now on site

Next step for River Wear crossing confirmed
Techniker to review costs and address technical issues with design

Interview with Tom Oslund
Architectural input to the replacement I-35W design (pictured)


Jerusalem mayor plans to demolish brand new Calatrava bridge
£40m light rail bridge could become redundant if light rail scheme cancelled

Portland could get USA's first ever extradosed bridge

A bridge with a twist

It seems the fashion for post-modernism in bridge design is steadily departing further and further from "normal" structural constraints to the extent that it's no longer post-modernism at all, it's good old-fashioned surrealism.

The latest case in point is a proposed new foot and cycle bridge in Houston, named the "Tolerance Bridge" and planned to cost US$7m. Announcing the winner of a 54-entry "international artistic competition" (whatever that is), mayor Bill White declared that "great art is part of a real city".

Like everyone else in the entire world, they were evidently looking for something unique, a landmark, an icon (etc etc etc), and the design chosen is definitely that. It's not entirely clear from this image, but it's intended to look as if the bridge deck rises up into an arch, twisting around as it does so into something that nobody other than the most ambitious skateboarder could possibly cross. In reality, the bridge deck is at grade. Other images of the design show streetlights on the arch, enhancing the illusion that a giant toddler has vented their frustration on a more conventional bridge.

As a structural engineer, comment seems largely superfluous. The "arch" is purely sculptural, it's not there to hold up the deck below, essentially the entire bridge is a one-note joke. Depending on taste, it's either a welcome dose of humour in a genre normally known for serious structural acrobatics, or it's a case of all common sense thrown overboard. I'm finding it hard to decide which is my view: my sensible structural engineer's heart rebels against the fundamental irrationality of it, while my brain tells me we should all be more open to the eccentric and unpredictable (even if it does cost 7 million bucks). At least one Houstonian seems inclined firmly to the more sceptical view.

Bridges to nowhere

If you had to define a bridge, it would probably be something like "a structure spanning and providing passage over an obstacle" (slightly abrided from dictionary.com, that one). But what about a structure that provides passage above an obstacle ... but not actually over it?

Not sure what that means in practice? Well, Deputy Dog has the answer with a delightful set of six bridges-to-nowhere that take people out into mid-air, and no further. These include the astonishing Grand Canyon Skywalk; viewing platforms in the mountains of Italy, Switzerland and Austria; and Norway's design-conscious but frankly terrifying Aurland Lookout (pictured, photo courtesy of Lewis Martin).

Pontists may also be interested in another recent Deputy Dog post on the use of rockets to build a suspension bridge.

Sunderland council decide way forward for River Wear crossing

Today, Sunderland City Council's cabinet are meeting to agree the way forward for their iconic bridge scheme (iconic is a much abused term in bridge design, but this is one bridge that if it is ever built, will undoubtedly merit the description).

The Sunderland Echo recently reported that the current Spence / Techniker concept design (pictured) "will have to go out to tender to engineering companies. Experts will then come up with a working design and accurate costings for the structure to see if it will work and be affordable." The Happy Pontist previously wondered whether the current designers might not be too happy to see their work passed on to another firm i.e. the un-named experts.

It seems the Echo's report was slightly misleading; the council's actual intention is to appoint Techniker to develop their own design further. In a report to the council cabinet (available online [PDF]), the council officers recommend appointing Techniker to "continue with the development of the concept design up to a stage where sufficient confidence on cost, risk and buildability can be provided to assess its affordability". No doubt Techniker will be pleased to take back the lead role on this bridge at long last.

The council are definitely taking the risks associated with this highly unconventional design seriously - their report acknowledges it to be "innovative and unique", stating that "a bridge of this type and scale has not been built anywhere else". They want to achieve a comparative level of cost certainty to a conventional bridge, which will require a very substantial amount of design work indeed.

The report discusses the extra £30m required for the iconic bridge (over and above the cost of a conventional bridge), but since it doesn't split out the cost of the bridge from the cost of the wider Sunderland Strategic Transport Corridor scheme (of which it forms part), it's difficult to comment on how reasonable their estimates are. By my estimate, £30m works out at about an extra £3,000 per square metre of deck.

