Inspired by the Eiffel Tower, Norman Foster has created one of the world's most breathtaking bridges. From the Guardian
Tuesday November 16, 2004
The Guardian

For decades Millau has been clogged in summer by a weight of traffic that beggars belief. From January, though, this old French glove-making town will be liberated. The traffic that races down the A75, connecting Paris through the Massif Central to the Cote d'Azur and on to Spain, will be diverted over the Tarn Gorge some way east of the town, across one of the world's most breathtaking bridges.

A sublime marriage of British and French architecture and engineering, the Grand Viaduc du Millau outdoes even the stirring 10-year-old Pont du Normandie that spans the mouth of the Seine between Honfleur and Le Havre. With a 2.5km span, the Millau bridge is far from the longest in the world, yet it is surely one of the most beautiful. In terms of artistry, it challenges the Garabit viaduct, which Gustave Eiffel built across the River Truyère in 1884.

Where Eiffel's red-painted railway bridge, poised over the void like a leaping ballet dancer, is a triumph of wrought-iron engineering, the cable-stayed Millau bridge is a high-vaulting celebration of the structural dynamics of concrete and steel. At least 10 years in the making, the Grand Viaduc is the result of a collaboration between Foster and Partners with the French engineer Michel Virlogeux, designer of the Pont de Normandie, and the construction consortium Eiffage, with its roots in the works of Eiffel himself.

From the outset, the bridge was intended as an epic work of art. (Initial discussions considered a tunnel as well as four alternative types of bridge under and across the Tarn Gorge.) The day I came this way, walking through rocky paths high above the gorge, the tips of the new bridge's concrete piers were only just visible above the clouds. Given that the tallest of the seven trapezoidal piers, each a major engineering work in its own right, is at least 40m higher than the Eiffel Tower, my early-morning walk demonstrated just how powerful a force nature is here. The bridge ventures across a wild, craggy and weather-beaten landscape, blasted by winds of up to 90mph and scorched by summer sun. So much so that the bridge's steel roadways will expand and contract by nearly 3m between the height of summer and depth of winter.

When the clouds cleared towards noon, the bridge revealed itself as the great work of art it was meant to be. From some angles, the structure is quite ethereal, almost vanishing in the bright light of this high and immense country. Its design is subtle. The course of the roadway curves gently and drops slightly from one end to the other, making the experience of crossing it - I went on foot - an ever-changing delight. The 3m-high screens that protect vehicles from side-winds are transparent and, despite the escape lanes that separate the carriageways from the edges of the bridge, the views will be eye-popping if you travel across by lorry or coach.

The view of the bridge itself, as cars descend towards it, should stir the sensibilities of the most jaded motorway users. Norman Foster says the experience should be like flying by car. He happens to be a pilot; drivers of a more grounded persuasion may find the experience daunting, at least at first, but as the crossing will take on average just over a minute, the bridge will appear and disappear like a trick of the light.

Aesthetics aside, the project's statistics tell a story of engineering derring-do. The viaduct is cradled by 154 steel stays stretched out from seven cloud-piercing concrete piers. The tallest of these rises 326m from the River Tarn. The top of one of the piers is big enough to hold a tennis court. The bridge weighs 242,000 tonnes, comprising 36,000 tonnes of steel and 206,000 tonnes of concrete. There were rarely fewer than 400 workers on site.

It may seem crazy to spend so much energy, and €310m (£220m), on a bridge that relieves one small town of traffic and takes little more than a minute to cross - but a truly magnificent bridge has the power to thrill 99% of us, and to stretch the possibilities of structural engineering and, in turn, the design of the most ambitious future buildings. Did the Forth railway bridge need to be quite so dramatic? Do we really need a sensationally long bridge linking Denmark and Sweden? Is Brunel's Saltash Bridge across the Tamar overwrought for the job it has to do?

Of course, it is possible to design far more mundane bridges than these, such as the ineffably dull Queen Elizabeth II Bridge bearing the M25 across the Thames at Dartford. But, just as our medieval cathedrals or greatest skyscrapers have an ambition far beyond utility, so do the finest bridges. There are many ways of carrying a road, a railway or even a canal across a void; the fact is, we delight in finding fresh solutions and ones that thrill us. The bridge at Dartford could have been designed by the enterprising architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava, but a post-industrial England that finds engineering little more than an embarrassing necessity rejected the Spaniard's impressive design in favour of a bridge that, although mighty, does little more than yawn its way across the Thames. The French did not make this mistake with the Pont de Normandie in 1995, and they've certainly avoided it with the Grand Viaduc du Millau, constructed over the past three and a half years.

Here is a particularly fine example of the arts of architecture and engineering working seamlessly together, and of how a hugely strong structure can appear to be lightweight. This motorway bridge, whatever you think of motorways, has been welcomed by local people. Millau can now happily turn its back on levels of traffic brought by the motorway generation, while, for a minute at a time, motorists will be transfigured by one of the great works of art of our time.