Due to the bad conditions of the old bridge, known as The Iron Bridge, the San Sebastián Council started a competition to design a replacement and satisfy the contemporary needs of the city.
To maintain the Urumea hydraulic gauge, which limited the possible depth of the deck, and taking into account the presence of a rail-bridge in the surroundings, a singular design was elaborated to fulfil all the requirements of the area.
The bridge is composed by two parallel beams, one of the “Warren” typology, made on steel, and the other one, in concrete which presents a cloister beams typology. The span distribution is 25+30+25 meters.
This raises a bridge with the piers aligned with the existing ones of the railway bridge, and whose hydrodynamic profiles remember the canoes that cross the Urumea River.
The deck has been conceived as a sequence of transparent filters or veils, sifting transparency or permeability, starting with a pedestrian walkway designed as a large balcony to the Urumea river, passing through a steel Warren truss which delimits the traffic, protecting the bike users who circulate between the pedestrians and this beam and finishing with the cloister concrete beam upstream, with its parabolic rhythmic openings, which separate the traffic from the railway.
An harmonious coexistence between the four possible types of land transport in one single cross section, in which the generous wooden balcony sidewalk is the element that joins both sides of the Urumea river, and creates an area not only for crossing the river, but also for relaxing and enjoying the landscape.
