NEXT Connects: Bridges as Socio-Cultural Practices

With global climate change and urbanization come new challenges. Water management and biodiversity are two notable examples of such challenges. This paper explores how bridge design can contribute to the way in which we experience and face these challenges. How can a bridge contribute to our understanding of the rapidly changing environment? How can a bridge add value to its environment? What is needed from architects, engineers, and constructors? How should they work together? To answer these questions, this paper takes a closer look at two pedestrian bridges designed by NEXT architects. NEXT is building an extensive portfolio of bridges that explicitly engage with their environments by ‘connecting' to the landscape and working in a cross-disciplinary manner. Both bridges focus on a specific climate and/or ecological challenge: the Zaligebrug in Nijmegen (NL), and the Vlotwatering Bridge in Monster (NL). Taken together, these two projects make a case for bridges to be firmly anchored in their environments so that they can add value to the site. It is argued that to achieve this, an integral approach to bridge design is necessary, whereby all the different elements and disciplines are conceived and designed together.

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