Budapest bridge design competition winner announced

In August 2017, I posted the 17-strong shortlist for a bridge design competition in Budapest, Hungary. The contest was seeking a design for a major new road bridge over the River Danube, to provide a long-planned transport connection on the south side of the city.

The competition winner was announced yesterday, and is a twin-mast cable-stayed bridge designed by UN Studio and Buro Happold. So far, I've not found much detail on the internet (and it's all in Hungarian), but I guess the span is around 250-300m.

The most obvious thing about the bridge (remarked on in several of the Hungarian news features), is its striking resemblance to the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, also designed by UN Studio (but with different engineers). I guess if plagiarism is the highest form of flattery, plagiarising your own ideas shows who you respect the most.

It's basically two Erasmus bridges joined together, and has a figurative resemblance to two people kneeling down facing each other. The cranked tower legs are connected to massive edge girders in the back-spans.

Other than the doubling up, the other obvious difference to the Erasmus Bridge is that the towers are significantly chunkier in Budapest, which I guess is a consequence of carrying a heavier carriageway (the Danube Bridge contest specified four highway and two tramway lanes).

The Erasmus Bridge design was problematic - expensive to build; and the two edge girders were to a great extent over-sized fascias, sized for visual rather than structural effect. It was also greatly complicated by the details required to transfer axial loads between the main-span and back-span girders, as these are offset from one another. From what can be seen in these images, the same problem exists in the Budapest design.

There are two joint second-prize winners, Lavigne et Chéron Architectes, Bureau d’Etude Greisch, Közkekedés Engineers, Geovil; and Leonhardt Andrä und Partner, Beratende Ingenieure, Zaha Hadid Architects, WERNER Consult, Smoltzcyk and Partner. I've only found an image of the second of those:

This twin-arch design has the kind of gargantuan disregard for context that you would expect from ZHA. I'm struggling to understand why the judges would so highly praise a concept which puts a support pedestal slap-bang in the middle of the river, when this is so easily avoidable. The "hangers" connecting the arch to the deck are also so large that they give the impression they are holding up the arch, rather than suspending the deck.

Three of the entrants were were selected for runners-up prizes:

• Knight Architects & Ove Arup and Partners
• Pont-terv Mérnöki Tervező és Tanácsadó Zrt
• Speciálterv Építőmérnöki Kft

I'm hoping that more of the entries will be made public, as it will be interesting to put the winners in context, and understand what made them the stand-out choices.

Shortlist announced for New Danube Bridge competition

The shortlisted entrants have been announced in a competition to design a new road bridge over the River Danube in Budapest, Hungary. The new bridge will provide a long-planned connection to the south of the Budapest city centre, and a bridge is being sought which is structurally efficient, architecturally high-quality, and innovative in design.

The 17 shortlisted teams are:

• Arhitektura d.o.o. & Ponting d.o.o.
• CÉH Tervező, Beruházó és Fejlesztő Zrt
• Explorations Architecture & COWI UK Ltd
• FHECOR Ingenieros Consultores & DISSING+WEITLING architecture *
• Főmterv Mérnőki Tervező Zrt
• Knight Architects & Ove Arup and Partners *
• Lavigne et Chéron Architectes, Bureau d’Etude Greisch, Közkekedés Engineers, Geovil *
• Leonhardt Andrä und Partner, Beratende Ingenieure, Zaha Hadid Architects, WERNER Consult, Smoltzcyk and Partner *
• Marc Mimram Architecture & Associes
• Mott MacDonald with Brownlie, Ernst and Marks *
• NEY + Partners BXL S.A.
• Pont-terv Mérnöki Tervező és Tanácsadó Zrt
• setec tpi, Wilkinson Eyre & Terrasol *
• Speciálterv Építőmérnöki Kft
• Unitef-83 Műszaki Tervező és Fejlesztő Zrt
• Van Berkel en Bos U.N. Studio B.V. & Buro Happold Consulting Engineers P.C
• Uvaterv Út- Vasúttervező Zrt

The selection process was interesting: twelve teams were pre-selected by the competition organisers. All but one of these made it past the pre-qualification hurdle.

A further six entrants have survived a competitive selection process, being ranked the highest scoring out of an undeclared number of additional entrants - I've marked these with a * above. This part of the selection process appears to have been somewhat odd, entrants being ranked according to the quantity of professional certificates and prizes they can demonstrate across a range of relevant projects and team experts. It seems a process calculated to bring in big names rather than simply the most creative designers.

The 17 shortlisted teams have until 5th January to develop and submit their designs, and will each receive a 40,000 euro stipend to support their efforts. Results of the competition are due to be announced on 8th March 2018, and prize money is available for the three top entries plus three additional runners-up. The total budget set aside by the promoter for all of this is €910,000.

The generous funding is matched by the size of the 21-member competition jury, so the overwhelming message appears to be how seriously the organisers are taking the exercise.

I anticipate that the competition entries will be made public in due course, so I'll look forward to discussing them here in due course.

Living bridge proposed for Budapest

Plans have recently been announced by Hungary's development minister Tamás Fellegi for a new pedestrian bridge across the Danube near the National Theatre in Budapest. It would form part of a wide-ranging series of new developments, the New Szechenyi Plan, but doubts have been expressed by Budapest's mayor as to where the money to build it would actually come from.


Initial design proposals have been prepared by Hungarian architect József Finta, who from the images below seems to be suffering from a definite case of Zaha-Hadid-envy (particularly for her firm's Zaragoza bridge-pavilion). The proposal is for an enclosed bridge incorporating shops, restaurants and cafes, and links to a convention centre. There have been a number of proposals for inhabited bridges with similar features, to be funded by developers, but it's unclear whether the land values would justify it in Budapest, or whether the impact on river-side views would be acceptable.


Finta suggests that the bridge could be named after János Bolyai, a 19th-century Hungarian mathematician known for his work in non-Euclidean geometry.