Year 2012
Location Ljubljana, Slovenia
Typology Footbridge
Scale 25 m
Status Competition entry - HONORABLE MENTION
Authors Miha Volgemut / Benjamin Hafner
With the design of the new footbridge we want to express movement, plasticity and spontaneity that should be in harmony with the character of existing place. Technically and formally bold shape should also inspire contemporaneity. Allusion of the new footbridge of the fish shape (because of the Fish square) should be indirect and subtle. The new footbridge will also form a new whole with the Plečnik’s ensemble. We are discovering that Plečnik wasn’t creating just visual qualities, but also physical, like it is felt in the movement over his steps towards the footbridge, where user is feeling the illusion of the water movement in his body, actually more sensible user can experience misticaly that he himself is becoming the water. With the new footbridge we try to expand this illusion of water movement into the footbridge itself, where sides of the bridge are softly bending towards the river.
So there are three dimensions of the footbridge design:
- continuity of the baroque vocabulary, with expressions of movement, plasticity and spontaneity,
- division of transit and applicable function of the footbridge; “a stand” – sitting and watching the river happenings and the most iconic view, which means the “celebration” of the space in function,
- construction logic (semi-monocoque shell structure)