Water Lilies Bridge

This is a bridge for pedestrians and cyclists. It passes over a secondary arm of the river Danube and connects the centre of the small Austrian town Tulln with a new garden exhibition built in a romantic forest and meadow area, and also with the harbour on the main Danube stream.

Text: Aneta Bulant, Klaus Wailzer, photos Rupert Steiner

Through our project for the bridge we did not intend to search for the most direct connection between its end points. We wanted to make the way over the water as pleasant as possible and to give the passer-by the possibility to enjoy the beautiful nature of the water park. Inspired by the form of the water lily plants, we designed round columns of prefabricated concrete as joints between the straight steel connecting girders, covered with wooden floor. This “metabolistic” type of construction gave the possibilities for changing the directions of the way and to make the bridge like a light spider net over the water. The round platforms-capitals are rest places and view points. As the levels of the goal points have about 3 meters difference in height, in view of the comfort of the pedestrians and the bicyclers, we did not want to make the bridge inclined only in one direction over this long distance of 140 m. We made each of the connecting parts go at first slightly upwards (about 1 % inclination) and after a small horizontal part it goes down with about 6 % inclination. This makes passing in both directions comfortable and creates a pleasant wavelike movement over the whole length of the bridge. The upward and downward way on each straight part meets the requirement that the steel construction be highest in the midpoint. During the night, the bridge is illuminated with LEDs, hidden in the handrail of the parapets, which gives a bizarre white light over the romantic environment.

Architects: Aneta Bulant-Kamenova and Klaus Wailzer
(Architekturstudio Bulant & Wailzer, Vienna)
Engineer: Lothar Heinrich (Vasko + Partners Engineers, Vienna)
Completion: May, 2008
Awards: Nomination for the architectural prize “Best Architectural Sites” in Lower Austria, 2009.

Architekturstudio Bulant & Wailzer
Aneta Bulant-Kamenova graduated from the University of Architecture and Civil Engineering in Sofia in 1969. Between 1978-1981 she collaborated with the team designing the memorial “Founders of the Bulgarian State” in Shumen, Bulgaria. She has been living in Vienna since 1981. Klaus Wailzer (1961). Studied architecture and interior design at SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, and at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he graduated in 1992. Bulant & Wailzer teach at the Technical University in Vienna and have received the Architecture Award of Salzburg 1997 (Austria), DuPont Benedictus Award 1998 (USA), Das goldene Haus (Germany), Solutia Design Award 2003 (USA), Golden Vizar 2003 (Bulgaria), Silver Medal “Interarch” 2006 (Bulgaria), “Mies van der Rohe” Award, nomination 2006 (EU), Otto Wagner Award 2007 (Austria), 2007 International Architecture Award (Chicago, USA), European Urban Public Space Award 2008, finalist (Spain).