With the delightfully unexpected and resourceful use of materials, Miró Rivera Architects has designed and supervised construction of a footbridge over an inlet of Lake Austin that pays homage to the site’s sensitive wetlands. The footbridge is the firm’s third completed project of a master plan for an eight-acre lakefront site that includes a three-acre inlet/lagoon. Preceding the bridge were a boat house and a guest house, with the main house planned as the next – and largest – component of the complex. Half of the residential site is designated as wetlands that serve as a migratory stop for egrets, cranes, and swans, and as such the site is regulated by the Texas Parks and Wildlife and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Reeds that grow along the water’s edge were the inspiration for the bridge’s contextual design. Because the ecosystem is delicate and because birds are attracted to the site, the insertion of the bridge was intended to disrupt the natural setting as little as possible. The architects’ sympathetic approach was to span the 80-foot-wide waterway with three curvilinear five-inch-diameter tubes that support the walkway. They are in turn carried by a pair of five-inch-diameter tubes, also curvilinear, that connect at the eight-foot apex of the arch and flare to the four-foot width of the bridge’s deck.
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project client
Footbridge, Austin
Withheld by request
architect
Miró Rivera Architects
design team
Juan Miró, AIA; Miguel Rivera, AIA; Brian Dillard;
Abby Dacey contractor consultants
Crowell + Architectural Engineers Collaborative (structural);
Environmental Survey Consulting (landscape) photographer
Paul Finkel
Smooth half-inch steel rod dowels employed as stirrups, some turned up and some turned down, conjure the image of reeds that border the shoreline at either end of the footbridge.
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a r c h i t e c t
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