Team beats 17 local entries to design high-profile crossing for City of Aveiro
Powell-Williams Architects and global multidisciplinary engineering consultancy Buro Happold have won a European design competition staged by the Câmara Municipal de Aveiro for a new pedestrian bridge.
The €560,000 bridge will cross Aveiro’s central canal and kick start a four-year development project, which will include a new ‘sustainability park’, to transform the City – known as the ‘Venice of Portugal’ due to its canals and working boats.
The 30m by 5.5m main span and 50m long approach ramps will be constructed using precast, pres-stressed concrete and both main spans and ramps will be carried on cantilever piers placed immediately behind the existing canal walls. The piers will also serve as staircases to provide multiple access points to the bridge.
Achieving a 4.2m clearance for waterborne traffic and positioning the ramps to achieve minimum impact on both canal and canal-side walks were key to the success of the team’s proposal.
The bridge and sustainability park are co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The bridge is expected to start on site in mid 2010 and complete in mid 2011.
Powell-Williams Architects and Buro Happold have collaborated on several high-profile projects including ‘Ponte Della Musica’, a 200m span bridge which is currently being built over the River Tiber in Rome.
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Buro Happold is a multi-disciplinary international practice of consulting engineers established in 1976. It offers civil and structural engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, quantity surveying, building services and environmental engineering, health and safety management, infrastructure and traffic engineering, ground engineering, façade engineering, fire engineering, computational fluid dynamics analysis, inclusive design consultancy, project management, urban design and a range of specialist CAD services.