Award Winners 2008

The Humboldthafenbrücke at Berlin’s main railway station and the “Three Nations Bridge” in Weil am Rhein are the winners.

The “Humboldthafenbrücke” at Berlin’s main railway station, in the category of “Road and Rail Bridges”, and the “Dreiländerbrücke” in Weil am Rhein, in the category “Foot and Bicycle Bridges”, are the winners of the 2008 German Bridge Construction Prize awarded on 10 March.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jörg Schlaich and the consortium of Dipl.-Ing. Wolfgang Strobl and architect Dietmar Feichtinger were honoured as the key engineers.

With the Humboldthafenbrücke, Prof. Schlaich succeeded in setting a milestone in railway bridge construction and stimulating a renaissance in cast steel. Architect Feichtinger and Dipl.-Ing. Strobl (of Leonhardt Andrä and Partner) were convincing with their elegant “Dreiländerbrücke” based on an intricate structural support system.

Along with the prize-winners, some 1,200 guests took part in the 2008 German Bridge Construction Prize awards ceremony in the Audimax venue of the Technical University of Dresden. The prize, awarded for the first time by the Federal Chamber of Engineers (BIngK) and the Association of Consulting Engineers (VBI) in 2006, was presented in the two categories “Road and Rail Bridges” and “Foot and Bicycle Bridges”. In addition to the recognition of the architectural structure, each of the engineers involved – whose creative work was key to the conception of the architectural structure – received one of the prize sculptures.

The German Federal Ministry for Transport, Construction and Urban Development supports and promotes the German Bridge Construction Prize as patron within the framework of the Building Culture initiative.

The keynote speakers were the president of the BIngK, Dr. Karl Heinrich Schwinn, and president of the VBI Dr. Volker Cornelius. Federal Minister for Construction and Housing, Wolfgang Tiefensee, emphasised the link between building culture and innovative engineering performance. Hartmut Mehdorn, Chairman of the Board of Deutsche Bahn AG, stressed its commitment, as a client, to railway architectural heritage and to the Bridge Construction Prize.

The German Bridge Construction Prize of the BIngK and VBI is awarded every two years to increase public awareness of the contribution of engineers to architectural heritage. The prize serves to honour the creative engineering achievements in the supreme discipline of structural engineering: bridge building.
A total of 42 applications were received for the 2008 German Bridge Construction Prize competition. Out of these, the jury chose to nominate three architectural structures per category, and to pay tribute to one victorious construction in each category.

In addition to the winners “Humboldthafenbrücke” and “Dreiländerbrücke”, the jury nominated the following architectural structures for the 2008 German Bridge Construction Prize: In the category of “Road and Rail Bridges”: the Saaletalbrücke – part of BAB 4 (German federal motorway 4); in the category of “Foot and Bicycle Bridges”: the Lautrupsbachtalbrücke in Flensburg, the bridge over the River Inn in Wernstein-Neuburg; and the “Drachenschwanzbrücke” in the Neue Landschaft Ronneburg.