Techniker's designer Matthew Wells has previously suggested that a bridge "of similar size and span and of exactly the same construction and arrangement has been constructed a decade ago without any difficult[y] or on-cost or excessive maintenance regime", so perhaps this will now be an opportunity to tell everyone what that bridge is and use it as a cost benchmark. Perhaps Calatrava's Alamillo Bridge is the best comparison: it cost US$38m when built in 1992, and allowing for inflation that would work out at roughly £5,000 per square metre of deck today. However, the River Wear design is substantially more exotic than even Alamillo, so any benchmark may be futile.

The council report also discusses the recent public consultation. Newspaper polls found over 90% in favour of the Techniker design. However, the council's own consultation finds that only 52% of people were in favour of "a striking design", against 49% wanting something "tried and tested". So with half of Sunderland opposed to the bridge, you must wonder exactly why their council is quite so keen to pursue it.

I sometimes feel as if the River Wear story has taken over this blog (notwithstanding exciting side trips to the Alps), but it undoubtedly has a long way to go yet!

Swiss Bridges: Epilogue

So that was that, the end of the IABSE Study Tour in Switzerland, and very much back down to earth afterwards.

One of the main things I took away from the trip was how much can be achieved by engineers when they are confident in their creativity, skilled in their art, and (relatively) unimpeded by bureaucracy. Few if any of the bridges we saw had the involvement of an architect, or if one was involved, the structural engineering was central to the design process. Much of this is down to the challenges set by the remarkable Swiss landscape rather than anything else: the engineering absolutely has to take precedence.

That most of these bridges are also aesthetically successful is far from a foregone conclusion. Several of Robert Maillart's bridges are visually clumsy (including one that we visited, Traubach Bridge). These bridges are masterpieces because of the deep involvement and care lavished upon them by their designers. I think bridge designers anywhere can learn what can be achieved when they have a strong vision and can minimise the need for compromise.

David Billington has suggested that all engineers should consider making a pilgrimage to the Salginatobel Bridge. Before this trip I'd have dismissed that as daft idealism, but now I'd quite happily go along with it. There's plenty to learn technically from structurally challenging historic bridges such as these, but more important is what they offer in both inspiration and aspiration.

I know I'm already looking forward to the next study tour!

While in Epilogue mode, can I take the opportunity to ask for more feedback from anyone reading this blog? I'd be keen to hear comments on the bridges, opinions, news or anything else; it would be good to know that someone is reading, and I'm particularly open to discussion, debate or even dispute!

Swiss Bridges: 7. Traversina Footbridge

From the Pùnt da Suransuns, we walked to our final bridge of the day, and our final bridge of the study tour. Built in 2005, the second Traversina Footbridge is another design by Jürg Conzett, and replaced his previous structure on the site (you guessed it, the first Traversina Footbridge), which had been destroyed by a falling boulder.

One thing that's impressive about Conzett is his ability to apply equal levels of ingenuity and imagination to the design of very disparate structural forms: in addition to those at Via Mala, his Coupurebrug in Belgium is another unusual example. While at first sight the second Traversina Footbridge looks like a relatively conventional suspension bridge, it turns out to be far from conventional and probably unique.

Spanning 56m across a 70m deep gorge, the levels of the hiking trail on each side are very different, and as a result the bridge is a staircase which increases in steepness towards one end. The deck and handrail are a mixture of steel and timber elements, hung from two suspension cables with a truss-like arrangement of hangers. The main suspension cables hang from abutments which are at essentially the same height, with the result that the hangers are short at the upper end of the staircase, and progressively longer towards the lower end.

The geometry and cable forces were derived using that quintessentially Swiss technique, graphic statics, specifically a Cremona diagram. Where many engineers would plunge in with the latest non-linear form-finding software, Conzett gets out a pencil and graph paper and harks back to the methods of a century ago. The trussed hangers make the structure far stiffer than a normal suspension bridge, and in practice it barely sways at all in use.

I've given links below to a couple of websites that have photos of the bridge construction, and these are well worth a look. Building a bridge above a gorge where the only access routes are steep, narrow mountain paths, is quite a challenge. As several people on the study tour noted, the people who work out how to build a bridge are often the unsung heroes of any project. All the five Maillart arches we saw relied heavily on the falsework designer to bridge the gap first, and the erection engineering at Sunniberg would have been a major design package in its own right.

