Memory span: a memorial bridge to the dead in the civil wars, built with great ingenuity and restraint, helps regenerate urban life in Rijeka.

Rijeka is one of Croatia's most important ports, at the northern end of the country's magical coastline. Its delightful nineteenth-century Habsburg city centre is now surrounded by concrete suburbs on forested slopes. As in many old ports, Rijeka's nineteenth-century dock areas are redundant, but the car park that has replaced them is shortly to be transformed into a public park. Between town centre and the old port is a sea canal, now used only by pleasure boats, and it was across this that the city decided to build a bridge to connect east and west of the centre.

The bridge, as well as being functional was to be a memorial to the Croatian defenders killed in the dreadful wars of the 1990s. 3LHD won with a project of great sophistication and simplicity. It is a simple plane, made of steel box girders, which opens like a long new square from the tree-lined boulevard on the west bank to terminate at two thin pylons (in the Egyptian sense) on the other side of the canal. Thin precast-concrete slabs monumentally define the approach from the nineteenth-century city, and its new memorial square. Between the slabs, a path made of red clay and epoxy (reminiscent of blood?) emphasizes the thrust of the composition and the simple grace of its two grey guardians.

The steel structure of the 47m long bridge was constructed in a local shipyard and floated into position on a specially adapted barge. It was able to go under other bridges at low tides, and was positioned by swinging the barge round at high water, and reducing its height in the water. Bearing on piled concrete abutments, the single span (35.7m clear) has a slight camber that was reduced as planned by selfweight once the huge beam was in position. Teak handrails are supported on sheets of toughened glass as balusters. There is no fuss, just gently formed warm wooden rails floating at the edges of the huge plank, which itself is covered in aluminium grilles. All is simple and clear, all prefabricated and assembled on site, including the pylons.

At night, the bridge is quietly transformed by LED (light emitting diode) lighting under the handrails that shines down the glass to illuminate the edges of the deck. LEDs are also used to define the edges of the pylons, and those of the red path between them. All jury members were moved by the simplicity and lack of ostentation of the monument, and by its clear contribution to civic life.

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3LHD, Zagreb

Project team

Sasa Begovic, Marko Dabrovic, Tanja Grozdanic, Silvije Novak, Sinisa Glusica, Koraljka Brebric, Milan Strbac

Structural engineer (bridge)

CES Rijeka

Structural engineer (bench and handrail)

UP12M Zagreb

Photographs

Aljosa Brajdic and 3LHD Archive