Footbridge in the Old Centre of Ljubljana or How Thin Can Bridge Be

The greatest modernist influence on the historical centre of Ljubljana gave the famous Slovenian architect Jože Plečnik. When arranging banks of the River Ljubljanica he even leave an opening in the masonry for a future footbridge. For some period, there was a temporary wooden structure (1991-2014), which was no longer useful. Therefore, the city of Ljubljana in 2012 announced a public design competition for a new footbridge. This article describes the winning solution of the new footbridge that was built and open in 2014.

Design is based on the principle of minimalism, with an extremely slim structure, thin as possible. The concept of minimalism in its limitation raises the question of how far we can go with slenderness ratio and keep the structure still suitable for use in the city centre with heavy pedestrian traffic. The paper presents a great engineering effort to fulfil the simple minimalistic statement.

The steel deck resembles a shallow ‘'V' box cross section, the deck clear span measures 25 meters in length and 3.4 meters in width, with structural height of only 50 centimetres. Towards the outer edges, the deck narrows to just 25 centimetres, which gives it a very elegant slender shape.

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