Award Winners 2010

Elbebrücke Mühlberg (Brandenburg/Saxony) and Stadthafenbrücke Sassnitz (on Rügen island) are the prize winners

Located adjacent to Mühlberg near the state border between Brandenburg and Saxony, the Elbebrücke won the 2010 German Bridge Construction Prize in the category “Road and Rail Bridges”. In the “Foot and Bicycle Bridges” category, the winner is the Stadthafenbrücke Sassnitz, located on the island of Rügen. The awards ceremony is on March 15 in Dresden.
Dipl.-Ing. Wolfgang Eilzer and Prof. Dr. Mike Schlaich, and also Dipl.-Ing. Andreas Keil, were honoured as the principal engineers.
With the so-called “Eye of Mühlberg”, Dipl.-Ing. Wolfgang Eilzer successfully combined an innovative design concept with understated elegance. The 700 m long Elbebrücke also superbly meets environmental requirements.
Prof. Dr. Mike Schlaich and Dipl.-Ing. Andreas Keil made an exemplary pairing of form and function in their architectural structure. The boldly curved, very slender bridge connects the town of Sassnitz with the city’s harbour, with a 22 m height difference.
Celebrating with the prize winners were some 1,300 guests at the 2010 German Bridge Construction Prize award ceremony held in the Audimax venue of the Technical University of Dresden. First awarded by the Federal Chamber of Engineers (BIngK) and the Association of Consulting Engineers (VBI) in 2006, honours are bestowed in the categories “Road and Rail Bridges” and “Foot and Bicycle Bridges”. As well as the architectural structure, the prize sculpture was awarded to each of the engineers involved whose creative work was key to conception of the bridge.
The German Federal Ministry for Transport, Construction and Urban Development (BMVBS) supports and promotes the German Bridge Construction Prize as patron within the framework of the Building Culture initiative. Deutsche Bahn AG is the main sponsor.

The presidents of the BIngK and the VBI, Dr.-Ing. Jens Karstedt and Dr.-Ing. Volker Cornelius, were the keynote speakers.

In his speech, main speaker Jan Mücke, Parliamentary State Secretary in the BMVBS, emphasised the link between building culture and innovative engineering performance. By means of the German Bridge Construction Prize, Germany’s federal government wants to signify the importance of bridges and their builders.

Dr. Rüdiger Grube, Chairman of the Board of Deutsche Bahn AG, praised the contribution that the German Bridge Construction Prize makes towards promoting building culture in Germany. “We hope that the prize will provide an incentive and motivation for planners and implementers, but also for the construction project managers and financiers, to find an optimum balance of economic efficiency, design and functionality – based on innovative ideas.”

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 creative engineering achievements in the supreme discipline of structural engineering.

A total of 27 applications were received for the 2010 German Bridge Construction Prize competition. Out of these, the jury chose to nominate three architectural structures per category and to select one victorious construction.
In addition to the winners “Elbebrücke Mühlberg” and “Stadthafenbrücke Sassnitz”, the jury nominated the following architectural structures for the 2010 German Bridge Construction Prize: in the “Road and Rail Bridges” category: the Muldebrücke in Wurzen (Saxony) and the Rügenbrücke (Strelasund crossing); in the “Foot and Bicycle Bridges” category: the Altmühlbrücke Eichstätt (Bavaria) and the Havenbrücke Bremerhaven.

Detailed information on the prize ceremony and the winning architectural structures, as well as photographs of them, is available on the web at: www.brueckenbaupreis.de