Extracts from a text by Mathias Boeckel / Architektur Aktuell, september 2006
The latest bridge across the Seine in Paris is an experience in terms of construction. It also conveys new perceptions of the city in a number of different, rhythmically interwoven levels and, in a highly poetic manner connects two new districts of the city.
This bridge is the central connecting element in the major urban conversion of eastern Paris. In an area dominated until the 1970s by an extensive complex of warehouses and market halls that were supplied by boat from the Seine, completely new urban structures have been created in the form of the Parc de Bercy on the north bank and the new area around Dominique Perrault’s National Library on the south bank. Once entirely commercial this district now primarily serves the functions of education and leisure.
Feichtinger’s passerelle(footbridge)leads one directly to the wood-defined accessible plinth of Dominique Perrault’s National Library.
The success of the concept of this passerelle is most probably based primarily on the astonishingly simple structural solution that offers manifold unexpected additional features, the greatest degree of elegance, and complex possibilities of interpretation and use. It is its urban planning qualities that lend it additional value.
Feichtinger has not merely achieved the normal connection of two points but has instead linked six points. Both banks of the Seine are stepped in three levels: at the lowest is the quay, above that the street level and at the very top the park and the platform of the National Library. In the competition Feichtinger did not only suggest connecting the street levels (as was required in the brief) but proposed linking two levels on
both sides of the river with his passerelle. He has thus meshed the walks between four points and has made it possible to avoid crossing the city motorway running along the river that separates the banks of the Seine from the adjoining areas of the city. There is now a direct connection from the park to the National Library, without having to change street level – a most useful additional amenity. From street level – the lower of the
two bridge levels – you can reach the lowest level – the quay or the water level – by steps or ramps. On either side a lift connects all three levels with each other.
In purely visual terms the most striking aspect initially is the enormous unsupported span of the bridge (194 metres) – it has a total length of 304 metres, which is exactly the height of the Eiffel Tower – with an extremely slender, almost filigree structure. Feichtinger appears to achieve this classic aesthetic ideal of modernism without effort and (for this very reason) in a most fascinating manner, by providing the routes taken by the users almost entirely through his structural solution, using hardly any other elements – apart from the primary structure – that have a visual impact. The most brilliant idea was the sophisticated combination of a suspension structure with an arch that penetrate each other. The suspension structure
consists of steel bands that are a maximum of 10 or 15 cm thick and that on either bank are spanned over two ‘boomerangs’ and then vanish vertically into the ground. By the use of hydraulic dampers – high tech appliances each of which cost half a million euro – the vibrations are controlled at the far ends of the bridge.
The routes across the bridge are intelligently differentiated by means of the intersection of the arch and the suspension structure: the more prominent of the two bridge levels at the park side of the river is the upper one – and it is therefore wider, whereas the lower (street) level is led across a narrower band that at the central bay penetrates the suspended structure from below. At the south bank (library) the situation is exactly the other way around. The intersection of the two structural elements of the bridge determines the
characteristic lens shape of the central piece – the greatest difference in height is 4.5 meters, which is required for the elegance of the overall form and for an unobstructed view of the urban silhouette. The interpenetration of the two elements of the bridge also leads to the lower level becoming the wider one at the centre bay, providing a kind of hovering urban space six metres above the surface of the Seine. With these subtle, ingeniously simple and yet structurally highly ambitious means Feichtinger not only succeeds
in reflecting the urban context but creates new ways of converting the city that no one could previously have imagined.
The deck of the bridge that carries pedestrian traffic rests almost directly on the structure and is made of oak panels three metres wide and six boards deep that are fixed from below so that standing rainwater cannot damage the screws. The railings of the bridge consist of wide aluminium handrails, below which the bridge lighting is mounted, and a stainless steel mesh. The path across the bridge offers an entire series of
unusual impressions, unexpected views of the city but also very different inclines. On the upper level the slope is up to eleven per cent which, of course, is not suitable for disabled persons. But on the lower level the maximum slope is four per cent and all levels can also be easily reached by the lifts at the bridgeheads and are therefore accessible to the disabled.
The amazingly generous dimensions of the bridge (in comparison to the normal kind of pedestrian bridge)
that surprise one when crossing it, the pleasant wave motion while crossing the water, the effortless hovering at a raised level with a view of the city while walking along a route made of oak boards from the park to the exotic wood landscape of the large platform of the National Library (that opens at the centre to a sunken garden), are all experiences of urban space that for the stroller could hardly be more beautiful or more varied. And in both technical and aesthetic terms Feichtinger’s passerelle is an absolute masterpiece of contemporary bridge building.
