The bridge of Jean-Jacques Bosc will be a continuation of the boulevard of the same name and will connect the Begle and Floriak districts, and if the former is an ordinary urban environment, then on the right bank of the Garonne there is a meadow bordered with poplars. To find a common denominator for the two spaces, architects Rem Koolhaas and Clément Blanchet, OMA's partner in charge of French projects, turned the bridge into a public space: from 44 meters wide, 15 meters are given to pedestrians (the bridge is 545 meters long).
According to Blanchet, the bridge will not be "an event in the city" (because its appearance is quite simple), but will become a platform for events in the city.
Such an original interpretation of the competition task tipped the jury's opinion in favor of OMA, since the audacity of the project was an important selection criterion: out of five invited bureaus, three did not make it to the final precisely because of the tradition of their proposals.
OMA's rival in the final was Austrian Dietmar Feichtinger, known for his Simone de Beauvoir bridge in Paris. Unlike Koolhaas' bureaus, who made the canvas of their structure flat, he gave the lower level to pedestrians and cyclists, and put transport, including trams and buses, over it, in the middle.
At the coast, for the convenience of "users", both levels are combined into one.
Also participating in the competition were the workshops of Mark Mimram and RFR Architecture, as well as Mark Barani with engineers from Setec TPI.
The plan for the construction of the bridge was formed gradually: before announcing the competition, the city authorities discussed the bridge project in detail with the residents of Bordeaux, and the competition itself took two years. However, things will go faster now: the Jean-Jacques Bosca bridge should open in 2018. Its budget will be 110 million euros, with 11 million going to the royalties for the designers. The OMA team includes landscape architect Michel Devigne, lighting specialists Lumières Studio, WSP engineers and EGIS consultants.