To build Traversina, a specialist firm installed a "cable crane", essentially a travelling crane running on cables strung between the trees. This allowed materials and most importantly the concrete for the abutments to be brought up from much further down the hillside. The cable network and deck panels could then be assembled in mid-air using a helicopter and roped-access specialists. It's quite a feat in a place like this.

The bridge that results is magnificent but also highly peculiar. This was pretty much the only bridge we saw where I got vertigo just crossing it, let alone leaning over the side. I think this was a combination of the precipitous location and the fact that it's a staircase - you never really feel you're on a level platform, and it's mildly disorienting.

It was getting quite late by now, and much of the return journey down the hillside was in near darkness. Looking back across the Via Mala gorge, I could only just make out the bridge, a pale grey ghost amongst dark grey shadows. It did seem afterwards like something out of a dream, the genius loci returning to its home in the spirit world.

Further information:

• entry at structurae
• location on Google Maps
• Traversina Steg II website (includes concept sketches, drawings, construction photos, publications etc, in German)
• Via Spluga (Italian & German only)
• information at Kulturraum Viamala
• construction photos at Kulturraum Viamala
• Mike Schlaich and Ursula Baus's Footbridges (German edition, also available in English)

Sunderland gets its iconic bridge. Or does it?

Time for another quick interruption to my ongoing dissection of all things Swiss.

Sunderland City Council have today announced their preferred design for the new River Wear Crossing, a project which has been rumbling on for some time and may finally be heading towards a resolution.



They've gone for the much-discussed iconic design by Stephen Spence and Techniker (pictured). This RIBA competition-winning design was kept secret for three years, before finally being unveiled in September, and then subject to a somewhat ill-informed public consultation.

Sunderland's decision to go along with the weight of public opinion leaves them with the not-so-minor difficulty of finding an extra £30m to pay for it.

The council's chief exec David Smith is quoted: "It's something that has never been done before in a shape and size like this. An international audience will be talking about Sunderland's bridge." They certainly will - although not necessarily for the reasons that Sunderland might imagine.

To their great credit, Sunderland now acknowledge that the current design may not survive further feasibility study and design development, and will be embarking on further work to "come up with a working design" and firm up the cost. This may apparently include "toning it down". It's not clear where this leaves Spence and Techniker, who might be somewhat disgruntled at someone else taking forward their competition winning bridge.

So, headline is that Sunderland will be getting its iconic bridge after all, but it's clear that this remains far from certain - the funding isn't in place, and the design could still be radically changed or even ditched.

Swiss Bridges: 6. Pùnt da Suransuns

Throughout our second day of the bridge study tour, we were accompanied by Jürg Conzett. In the afternoon, we visited two of his bridges, both part of the Via Spluga hiking trail in Via Mala gorge near Thusis.

The gorge itself is absolutely stunning. At several points, you can look 80m down and struggle to see the water below in a dark crevice as little as 1m wide. And looking up there are tall cliffs for another 100m or more. Where it widens out, it's crossed by bridges including Christian Menn's Great Viamala Bridge.

We walked only a relatively short length of the hiking trail, under the Menn bridge to first see the Pùnt da Suransuns, a remarkable stressed ribbon footbridge spanning 40m across the river. I'm not entirely a fan of the stressed ribbon bridge - while they can be beautifully slender structures, the way they droop often looks unhappy - see the Maldonado Bridge in Uruguay for an example of this. They rarely meet the engineering or administrative constraints of most sites - the sag leads to slopes greater than are desirable for many users, and for the same reason they don't work where there is limited headroom below (which is the case for most footbridges). They are also almost never the most economic solution, with the costs of expensive foundation anchorages far outweighing the material savings to be made in the main bridge deck.

Suransuns, however, is a perfect example of just how a stressed ribbon bridge can work well. The river valley sides have plenty of stable rock, required for an efficient anchorage design, and the setting demands as minimal an intervention as possible. And Suransuns must be amongst the most minimal of stressed ribbon bridges you could get.

