Francesco Piffari shared with us the design proposal for the Amsterdam Pedestrian Bridge. To design a new iconic bridge, it is essential to reflect on the concept of bridge; what a bridge is in the collective imagination. Considering the bridge in its core meaning, it can be said that the peculiarities of a bridge is to “touch” the ground in just two points, to hover in the air and to be suspended over the obstacle; it is very clear that a bridge establishes a strong relationship with air and water, the two elements it is surrounded with. More images and architect’s description after the break.
In the past a bridge was a connection between two points otherwise hard to reach, like a shortcut. Even today, indeed, it is considered just a link and a passing-by architecture made up of a suspended path. As nominally it is set to be just a slab thick enough to hold the required load, usually pretty thin, the relation between a bridge and the air, generates transparency and lightness. This is why this bridge is made by thin slabs which all spans across the Amstel Canal from one bank to the other; these slabs are overlapping each other to create the spaces required by the brief.
