Designs vie to become London’s next bridge

Four new designs have been published in the competition to create a new pedestrian bridge over the River Thames between Nine Elms and Pimlico in London.

The Nine Elms to Pimlico bridge is planned by Wandsworth Council as a pedestrian and cycling bridge and is part of the £1 billion to transform the Nine Elms “regeneration area”.

The council says this will be the first bridge in the centre of a major world city to be designed around the needs of cyclists and pedestrians.

Among the design challenges will be the need to raise the bridge high enough from the riverbank so that large vessels can pass underneath it, but without creating too steep a slope for cyclists and pedestrians.

So far £26 million has been earmarked for the bridge, and Wandsworth says it is seeking further funding.

Four design teams were shortlisted earlier this year from 74 entries from around the world in the competition organised by Wandsworth Council.

The four shortlisted teams are:

• Buro Happold with Marks Barfield Architects, J&L Gibbons Landscape Architects, Gardiner and Theobald;
• Bystrup Architecture Design and Engineering with Robin Snell & Partners, Sven Ole Hansen ApS, Aarsleff and ÅF Lighting;
• Ove Arup & Partners with AL_A, Gross Max, Equals Consulting and Movement Strategies; and
• Ove Arup & Partners with Hopkins Architects and Grant Associates.

The design teams have now updated their proposals, and the public is being invited to comment on them. They can be viewed online at www.nepbridgecompetition.co.uk and will also be on display at exhibitions in Wandsworth and Westminster.

Ravi Govindia, leader of Wandsworth Council, says: “We now have some very exciting and quite spectacular designs on the table. There is still a long way to go but these teams have given us real hope that a solution can be found to the complex challenges involved in creating a new pedestrian and cycle link across this stretch of the river.”

Feedback received from the public will be taken into account by the competition’s jury, which is set to select the winning design later this year.

Any new bridge would require planning permission before it could be built.

Discover more:

• Could this be London’s next bridge?

• New pedestrian bridge planned for London

• Heatherwick designs £60m ‘Garden Bridge’ Thames crossing