The bridge comprises granite planks, 60mm thick, 250mm wide, and 1100mm long, which sit directly on stainless steel strips only 15mm thick, and are held apart by 3mm thick aluminium inserts. That's basically the entire structural system of the bridge, and it is beautifully complemented by ultra-minimal steel handrails supported on 16mm diameter vertical rods.

Clearly, the location allowed Conzett to break many of the rules which normally bind footbridge design: minimum widths; maximum gradients; strength of parapets; susceptibility to vibration. However, it's the way he responded to some of the challenges of stressed ribbon design which was particularly impressive. Bending of the deck slab at its support abutments is a key consideration in design, which Conzett dealt with using a seemingly simple "leaf-spring" arrangement, just using more of the main stainless steel strips locally.

The elegance of the bridge's minimal silhouette is matched by the simplicity of the engineering, and for me, this was one of the best bridges we saw. Conzett, Bronzini and Gartmann are designing a very similar bridge (albeit multi-span) at Gemeinde Windisch, and it will be interesting to see how it compares.

Further information:

• entry at structurae
• location on Google Maps (satellite photo predates bridge construction!)
• Pùnt da Suransuns Pedestrian Bridge, Switzerland (paper in Structural Engineering International, 2000/2)
• Via Spluga (Italian & German only)
• Matthew Well's book 30 Bridges
• Mike Schlaich and Ursula Baus's book Footbridges (link is to German edition, also available in English)

Swiss Bridges: 5. Sunniberg Bridge

From Salginatobel, we drove south towards Klosters and by far the biggest bridge on the study tour. Christian Menn's Sunniberg Bridge is, to my mind, his finest work, and since its completion in 1998, it has been a major landmark in the Landquart River valley.

The bridge is part of the Klosters bypass scheme, but at CHF 17m, its cost is dwarfed by the CHF 345m cost of the 4km long Gotschna Tunnel, which the highway enters at the south end of the bridge. Nonetheless, the bridge design was (rightly) chosen in place of a cheaper box-girder option because of the environmental sensitivity of the landscape.

Bizarrely, the bridge was opened seven years after completion, in 2005, by Prince Charles, that notorious foe of modern architecture. Prior to opening, the bridge had provided the construction access for the tunnel works. I find it hard to imagine the opening ceremony: "Yes, one is proud to open this monstrous carbuncle if it makes it ten minutes quicker to get to one's skiing holiday."

Approaching the bridge from the south, we drove down towards it from higher in the valley. From here, the bridge looked small, minimal, barely present in the landscape. It was only once we approached it from ground level that its scale became apparent. 526m long, 12m wide, with a longest span of 140m, and pylons up to 77m above ground level, it's a bridge on the heroic scale.

Menn's adoption of the extradosed bridge form allows the deck to be more slender than in a conventional box girder bridge (because it's supported by cables from above), while the overall bridge doesn't compete unduly with the mountain landscape (because the cables are at a much shallower angle than a conventional cable-stayed bridge). The extradosed bridge is really a special case of a post-tensioned bridge, where the cables are lifted out of the deck to allow the overall bridge deck to carry higher bending moments and shear forces at pier positions. Essentially, it's more complex and expensive than a post-tensioned bridge, but less efficient than a normal cable-stayed bridge. But when done well, it can certainly look very impressive indeed.

The bridge was designed without any expansion joints, which means that under temperature variations, the deck "breathes" in plan i.e. sways sideways. The piers are designed with relatively slender bases to be flexible enough to withstand this movement, and along with the need to maintain highway headrooms, this leads to their distinctive and elegant Y-shape. Everything about the piers and pylons is well thought out - their gentle curves, echoing the tall trees nearby; the way the bridge deck nestles between their arms; their continuity (many cable-stayed bridge have very different pylon forms above and below deck); the clever way the massive steel cable anchorages are hidden within them; and their delicate but robust proportioning.

Unfortunately, we spent so much time tramping around admiring the bridge from below, that we had no time to stop at deck level. However, a pretty good idea of the appearance can be found from this advertising poster, which I spotted when arriving at Zurich airport. Good to see the Swiss pride in this monument to engineering heroism.

