Zweite Hinterrheinbrücke
Complementary bridge design in the Swiss Alps
Zweite Hinterrheinbrücke is designed for the landscape and train line in the Swiss Alps, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
- Location
- Reichenau, Schweiz
- Category
- Road Bridges and Tunnels
- Year
- 2015 - 2019
- Client
- Rhätische Bahn AG (RhB)
- Collaborators
- Walt+Galmarini AG / Flint&Neill / Hager Partner AG
- Size
- 200 m
- Award
- 20 Jahre Symposium Brückenbau in Leipzig, 2020. Category Eisenbahnbrücken International
Dissing+Weitling has designed the refined Zweite Hinterrheinbrücke bridge as a ‘little sister’ to the historic Erste Hinterrheinbrücke built in 1895. In design and construction, the new bridge complements the old bridge, and not least the surrounding alpine landscape in Graubünden on the beautiful Albula line.
The train line has been included on the UNESCO World Heritage List and the unique natural and historical context, with its particular technical challenges, has determined the design of the new bridge architecture.
Zweite Hinterrheinbrücke relieves the 120-year-old ‘big sister’ bridge, which can now be renovated. Bridge ensemble
Zweite Hinterrheinbrücke is situated where two main tributaries of the Rhine meet and several historical bridges weave into the landscape. The railway bridge has a distinctive elegant and minimalistic design that takes carefully ties in with the surrounding landscape, and means that it is always visible with the old bridge close by. The two adjacent bridges thus make up an ensemble.
The link can be seen in a minimalism that reflects two centuries with different expressions and technologies. The new bridge consists of a steel trough carried on V-shaped steel arms on concrete pillars that align with the pillars of the old bridge. The bridge takes a railway and the A13 motorway over the River Hinterrhein to increase train frequency on the Chur-St.Moritz and Chur-Disentis-Muster lines.
Dissing+Weitling’s bridge design won an open international competition held by Rhätische Bahn AG in 2015, and the bridge is being realised in collaboration with Hager Partner AG landscape architects and engineers Flint&Neill and Walt+Galmarini AG.