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Danish firms to build giant new bridge in China

Engineering firm COWI and architects Dissing+Weitling have won an international competition to build the ShenZhong link in Guangdong, China.

Danish firms to build giant new bridge in China
The bridge will connect the cities of Shenzhen and Zhongshan. Screenshot: COWI
The two Danish firms will build a coast-to-coast link that connects the cities of Shenzhen and Zhongshan.
 
Plans for the 24-kilometre bridge include what will be the world’s widest immersed tunnel, two artificial islands and two suspension bridges. 
 
The two firms have previously teamed up on the Great Belt Fixed Link (Storbæltsbroen) between Funen and Zealand and were heavily involved in the Øresund Bridge connecting Copenhagen and Malmö. 
 

“One of our primary advantages as a team is that we have vast experience both with large suspension bridges, immersed tunnels and marine engineering,” COWI regional vice president Lars Hauge said in a press release. 
 
“Winning this major international competition underlines Denmark's world leading position when it comes to designing major bridges,” Hauge added, vowing that the ShenZhong link would be “both visionary and structurally daring”.
 
Guangdong is one of China’s wealthiest provinces and the new coast-to-coast link will be a party of a major infrastructure upgrade to support the area’s economic growth. 
 
According to Berlingske Business, the ShenZhong link project has a price tag of 36 billion kroner ($5.5 billion).
 
See the plans for the project here: 
 
 

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ARCHITECTURE

Futuristic Gehry tower opens in World Heritage Arles

Rising high beyond an ancient Roman arena in Arles, a tall, twisted tower created by Frank Gehry shimmers in the sun, the latest futuristic addition to this southern French city known for its World Heritage sites.

Futuristic Gehry tower opens in World Heritage Arles
Gehry's Luma Tower opens in Arles, France. Photo: H I / Pixabay

The tower, which opens to the public on Saturday, is the flagship attraction of a new “creative campus” conceived by the Swiss Luma arts foundation that wants to offer artists a space to create, collaborate and showcase their work.

Gehry, the 92-year-old brain behind Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum and Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, wrapped 11,000 stainless steel panels around his tower above a huge glass round base.

It will house contemporary art exhibitions, a library, and offices, while the Luma Arles campus as a whole will host conferences and live performances.

From a distance, the structure reflects the changing lights of this town that inspired Van Gogh, capturing the whiteness of the limestone Alpilles mountain range nearby which glows a fierce orange when the sun sets.

Mustapha Bouhayati, the head of Luma Arles, says the town is no stranger to
imposing monuments; its ancient Roman arena and theatre have long drawn the
crowds.

The tower is just the latest addition, he says. “We’re building the heritage of tomorrow.”

Luma Arles spreads out over a huge former industrial wasteland.

Maja Hoffmann, a Swiss patron of the arts who created the foundation, says
the site took seven years to build and many more years to conceive.

Maja Hoffmann, founder and president of the Luma Foundation. Photo: Pascal GUYOT / AFP

Aside from the tower, Luma Arles also has exhibition and performance spaces in former industrial buildings, a phosphorescent skatepark created by South Korean artist Koo Jeong A and a sprawling public park conceived by Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets.

‘Arles chose me’

The wealthy great-granddaughter of a founder of Swiss drug giant Roche, Hoffmann has for years been involved in the world of contemporary art, like her grandmother before her.

A documentary producer and arts collector, she owns photos by Annie Leibovitz and Diane Arbus and says she hung out with Jean-Michel Basquiat in New York.

Her foundation’s stated aim is to promote artists and their work, with a special interest in environmental issues, human rights, education and culture.

She refuses to answer a question on how much the project in Arles cost. But as to why she chose the 53,000-strong town, Hoffmann responds: “I did not choose Arles, Arles chose me.”

She moved there as a baby when her father Luc Hoffmann, who co-founded WWF,
created a reserve to preserve the biodiversity of the Camargue, a region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Rhone river delta known for its pink flamingos.

The tower reflects that, with Camargue salt used as mural panels and the
delta’s algae as textile dye.

Hoffmann says she wants her project to attract more visitors in the winter, in a town where nearly a quarter of the population lives under the poverty line.

Some 190 people will be working at the Luma project over the summer, Bouhayati says, adding that Hoffman has created an “ecosystem for creation”.

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