Missing Link – The Green Ribbon Footbridge Project at the Train Station in Renens; Switzerland

<p>The presented footbridge is part of a vast urban project to redevelop the train station and the surrounding public spaces in Renens, a small community situated in the greater Lausanne area in Switzerland. It is the result of a design competition won in 2007 by the “Rayon vert” (Green Ribbon) consortium, a close collaboration between architects and engineers.</p><p>Throughout the project, the engineers were given significant creative freedom, which pushed the structural concept to the limit. This in turn strengthened the architectural concept, and the resulting design is both coherent and poetic. Discussing the engineering practice and vision with the architects is above all a way of bringing architecture and structure into dialogue, so as not to reduce the latter to its most basic load-bearing function, but rather to integrate it holistically into the architecture.</p>