Later in the day, we'd see one of Menn's concrete arch bridges at Viamala gorge, but it wasn't really flattered by the viewpoint, and certainly didn't compare well to Sunniberg. Sunniberg Bridge is a proper engineer's bridge - all the key elements of the design have a sound technical rationale, but the combination of choices made and the way they are each worked out is absolutely exquisite.



Further information:

• entry at structurae
• entry at wikipedia
• location on Google Maps (satellite photo predates bridge construction!)
• information posters for Klosters bypass (in German)
• project newsletters (see number 17 for the alternative design options; see number 33 for bridge design & construction details)
• Sunniberg Bridge, Klosters, Switzerland (paper in SEI by Menn et al)
• analysis of the Sunniberg bridge (student paper, PDF)
• Matthew Wells's book 30 Bridges
• David Billington's book The Art of Structural Design - A Swiss Legacy

Frowning at the Dubai Smile

Another quick interruption to the ongoing Swiss bridge reports - I just couldn't let this one pass!

It's another "iconic" bridge. And in Dubai, home to the world's greatest Competitive Extravagance Championships. Care to guess whether it's a structurally sound idea or not?

I have to admit, I'm always in two minds about some of the crazier bridge schemes which seem to be in vogue at present. On one hand, everything in my sober engineer's analytical heart yearns for designs which, like the Swiss masterpieces I'm currently covering, achieve aesthetic excellence by exploring an imaginative engineering concept with integrity and courage. On the other hand, I understand intellectually that in the age of post-modernist excess, there are other yardsticks by which a structure can be judged, particularly if (as in this case) it's just an excuse to erect a giant logo-as-sculpture, Sheikh Maktoum's equivalent of the McDonalds golden arches.

So, the Dubai smile. Dubai has just announced its chosen design for a seventh crossing of the Dubai Creek, following competitive proposals submitted by a variety of "specialised global companies" (none of whom are named - not even the winner - so if anyone knows who they are, please share). The new bridge crosses a 400m wide waterway, and according to one story it replaces the existing Floating Bridge, quadrupling the current traffic capacity. I hope that story has it wrong, because the Floating Bridge was only built last year!

The bridge deck is suspended from a 100m tall inverted arch (see illustration, although there's a better image here), apparently for the sole reason of creating a welcoming smile for visitors to admire. It certainly doesn't make any structural sense, as the enormous back cantilevers have to carry the weight of 12 traffic lanes in unassisted bending. Essentially, the bridge is a bit like a conventional suspension bridge (the easier way to achieve a smiling appearance) except with the support towers in completely the wrong place.

It has more in common with cable-stayed bridges with the backstay missing (e.g. Alamillo Bridge or the unbuilt River Wear Bridge), except it seems to have been consciously arranged to be even more structurally inefficient. What's especially disappointing is that it could have been made much more efficient fairly easily by stringing a few more cables horizontally between the twin cantilevers.

At 61m wide and (at a guess) about 500m long, the bridge is intended to cost 810 million dirams, which is about £147m. That works out at £4,800 per square metre of deck, which is not inappropriate for a "normal" landmark bridge but is well below the going rate for a structurally inefficient design. I don't know whether the availability of a large pool of poorly treated immigrant labour from India and Pakistan helps get the costs down or not.

Returning to my dilemma, I think it's fairly easy to take a view on this one. I can't find anything to smile about in the Dubai Smile. There's no structural rationale whatsoever, and it will be monumentally difficult to build as a result. It may be a topsy-turvy arch to fit into Dubai's topsy-turvy Alice-in-wonderland world, but essentially it's just plain old kitsch. I can see the puritan faction amongst bridge designers starting a Campaign for Real Bridges right here.

Swiss Bridges: 4. Salginatobel Bridge

The first day of the IABSE study tour had been pretty marvellous - great scenery, great bridges, great company. But it was very much run into second place compared to the excitements of the second day.

As with the first day, there was plenty to see from the coach to indicate that the Swiss have engineering accomplishments to be proud of. Driving from Zurich to Schiers, we passed below the 1965 Bircherweid stressed ribbon footbridge designed by René Walther, for example. Driving from Schiers towards Klosters, we stopped at a reinforced concrete vierendeel truss bridge (apparently the only one of its type in the country) for a quick look. And of course the Alps are riddled with spectacular road tunnels, avalanche shelters, funicular railways etc.

