The Potential Embodied in Simplicity, from Line to Ring: Simone Veil Bridge

SPACE September 2024 (No. 682) 

©JB Menges / Image courtesy of Bordeaux Metropole 

©JB Menges / Image courtesy of Bordeaux Metropole

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On the 6th of July, the opening ceremony of the Simone Veil Bridge, for which OMA’s Rem Koolhaas and Chris van Duijn are general directors and Gilles Guyot is project architect, took place in Bordeaux, France. It included a discussion with Rem, Gilles, and others, as well as a parade on the bridge involving citizens, architects and others, while also holding a talk with Chris. On this basis, I uncover the potential embodied in the seemingly simple design of the Simone Veil Bridge.

Bordeaux is a port city in southwest France. The Garonne River flows to the east of Bordeaux, and along this river, arranged from its top to bottom, are Bordeaux’s landmark Bourse Square, a complex cultural space MÉCA (2019) designed by BIG, and the recently completed Simone Veil Bridge. In the 2000s, Bordeaux held a competition to revitalize the southern part of Bordeaux, Euratlantique, for which OMA proposed the Bordeaux Euratlantique masterplan (2011). This area, which includes train stations and storage facilities, is where a number of large-scale residential buildings are now being erected. Meanwhile, the bridge at the southern tip of Bordeaux connects with the city below, Bègles, and the city across the river, Floirac, and the highway south of Bègles connects with another city.

What kind of bridge did the architects hope to build on such a site, linking to public spaces and the city’s stronghold? OMA designed a bridge with a total width of 44m and a length of 549m. The bridge is twice as wide as the 20m originally requested by the municipality, with 6.8ha and 5.2ha of green space at each end. The width of the bridge and the green spaces at the entrances are key elements in understanding this work.

Anti-Iconic, not Iconic

OMA stressed that the limited budget was trained on widening the width of the bridge rather than using it for structural design. In addition, about half of the bridge’s width (18m) was reserved for pedestrians. To understand this layout, let us look at OMA’s previous projects and research.

In addition to the widely known Maison à Bordeaux (1998), OMA has participated in several other projects in Bordeaux. Among them, the ‘Bordeaux port de la lune / Architecture 89’ idea competition (1989), which links different regions with a curve-shaped line that crosses the Garonne River twice, and the Bordeaux Euratlantique masterplan proposal, which emphasises the void dedicated to the public within the city. Critic Jean Attali, who took part in the discussion, analysed the Dubai Renaissance proposal (2006) and the ‘Venice Biennale 2012: Public Works’ (2012) as also relevant to this work. The Dubai Renaissance proposal was designed to be a flat box, in contrast to many of the buildings with an ostentatious façade in Dubai, and the ‘Venice Biennale 2012: Public Works’ captures scepticism about the tendency of designs to elevate their own style above the many contexts surrounding architecture. Following this precedent is the anti-iconic Simone Veil Bridge, which forms a new axis in Bordeaux. Designed as a single-lined flat plate with square columns devoid of inessential ornamentation, the bridge appears simple from a distance, but the closer you get, the more details reveal themselves: the railings finished in pale pink, the cylindrical steel that serves as lighting and rails. Behind this ‘designed to look seemingly plain’ Simone Veil Bridge is an ‘architect’ who puts architecture before architect, programme before form.

