Suspension Bridges in Urban Context – Paris v Krakow (Design Competitions)

The 2007 Henderson Colloquium of the UK IABSE Branch held at the University of Cambridge was devoted to learning lessons from successful and failed bridge design competitions. Its aim was to generate guidelines for promoters of bridge design competitions on how and by whom competitions should be organised, and how they should be handled and judged. This paper, by a contributor to the 2007 Henderson Colloquium and based on first hand experience, juxtaposes two bridges entered in two invited competitions and compares how these two competitions were run. Both involved an urban context and both designs used suspension system in order to achieve lightness and minimal visual profile. Both were technically innovative, limited the presence of structural elements to a minimum, and offered maximum openness of unobstructed views from their decks. Both had a set agenda of avoiding 'structural gymnastics'. Development of the form and typology of these two bridges, which responded to their setting, both by way of exploring the opportunities and respecting the constraints, is also analysed in this paper.

(This paper should be considered in conjunction with Keith Brownlie's paper 'Lessons from Design Competitions, Henderson Colloquium 2007'.)

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