The first stop of the day, Robert Maillart's Salginatobel Bridge, was the only structure in the entire trip to be properly signposted, with brown tourist signs (Rossgraben did have some less visible signs, and both it and Schwandbach have tourist information boards). It was also the only bridge that seemed to have an entire cafe dedicated to visiting pontists: the Prättigauerhof in Schiers. You can stay overnight, eat pizza, drink coffee in this 1627 building.

Or just admire the various artefacts on display. Tourists stopping off en route to the bridge can examine detailed construction drawings, a model of the formwork, souvenir lumps of concrete taken from the bridge (presumably during its refurbishment), and inspect an original section of the bridge parapet. Sadly the Prättigauerhof didn't have any copies of Andreas Kessler's locally published book Vom Holzsteg zum Weltmonument - Die Geschichte der Salginatobelbrücke, let alone any souvenir t-shirts. I had to settle for a postcard.

Writing about the Salginatobel Bridge when it was presented with an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark plaque in August 1991, David Billington said:

"Such structures remind us that in this fragmented world, a highly rational, deeply educated engineer can integrate utility and beauty and bring into being objects to which all engineers must make at least one pilgrimage in their lifetimes." (Structural Engineering International 4/91)

So: a marvellous mecca for engineers, or just a nice lump of concrete neatly set off by the lovely landscape?

It took some time to get around Salginatobel Bridge. For one thing, there were plenty of places to view and photograph it from - on top, underneath, from the road at one end, and from a viewing platform at the other end. But no amount of rushing around could distract from a palpable sense of awe that grew the longer I stayed there. Billington is right: this was an almost religious experience, which caught me quite by surprise.

The design of Salginatobel bridge is undoubtedly excellent (although not quite perfect - see below). And the setting, 90m above the bottom of a deep valley, with forest to one side and gnarled rock to the other, is magnificent. Photos struggle to do justice to its promethean splendour - you have to be there with the mountains to all sides to really understand how great this bridge is. Many photos of the bridge nestling amongst the forested hillsides fail to give any idea of its scale - it's a big bridge in this context, making it even more remarkable how good it looks.

It's a great example of how the introduction of a bridge can transform relatively ordinary scenery. Sure, it's grand scenery, but there are far more spectacular gorges and mountains throughout the rest of Switzerland. Without the bridge, this would just be one of many pretty mountain valleys. Salginatobelbrücke literally makes concrete the pervading spirit, the genius loci, of this particular valley, as if rocks layed down a hundred million years ago had just been waiting patiently for a bridge to one day vault majestically outwards.

Like many great bridges, what you can see is only half the true story. Excellence in bridge design is as much about how a bridge will be built as how it will look. Without Richard Coray's audacious timber centering, the 90m span of Salginatobel Bridge could never have been built. In 1930, Maillart won the job because his was the most economic solution, and it's unfortunate that this would no longer be the case. Now, a prestressed concrete structure or welded steel bridge would be much cheaper, and both lead to structural forms suited to factory production or repetitive site assembly, certainly not an arch requiring major temporary works. A bridge like this is unlikely ever to be built again.

So where are its flaws? The masonry abutments certainly detract, and the solid concrete parapets give a heavier appearance than at Rossgraben (but not terribly so). However, I think it would be quite frightening standing on Salginatobel and looking down 90m if the parapets were only of the post-and-rail type (it's okay less disconcerting at Rossgraben because the drop is only about 12m).

Of course, although the arch shape looks like it has been precision-engineered to match the bending moment diagram for a three-hinged arch (see diagrams linked below), it's the perfect shape just for one very specific (and unlikely) arrangement of loads. Robert Maillart realised this and changed the shape of his later three-hinged arch bridges, but the less logical shape at Salginatobel undoubtedly looks more beautiful.

As at Rossgraben, if you look along the arch at an acute angle, there seems to be a reverse curve towards the springings, an illusion created by the way the arch widens at its ends.

