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Tintra Footbridge

Located in Voss, Norway, Tintra Footbridge has been designed by Rintala Eggertsson Architects, featuring corten steel and wooden floors, walls and ceilings.

In the spring of 2015 the the municipality of Voss, in western Norway, invited entrepreneurs and architects to participate in tenders for a pedestrian bridge over the river Vosso. The bridge was to replace a historic bridge, which had been taken by a flood in the river the previous year. The team of IKM Steel & Facade, SK Langeland and Rintala Eggertsson Architects won the competition with a steel lattice bridge in corten steel and wooden floors, walls and ceilings.

It was important for the client to provide the pedestrians with enough visibility to the powerful nature in the area. The river is also a good fishing river, which has proved to be a source of recreation for the local population where the old bridge was an important a basecamp of activities. This was something the municipality wanted to incorporate in the design of the new bridge.

The design of the new bridge was generated by the idea of a rhythmical play of modules crossing the river in order to break down the timeline into intervals and reduce the monotony when crossing the river. This play of modules would be based on the distance between the already existing pillars in the river, the only remains of the old bridge.

As it often is the case with bridges, maintenance was an important issue for the client. They were therefore very intrigued by the idea of using Corten steel as a main structure and Accoya wood as a cladding material. That would combine strength, durability and above all no costs of maintenance over the years. They also liked the idea of covering the bridge with a roof, which would eliminate the need of snow plowing, which can be a complicated issue for pedestrian bridges.