Coimbra: Pedro and Ines footbridge
Coimbra has got a new footbridge. It’s so beautiful and revolutionary that two British newspapers have published long articles about Coimbra and its new footbridge, called Pedro and Ines.
Read part of the GUARDIAN’s article. Then you can check THE INDEPENDENT.
Early morning in Coimbra, central Portugal, and the sun peeks out over the Rio Mondego before disappearing behind banks of low cloud and squally rain. This bothers Cecil Balmond, the renowned structural engineer. You have to see the bridge before the sun goes down, he says. But by the time I step on to the bridge, it is bathed in the kind of light that would make the most voluptuous baroque church in Portugal look a little dull.
The brand new Pedro and Ines footbridge over the Rio Mondego is a quiet sensation. Coimbra is a small university city reinventing itself with vigour, and if that sounds like a contradiction in terms, then the bridge exemplifies it. Its structure is revolutionary, yet rather than showy; it is effortlessly elegant. It is also the stuff of engineering sorcery.
The bridge is the fourth to cross the river at Coimbra, and it provides a walkway between two expanding new districts in a highly imaginative way. The two spans - one rising from either bank of the river - launch themselves at different points across the water, as if destined never to meet. They do, but only by performing a dance - the twist, you might call it - over the middle of the river. It's as if two separate and parallel bridges had been the order of the day, but, at the last moment, someone had ordered them to join together. This join between the two spans forms a gloriously unexpected public space at the centre of the bridge, encouraging people to stop, look, chat and generally while away the day.
When the sun comes out, the intriguing asymmetrical structure of the footbridge is etched across the Mondego. The ice-cream coloured glass panels running either side of the pedestrian deck light up, splaying kaleidoscopes into the water below, and bathing the bridge and those crossing it in soft pinks, blues, greens and yellows. When the sun retreats, the bridge is decorum itself, cool, white and almost still.
Read part of the GUARDIAN’s article. Then you can check THE INDEPENDENT.
Early morning in Coimbra, central Portugal, and the sun peeks out over the Rio Mondego before disappearing behind banks of low cloud and squally rain. This bothers Cecil Balmond, the renowned structural engineer. You have to see the bridge before the sun goes down, he says. But by the time I step on to the bridge, it is bathed in the kind of light that would make the most voluptuous baroque church in Portugal look a little dull.
The brand new Pedro and Ines footbridge over the Rio Mondego is a quiet sensation. Coimbra is a small university city reinventing itself with vigour, and if that sounds like a contradiction in terms, then the bridge exemplifies it. Its structure is revolutionary, yet rather than showy; it is effortlessly elegant. It is also the stuff of engineering sorcery.
The bridge is the fourth to cross the river at Coimbra, and it provides a walkway between two expanding new districts in a highly imaginative way. The two spans - one rising from either bank of the river - launch themselves at different points across the water, as if destined never to meet. They do, but only by performing a dance - the twist, you might call it - over the middle of the river. It's as if two separate and parallel bridges had been the order of the day, but, at the last moment, someone had ordered them to join together. This join between the two spans forms a gloriously unexpected public space at the centre of the bridge, encouraging people to stop, look, chat and generally while away the day.
When the sun comes out, the intriguing asymmetrical structure of the footbridge is etched across the Mondego. The ice-cream coloured glass panels running either side of the pedestrian deck light up, splaying kaleidoscopes into the water below, and bathing the bridge and those crossing it in soft pinks, blues, greens and yellows. When the sun retreats, the bridge is decorum itself, cool, white and almost still.
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