The original bridge design also dates from a time before concrete's long-term durability was well understood - there was no waterproofing, minimal cover to reinforcement, poor quality concrete and inadequate drainage. These were all put right with repairs in 1975/76 and a US$1.3m refurbishment completed in 1998, including complete replacement of the parapets (which is why there's a section of parapet outside the Prättigauerhof). The engineers did a remarkable job on the repairs, blasting off and then shotcreting most of the concrete surface. Unusually, formwork boards were then applied to the shotcrete to reinstate the original appearance.

The flaws are pretty irrelevant. It's as much the glorious setting as the bridge itself, but Salginatobel Bridge remains Maillart's masterpiece, a truly singular sculpture in reinforced concrete that must rarely, if ever, have been equalled. We had a busy day ahead and were already running late, but it was difficult to tear ourselves away - I would have been quite happy just to stay there for another hour drinking in the view, or exploring the bridge more closely.

It was lucky the bridges still to be seen would prove to be Salginatobel Bridge's equal, in their own ways.

Further information:

• entry at structurae
• entry at Wikipedia
• location on Google Maps
• Schiers tourist information (including picture of scaffolding)
• Prättigauerhof information (including more pictures of scaffolding)
• photos of refurbishment (in French)
• diagram of bending moments explaining shape of bridge
• The Salginatobel Bridge (student paper, PDF)
• David Billington's b0oks Robert Maillart's Bridges; Robert Maillart and the Art of Reinforced Concrete; and The Art of Structural Design - A Swiss Legacy
• Heinrich Figi's paper Rehabilitation of the Salginatobel Bridge (Structural Engineering International 1/2000)

Bridges news roundup

Time for a quick interlude before moving on to day two of the Swiss bridges tour. Just three quick links to bridge stories I've spotted recently:

10 Most Amazing Bridges

Proposal for new 900m bridge costing EUR 125m in Helsinki
Architectural competition to be held next year for bridge carrying trams and light traffic

Steven Holl wins Copenhagen gateway competition
Cable-stayed footbridges cantilever in twin-tower "handshake" (pictured below)

Swiss Bridges: 3. Traubach Bridge & Bohlbach Bridge

From Bern we headed to Habkern, near Interlaken, home to two more deck-stiffened reinforced concrete arches by Robert Maillart. Habkern is in a very hilly but essentially agricultural area. It has steep-sided valleys but they are somewhat less spectacular than the settings of the two bridges at Schwarzenburg (Rossgraben and Schwandbach).

Built in 1932, Traubach bridge is straight in plan, and much plainer in appearance than Schwandbach. In particular, its solid concrete parapets look very heavy, and despite the slender arch it would be difficult to describe the bridge as elegant. A slight overhang on the outer face of the parapet only draws attention to its monolithic flatness, rather than breaking it up.

Also contributing to the heaviness are the plain-faced concrete abutments and wing walls, which Maillart successfully avoided elsewhere. A couple of service pipes are supported on one side of the bridge, and overall it gives the appearance of something sturdy and practical, rather than aesthetically exceptional.

The arch spans 40m, and the bridge has been recently strengthened to carry heavier vehicle loads. One advantage of the deck-stiffened arch when it comes to strengthening is that most of the live load bending is carried in the deck, which is much easier to strengthen than the arch. At Traubach, the deck slab and parapet beams have had much of their concrete replaced, allowing a prestressing system to be introduced (see photos at link below). A hydrophobic surface coating has also been added to guard against chloride ingress from highway de-icing salts.

Bohlbach bridge is a short walk further along the same road from Traubach, and was built in the same year. Spanning a mere 14.4m, it's another deck-stiffened arch, but curved in plan similar to Schwandbach Bridge. In many ways, it was a dry run for Schwandbach, which would be built one year later.

At Bohlbach, the bridge abutments are almost invisible, and the absence of wing walls means the solid concrete parapet is less obtrusive. I quite liked it: the setting is charming, with a waterfall and fallen tree across the stream to one side; it's at a scale where monolithic flat grey concrete works without being overpowering.

However, it's easy to see how Maillart improved the design by the time of Schwandbach. By then, the solid concrete parapets would be gone, replaced with lightweight metal railings, making the bridge far more elegant. Also, at both Traubach and Bohlbach, the arch and deck merge together for a considerable length of the span. At Schwandbach, they only just kiss, giving a much more light and open aspect.