Model of Simone Veil Bridge​ ©Frans Parthesius

Why the Simone Veil Bridge was considered pedestrian-oriented can be gleaned from OMA’s research. Rem said that the inspiration for this work came from the Rialto Bridge (1588) in Venice. Until the 1800s, the Rialto Bridge was the only bridge across the Grand Canal in Venice that could be crossed on foot, and its structure, with shops on either side, remains at the heart of Venice’s commercial supremacy to this day. The symbolism of the bridge and the narratives inspired by the gathering of people on its length has led to it being referenced in literary works such as Goethe’s Italian Journey and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, as well as in John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice. OMA analysed the existing bridges over the Garonne River from the point of view of the users. With the exception of the Pierre Bridge (1821), which was designed before the commercialisation of the automobile, what dominate the six later bridges are cars and trams. Compared to the Rialto Bridge, the actions that can be performed on the bridge and the potential energy generated by people are limited. In response, OMA envisaged a bridge with about half of its width devoted to pedestrians and the rest to bicycles, trams, buses and cars, allowing for daily strolls, jogs and picnics, as well as occasional markets and parades. The wide pavements, which can be used for events at any time, and the lighting and rails, which are installed as a unit, were designed to be removable to allow the roadway to be used for larger events. In fact, the opening ceremony included a parade, featuring a bicycle with a DJ set installed, which blocked traffic. For the pedestrian – those who walk without owning a car – there are very few chances to get a view of the city from the bridge, unless one takes a car, bus or taxi. The Simone Veil Bridge is de-centred in that it offers a view of Bordeaux’s city centre from a bridge sitting on the outskirts of the city, more than 5km away, and fairly subversive in that it shifts the control of use from drivers to pedestrians, transforming a public facility into a public space.

Programme scenarios 

A Stroll on a Ring, as Opposed to a Maze

While it is important to situate the building itself within architectural and urban history, such as anti-iconic, pedestrian-friendly streets, it is also important to look at how this bridge will practically function within the city.

Chris has recently gained attention in Korea for the winning design in the ‘NEW HONGIK: International Invited Design Competition for Hongik University Seoul Campus’ (hereinafter NEW HONGIK, covered in SPACE No. 675) in 2023. NEW HONGIK is located on a site with a high density of people and buildings and a large difference between levels. As a solution to this situation and topography, they placed various programmes such as classrooms, laboratories, and offices on the basement level and created several axes connecting the streets of Hongik University, Hongik University, and Wausan Mountain, which are located on different levels. If this can be likened to a ‘stroll in a maze’, the Simone Veil Bridge can be expressed as a ‘stroll on a ring’.

The open spaces in Paris are organised in a dotted formation and along the long axis of the city, and a typical example would be that the Champs-Élysées Street was planned to extend the Tuileries Garden, which was the open space. Chris noted that this urban grammar, developed over a long period of time in Europe, was so ingrained that Bordeaux Metropole didn’t to do things that clients would have asked of them when working in other countries—such as making open space smaller, adding facilities, and so on. The wide, open bridge, derived from such an urban grammar, poses itself as a ‘platform’ and connects the open space (street) of Bordeaux with the open space (green space) of Floirac. And when the green spaces on both sides of the entrance are completed in just over a year, it will form a circular open space of a total length of 10km on the Bordeaux side and a green space along the riverside on the Floirac side. How will Bordeaux change with better access to other cities, the publicity brought by the wide pavement, and expansion that links surrounding open spaces using rings?

Mapping of open space. when the green spaces on both sides of the entrance are completed in just over a year, it will form a circular open space of a total length of 10km on the Bordeaux side and a green space along the riverside on the Floirac side. 

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Model of urban scale​

Towards the end of the discussion, a citizen expressed concern about the traffic jams that would likely be caused by the limited access to the road. This concern is based on car-centric thinking, but this most likely originated from the fact that existing cities are designed around the car. It remains to be seen how a pedestrian-friendly bridge will be accepted or will change this city, and how it will become part of the narrative within the city, architecture, and life. There is also the question of how inviting the bridge, with no shade, will serve pedestrians in the summer, but this is a relatively simple problem to solve by installing facilities such as pavilions where needed. Gilles compared this flat bridge to an iPad, saying ‘When the iPad was invented, there was no content yet. The advent of the device triggered the creation of content.’ Crowds took over the road in 2002 to cheer on the Red Devils, and again in 2016 for a candlelight vigil in Korea. Perhaps people gathered because the roadway was opened up first, not that the roadway needed to be opened up because people were gathering more. Isn’t there something problematic about opening up a previously blocked off place that encourages people to congregate? What would then be the power of this new bridge, which is opening up a previously inaccessible place in the city? While the role of the users and organisers of the Simone Veil Bridge is just as important, if not more so, for the bridge to actually work, there is no doubt that it has great potential.