The design integrates the existing with the new bridge and transforms the surrounding landscape into a 'green contour map'.

A tangle of roads, that is how we experienced the road plan on which our design is based. The plan regulates slow and motorized traffic from all directions and has apart bus lanes. It was obvious to us that we had to design the whole traffic junction and not only the bridge itself.

Our design turns the whole area around the Frisian Bridge into a small, artificial landscape within which the existing bridge is modernised and integrated with the new bridge. The landscape is defined by the water and the infrastructure, but also by the remnant space. This remnant space with its differences in height has been turned into a green area. The height differences are used to develop a 'green contour map' with strips of cor-ten steel being used as earth-retaining elements.

The terraces are filled with moss-sedum. These plants need hardly any maintenance and change colour with the seasons. Blue light lines along the steel trips accentuate the landscape in the darkness. The tunnel walls have been restricted to a bare minimum which results in a continuous landscape. The technical installations are not placed on the ground but are integrated into the bridge, which furthers this continuity.

The landscape plays with different elements: the water, the roads and the green 'contour map'. The bridge is part of the roads and therefore gets no independent design.

The bicycle path plays with its position on the water. It moves away from the quayside so cyclists are almost floating on the water. Its scaffolding construction is made from lasting, low-maintenance materials.

Marte Röling designed a work of art specifically for this site.

 

Photography: htjbakker.nl