Much of the pleasure of our trip was in the Alpine scenery, and the vernacular wooden buildings to be found everywhere we went. Nearby to Traubach we found a lovely farm hut, festooned with pots, pans and sledges ready for winter, as well as a delightful shepherd's barn.

There was also a simple king post truss covered wooden bridge across a stream, which attracted almost as much attention as the Maillart bridges! This had clearly been recently renovated, with half the roof re-shingled, and other protective boarding replaced. This was very much a craft structure, with traditional timber jointing and marking in evidence. It's hard to imagine that much in the way of analytical calculation was required for its design.

But in many ways the Maillart bridges are also craft structures - plenty of evidence of their making (in formwork boarding marks) is present, and Maillart himself avoided calculations whenever possible (relying on engineers such as his assistant Ernst Stettler for this), to the extent that Swiss academics derided his tanzboden statik ("dance-floor statics").

We left Habkern tired but very much a group of happy pontists after a great day tramping around the countryside in search of classic bridges. I think we had little idea quite how different the following day would be.

Further information:

• entries at structurae: Traubach, Bohlbach
• locations on Google Maps: Traubach, Bohlbach
• photos of refurbishment works to both bridges (German)
• David Billington's book Robert Maillart and the Art of Reinforced Concrete

Swiss Bridges: 2. Schwandbach Bridge

Robert Maillart's Schwandbach Bridge, built a year after its Rossgraben neighbour in 1933, is only a short walk further up the same road. It's regarded (at least by serial Maillart-booster David Billington) as one of Maillart's masterpieces. It takes a design he had developed at Bohlbach in the previous year, and perfects it, much in the same way as Rossgraben built upon what he had learned from Salginatobel Bridge. We were due to visit Bohlbach later in the day, so I'll leave any comparisons for a later post.

Spanning 38m, with an arch only 200mm thick, it's no surprise that Schwandbach Bridge is seen as a classic of minimal, elegant design. It's an example of a deck-stiffened arch, a form which Maillart didn't invent but did pursue more vigorously than others. Essentially, the stiffer the bridge arch is, the more it attracts bending moments - if it can be made very slender, the stiffer deck will then carry most (nearly all) of the bending - allowing the arch itself to be very slender.

The aesthetic merits of this approach are conflicting - sure, the arch looks nice, but the deck above can look very heavy indeed. It works well on relatively narrow bridges, where the parapets can double as deck beams and provide the necessary stiffness. On wider bridges, the deck slab itself must be made stiffer, resulting in a very ungainly structure.

The real advantage is in the cost of construction of the bridge. Because the arch is thin, it can be built using relatively lightweight and hence less expensive formwork. The arch itself is then used as the support while crosswalls and then the deck are constructed.

What makes Schwandbach such a work of genius is not the admirable slender arch, but how the bridge is arranged in plan. Carrying a curved roadway across a deep valley, the arch is curved on its inside edge, but straight on its outside edge.

The inside edge lies directly below the curved edge of the deck, but the outside edge is offset more from the deck as it gets closer to the arch springings. This allows the crosswalls to be splayed out, carrying the thrust from centrifugal and eccentric forces in the deck down into the arch - and as the arch is wider at its supports, it is much more stable against the same loads.

It's the sort of thing that seems amazingly simple in its use of geometry to control the load effects in the bridge, but is usually very difficult to develop into such a consistent and confident solution.

Like Rossgraben, the grey concrete works well in Schwandbach's setting, especially where it's stained with moss and lichen. The artificial geometry of the highway is made to seem like a natural feature, as much an integral part of the setting as the rocky valley sides.

As at Rossgraben, we didn't get to spend all day admiring Schwandbach Bridge, but had to head onwards, to lunch in the Alps en route to two more Maillart bridges near Interlaken.

Further information:

• entry at structurae
• entry at Wikipedia
• location on Google Maps
• sketch of the bridge by Santiago Calatrava
• diagrams and equations explaining behaviour of deck-stiffened arch (in French)
• David Billington's books Robert Maillart's Bridges and Robert Maillart and the Art of Reinforced Concrete