OCT Gallery Bridge

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

This 80m curved footbridge provides step free access to the first floor of the gallery. The ramp spans around an artificial lake and fulfils the architectural desire for a column-free curved geometry. 

Judge's comment:

A sinuous ramp that floats over the reflecting calm of the pool below. The engineers’ success here is to allow the ramp to apparently effortlessly curve, without any vertical structure, around the confines of its three walls, touching them only modestly at three points as it passes.

The simplicity of this concept is well-executed and detailed, demonstrating the engineer’s talent for understanding forces and form.

The honesty of the structure, in a scheme where there is nowhere to hide unresolved details, raises it above the ordinary, and we celebrate this elegant and skilled achievement.