Pedestrian Bridge to Bluewaters Island

The pedestrian bridge leads from the beach by Jumeirah Beach Residence to the artificial Bluewaters Island. Its low curved line appeared after the first design had to remain on paper.

Meraas, the company creating the island, initially wanted a cable-stayed bridge: a one-hundred-meter span was to hang from cables fixed to a pylon of the same height. But the materials for that structure did not fit within the approved budget. Engineers from Six Construct, the Middle Eastern division of the BESIX group, were tasked with preserving the curve of the deck and finding a solution that could be built for the same money.

The contractor was responsible for both the calculations and the bridge’s construction, with twelve months allotted for all the work. The team removed the pylon and cables and set a lightweight deck on slender supports. They left a gap seventy-seven meters wide between two of them so vessels could enter the marina. Three large sections of the deck were delivered by water on a barge, lifted by cranes, and drawn into their design position with cable jacks.

When the clients saw the new scheme, they asked for stopping areas to be added to the bridge. That is how built-in seats and sections of transparent flooring appeared in the widened parts of the deck. The crossing, designed to bring people from the beach to the island, acquired a second function even before it opened: movement here was deliberately slowed down.

The builders completed the bridge in October two thousand seventeen, and in November two thousand eighteen the first visitors to the newly opened Bluewaters Island crossed it. Above them there is no planned one-hundred-meter pylon or fan of cables. In place of that vertical feature remain a low arc, two platforms above the water, and a wide passage between the supports for vessels.