PRESENTATION: “Berlin Footbridge Conference 2017 Highlights” by John McNeil and Jeff Wells

When – Tuesday 12th December 2017 //

Berlin Footbridge Conference 2017 Highlights:

The 6th International Footbridge Conference was held in Berlin in September. It brought together over 400 delegates, bridge designers, asset owners suppliers and builders from around the world to share their views, to exchange ideas. It is attended by engineers, architects and academics to connect on creative aspects of footbridge design and structural engineering.

The conference theme was “Tell a Story” and encouraged people to improve the art of storytelling. The opening key note talk was form a Hollywood director, not your usual bridge conference theme and the conference closed with a presentation from Wolfgang Volz, the photographer documenting and project managing the implementation of Christo & Jeanne Claude’s 40 year career of large scale installations ( http://christojeanneclaude.net/ ).

The conference also invited designers to submit ideas for bridge designs in Berlin. A mock design competition without any firm rules - no winners or losers, a great way for everyone involved to appreciate the effort of others with 76 design ideas submitted.

John McNeil and Jeff Wells attended and being two of the very few people from the southern hemisphere, were made very welcome. Their presentation of a design proposal for one of the Berlin footbridge sites was well received. They will discuss highlights from the conference including the success of the design ideas as well as the process undertaken to develop a design for a site unseen in Berlin.

Please register for this event below:

Berlin Footbridge 2017

John and Jeff Concept for Berlin 2017

Biography

John McNeil is a Bridge Engineer and Technical Director with Aurecon. He is a University of Auckland graduate and a Chartered Engineer with ENZ. John has 25 years of experience specialising in bridge design. His has delivered projects across 12 countries while working in the UK, Hong Kong Australia and NZ. John leads Aurecon’s NZ bridge team.

John has a keen interest in the design of unique structures with architectural input. He likes simple and elegant solutions which challenge project briefs and respond to functional requirements, the flow of forces, and the landscape.

Jeff Wells is an Architect who has worked on a wide range of projects in over 30 years at Jasmax where he was one of the founding directors, before forming Wells Architects Planners in 2007 to concentrate on bridge architecture. Jeff studied for a BSc at Canterbury before seeing the light and completing a BArch and diploma in Town Planning at Auckland University.

He has worked with bridge engineers from most of NZ’s major engineering consultancies and on numerous motorway projects, including six sections of Auckland’s SH16/18/20 Western Ring Route. Jeff aims for readable, elegant structures with refined detailing and a strong sense of place. A design process which is collaborative and investigates all the possibilities, however crazy, is key to achieving good designs.