Fri 15 Apr 2011

New Plymouth’s Te Rewa Rewa Bridge has been shortlisted for a hotly contested international award for footbridges.

The Footbridge Awards 2011 has named Te Rewa Rewa Bridge alongside six other bridges in Europe for the Aesthetics Medium Award (for bridges with spans between 30m and 75m long).

In her announcement of the shortlist, Editor of Bridge Design and Engineering Helena Russell says the judges had a difficult task finalising a shortlist for this year’s awards.

“Competition in the medium and long-span categories in particular was very fierce, and as a result our shortlists are slightly longer than we had anticipated,” she says.

Mayor Harry Duynhoven says just making the shortlist is a significant achievement.

“At the conference for the Footbridge Awards are researchers, civil engineers, designers, architects and students from around the world, all of whom are interested in the latest developments on the challenges of footbridge design,” he says.

“They will be looking at Te Rewa Rewa Bridge and seeing how New Zealand designers and engineers have produced a 70m single-span footbridge that is not only suitable for its purpose, but is also iconic.

Te Rewa Rewa Bridge was conceived by New Plymouth District Council and jointly funded by the Council and the NZ Transport Agency. The design-build contract for Te Rewa Rewa Bridge was won by New Plymouth company Whitaker Civil Engineering Limited in a consortium with Novare Design Ltd and CPG, with subcontractor Fitzroy Engineering.

The winners will be announced at the conference in Poland on 6 June.

Those named on the shortlist for the Aesthetics Medium Award are:
• Butarque Footbridge, Leganes, Spain.
• Knokke Heist Footbridge, Belgium.
• Lyon Confluence Footbridge, France.
• Paloma Footbridge, Madrid, Spain.
• Riverside Footbridge, Cambridge, UK.
• Sant Fruitos Footbridge, Barcelona, Spain.
• Te Rewa Rewa Bridge, New Plymouth, New Zealand.

ENDS

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