The winner of the design contest for the Old City Harbour bridge was announced

The company SIA WITTEVEEN + BOS LATVIA with their contest keyword being New Balance 100 won the design contest announced by the Port of Tallinn for the Old City Harbour bridge.

The most innovative and architecturally and conceptually superior solution for the pedestrian bridge to be built over the channel of the Admiralty Basin was sought within the framework of the design contest. Nine anonymous projects were duly submitted in the contest.

The panel for evaluating the design contest for the Old City Harbour pedestrian bridge, consisting of Peeter Nõgu (AS Tallinna Sadam), Hele-Mai Metsal (AS Tallinna Sadam), Endrik Mänd (Chief Architect of Tallinn), Tomomi Hayashi (architect, representative of the Estonian Association of Architects), Urmas Muru (architect, representative of the Estonian Association of Architects) and Siim Idnurm (professor emeritus, Tallinn University), chose three projects to be given awards and gave special recognition to one project of the nine duly submitted to the contest.

The award for first place was given to the New Balance 100 conceptual design developed by Oskars Zivtinš and Robert-Jan van der Veen from Latvia and the Netherlands, respectfully. The project was submitted by the company SIA WITTEVEEN + BOS LATVIA. The team consists of Dutch and Latvian engineers of Witteveen+Bos, Dutch architects of Plein06 and Estonian consultants of Novarc Group. The New Balance 100 design was a beautiful solution with respect to its engineering methods and highlighted and exposed grand, powerful elements. Since the bridge could be situated crosswise or diagonally, various opening mechanisms were proposed. The design proposes a well-elaborated traditional bridge in a modern setting. The bridge offers interesting views both when open and closed.

The second-place award was given to Golden Crane by Salto AB OÜ. The beauty of the Golden Crane solution lies in its simplicity, wherein the history of the harbour, and the concepts of recovery and reuse and functional transformation have been interconnected – a crane for loading goods in the harbour has been used as a functional design element for opening the bridge.

The award for third place was given to OÜ Stuudio Tallinn for their project “Silmad” ("Eyes"). The Silmad project boasts a technically distinct two-in-one solution with an efficient design which gives the impression of a sightseeing object where the counterweights of the bridge and their operation are exposed.

The Ki-Ki conceptual design developed by OÜ AB Kontekst was given special recognition by the panel. The Ki-Ki solution resembles origami, with the bridge having clearly distinguishable open and closed positions. 

Based on the conditions of the contest, the panel evaluated the modernity and originality of all conceptual designs recognised as compliant, the persuasiveness and integrity of the architectural design and its suitability for the required location. The panel also evaluated the feasibility of the architectural solution, the economic feasibility of its maintenance and other practical considerations.

Port of Tallinn is planning to build a pedestrian bridge over the channel of the Admiralty Basin in order to allow for more convenient pedestrian traffic between the two passenger terminals and the areas adjacent to the terminals. It will be possible to open the bridge in order to ensure the further operation of the Old City Marina of the Old City Harbour.  The Port of Tallinn has also established the objective of the bridge becoming an attractive architectural object in order to improve the appearance of the surrounding urban area. The planned time of completion of the bridge is the end of 2018. The design contest of the bridge and its further design and construction is co-financed by the EU within the framework of the TWIN-PORT 2 project no. 2014-EU-TM-0087-M of the Connecting Europe Facility. 

See the gallery of the top 4 projects here >>