Summer pedestrian bridge inspired by vertigo and referencing construction games.
Winner : Muse Design Award – Rose Gold – FunambOule – Arches, Bridges, Viaducts & Gateways
Winner : American Architecture Prize 2017 (American MasterPrize today)
Finaliste : Prix d’excellence de l'Ordre des architectes du Québec 2019
Finaliste : Prix d’excellence de la construction en acier de l’ICCA 2017
Carried out as part of the Aires Libres festival, the project's primary objective was to offer a new perspective on Claude Cormier's iconic suspended balls. Visitors, six meters above Ste-Catherine Street, float on a multicolored river of plastic balls. Some may even experience the "suspension bridge effect" and fall in love*.
In reference to the modularity of its components and its function, its aesthetic is inspired in part by children's construction games. The self-supporting structure is dismantled, stored and reinstalled each year in a different section of the street. The result of an intense collaboration between architect and engineer, the installation is reminiscent of lightweight cable-supported suspension bridges. The design of the deck, made of fiberglass gratings bent to the profile of the garlands of balls, accentuates the effect of vertigo. The handrails form three-dimensional trusses that the handrails, designed to be structural, contribute to lightening, being punctually connected to the upper and lower ropes.
*The suspension bridge effect is a "misattribution of arousal", in which someone experiences the effects of fear of a physical danger while meeting someone, and mistakenly believes that the other person is the cause of their physical responses (such as elevated heart rate, shortness of breath).
