The design brief for the railway bridge over the IJssel was a challenge with many technical and aesthetic aspects, with the integration of the bridge in the broad one kilometer wide riverbed landscape as the mean aspect.
The design creates one smooth motion across the width of the future river basin which stretches from winter dike to winter dike. The bridge can be read as a line across the landscape with just a thickening at the location of the main span. The long spans and few piers ensure minimum damage to the floodplain and a maximum view of the river landscape.
To make the bridge as a smooth movement we searched for a construction in which the ramps and the main span seamlessly blend together and form a whole. The ramps are constructed with steel beams on the outer edge of the deck. At the main span these beams transform into specially designed trusses. The height of the trusses are kept as low as possible so they relate to the edge beams by scale. In order to emphasize that the floodplain of the river is no longer confined to the mainstream, the trusses reach over the summer dikes with spans of 75 meters. In this area the gradual transition from trusses to edge beams are realized.
