Work is about to start on a pedestrian bridge between the historic centre of Alicante to the beach across a busy road, designed by Spanish achitects bgstudio.
The looping Pasarela del Postiguet is clad in translucent composite material.
Construction starts next month and should be complete by the end of this year.
Here's some info from bgstudio:
The project is a reconstruction of a pedestrian walkway along the beach promenade in the town of Alicante.
It is connecting the beach to the fortified historical center, and it's located at the entrance of the town which both make it an important architectural landmark in the city's life.
Our redesign attempts to redefine the visual language of the bridge in order to bring it closer to the basic idea that the city of Alicante aspire to transmit: innovation y dynamics.
Existing structure will be enveloped in a new continuously curved skin all along the bridge to create a new abstract form.
The translucent skin is made of plastic composites based on resin and glass fibers with lightened core, and it is in constant interplay with the LED lighting system at the base that change the color tone.
The result is a unique sculptural object which constantly changes faces during the day and time of year.
Apart from its surprising appearance, the new skin material was chosen for its properties that are very suitable for this type of intervention: it is lightweight, easy to install and very high chemical and mechanical resistance.
In addition to that, LED lighting presents a significant energy saving compared to traditional city lighting, which is important statement to underline in an architectural gesture so visible to the city.
BGSTUDIO is a team of architects and designers based in Valencia. We like to think of it as a creative lab where we research the various aspects of design related to architecture and environment. Each project we take goes through an intense creative process where every member of the team contributes a different point of view based on our different backgrounds.