Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin

I was walking to the city centre last month on a foggy day when I stumbled upon Dublin's latest engineering masterpiece - the Samuel Beckett Bridge.


Samuel Beckett Bridge spanning across River Liffey is designed by world renowned Spanish architect and engineer, Dr Santiago Calatrava. Santiago's designs and creativities never fail to amaze me. I visited the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia 2 years ago, which was design by him as well. The design of the building complex totally blew my mind off, both structurally and architecturally.


This is Santiago's second bridge project in Dublin after the James Joyce Bridge further upstream. The main span of the bridge is 123m long and the arc pylon is 48m height. It could be rotated mechanically about its concrete pier to allow larger ships to pass through when necessary. It's not really a huge bridge structure relatively. Nevertheless it's still a very gracious cable-stayed bridge.




The contract was awarded to Graham and Hollandia joint venture and is scheduled to open to public next year. The steel bridge superstructure was fabricated in Rotterdam by Hollandia and was only towed to River Liffey recently. The bridge structure has yet to be lifted to its concrete pier then, pending the completion of some finishing and commissioning works.




The layout of the cables and arc pylon are meant to resemble a harp lying on its edge. Harp has been a political symbol of Ireland for centuries.


Marvelous!