A Nijmegen: Designing the 'City Bridge'

Nijmegen: Designing the ‘City Bridge' is a personal account by Laurent Ney, the engineering half of the architectural duo Ney and Poulissen who designed Nijmegen's new City Bridge – a challenging assignment, for Nijmegen already had an iconic bridge, The Waal Bridge, whose imposing arch structure had led the Dutch government to declare it a historic monument.

Laurent Ney provides glimpse inside his head, and his sketchesbook. We follow him through an exciting process in which his knowledge of construction – historical as well as cultural, and local as well as international – blended with a clear vision of landscape and urban design.

Nijmegen's city council had called for a ‘city bridge', but what exactly this meant was to prove the key issue in the design process. Numerous decisions were made' and factors weighed up – but when it became clear that an all-steel bridge would be far too expensive, the architects had to go almost back to square one.

The result is impressive: Europe's largest single-arch bridge. Using original documentation, such as the assignment description, design sketches, explorations of the surroundings, sources of inspiration, models and photographs, Laurent Ney presents a fascinating picture of a complex design process.

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