Equipped for the future.
The Wilhelminenbrücke is one of the most beautiful bridges in Hamburg. One of its special features is the mosaic paving of the footway, which decorates the bridge like an oriental carpet of stone.
The bridge is a component of the key pedestrian routes from the inner city to the warehouse district (Speicherstadt) and the Elbphilharmonie concert hall. For pedestrians the bridge has now been considerably widened on the western footway side.
The special engineering challenge was to widen the bridge in the transverse direction without any further reinforcement work on the overall structure. Furthermore it was absolutely essential to preserve the bridge’s visual appearance. For this, among other things the railings – a protected historical feature – were dismantled, repaired and then reconnected to the bridge structure via a new steel construction. The new cantilever construction of the footway reflects the visual look of the existing structure. Finally the bastions on the abutments – another special feature of this bridge – were removed without damaging them, and subsequently re-erected in the course of the widening work with an appropriate offset.
Thus, the good old Wilhelminenbrücke now handles today’s massive tourist flows quite naturally, just as if nothing had happened.
© Piet Niemann, BIN, Piet Niemann, BIN, BIN, Piet Niemann, Piet Niemann, Piet Niemann
