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Architects: LDArchitects
- Area: 2500 m²
- Year: 2019
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Photographs:Andrea Bosio
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Manufacturers: AutoDesk, Acca, Adobe, Albino, Plana
Text description provided by the architects. The footbridge, both cycle and pedestrian, connects the Municipalities of Ventimiglia and Camporosso al Mare located at the sides of the Torrente Nervia and on the edge of the Ligurian Sea in a unique naturalistic and landscape context. In fact, the new catwalk is situated in the Naturalistic Oasis of Torrente Nervia, in a context bounded by the landscape, the environment (Site of Community Interest) and the archeology (in touch with the Roman city of Albintimiluim).
With its development of about 120 meters, a width varying from 3 to 5.5 meters, it is the most important point of the new Pelagos Cycle Route (about 12 km long). It represents an important element of pedestrian connection of the new public spaces obtained from the former railway yard on the right bank of the Nervia stream (Municipality of Ventimiglia) and along Via Dante on the left bank (Municipality of Camporosso al Mare).
It is also a spot, a public space, a widening, an elongated and deformed square (similar to those in the Ligurian historical centers), where you can stop and observe the surrounding landscape: the mountain and marine landscape of Italy's last valley before France; the scenery of the Valle Nervia with its mountains of about 2,000 meters, and its outlet in the Ligurian Sea; the landscape of the naturalistic Oasis of the Nervia torrent, with the 160 listed botanical species and 140 species of birds that continue to live in an uncontaminated natural habitat.
It is this specific landscape, characterized by the water of the river and the sea, by the wide protected trees, the colors of the summer and wintry cane thicket, the land of the shores, with which the footbridge is compared and in which it is inserted, trying to blend itself in it and still to belong to it. The irregular shape, in plan and section, meets the structural requirements for reducing the height of the edge beams. The lateral parapets with irregular shape and heights (from 120 to 180 cm.), rise near the most sensitive areas of the naturalistic Oasis. Irregular cuts in the parapet allow to contemplate, in small panels, the landscape of the Valle Nervia and then the Oasis near the catwalk.
The structure is simple: two abutments and two piers, one of which is inclined. Corten steel edge beams of about 170 cm. of the length of 40 mt. inserted inside an internal wooden lining (in some cases interrupted by multicolored painted steel parapets). An external covering consisting precisely of multicolored painted steel parapets and closing carter made of a perforated steel sheet in corten steel. The floor is made of "transparent or albino" asphalt composed of aggregates of a local white / beige quarry. The reinforced concrete piers are "excavated" to accommodate birds' nests and therefore to be able to dematerialize and lose volumetric mass.
