Bubble Link: Rethinking Copenhagen's Bridge as a Floating Public Living Room

What if a bridge could grow? Not in some distant metaphorical sense, but literally: adding rooms, shifting modules, expanding its footprint as the city around it evolves. Bubble Link takes that premise seriously, proposing a pedestrian and cycling bridge in Copenhagen where bubble-shaped pavilions cluster along a central spine, each one a self-contained public room floating above the water. The structure refuses to behave like a mechanical object. It borrows instead from organic systems, forming, connecting, and adapting the way bubbles do.

Designed by Shiyu Hu and Taisuke Wakabayashi for the The City Link competition, Bubble Link is sited in Copenhagen, a city whose cycling culture and human-scaled urbanism make it an ideal testing ground for infrastructure that doubles as civic space. The project challenges three assumptions at once: that bridges need vertical opening mechanisms, that they should follow rectilinear geometry, and that they are ever truly finished.

A Spine of Bubbles Branching into the Harbor

The axonometric view reveals the project's fundamental logic: a linear circulation spine from which bubble-shaped pavilions branch laterally into the surrounding water. Each bubble is a discrete volume, yet they are all linked to the central path, forming a continuous urban experience rather than an isolated crossing. The floor plan makes this legibility even sharper. Organic, circular program spaces are arrayed along the spine, their radii varying to accommodate different functions. There is no grid here, no modular repetition for its own sake. The geometry is closer to cellular biology than civil engineering.

What separates this from mere formal playfulness is the programmatic specificity. Each bubble houses a distinct public use: cafés, libraries, workshops, retail areas, rest zones, and lounges are distributed across the bridge so that the structure accumulates reasons for people to stay, not just pass through. The plan shows how the central bicycle route remains uninterrupted while pedestrians are drawn off-axis into these inhabitable pockets, a dual circulation strategy that lets speed and slowness coexist on the same structure.

Cycling Through Coral-Tinted Enclosures

The interior perspective is where Bubble Link shifts from diagram to sensation. A coral-colored bike path threads through transparent arched enclosures, their surfaces catching mist and diffused light. Cyclists move through the space as if inside a series of connected greenhouses, sheltered but never sealed off from the water and sky. The color choice is deliberate and surprising: Copenhagen's muted palette of brick and slate gets a warm counterpoint that signals the bridge as something categorically different from its surroundings.

The arch profiles visible in this rendering reinforce the bubble metaphor structurally. Each enclosure reads as a swollen membrane, taut and translucent, rather than a rigid frame with cladding. For cyclists, the experience is a smooth, flowing trajectory. The path's continuity is never broken by doors, ramps, or level changes, reinforcing Copenhagen's commitment to cycling as a primary mode of transportation.

Stacked Worlds: Bikes Above, Gathering Below

The cross-section peels the bridge open to show how two distinct worlds occupy the same bubble volume. On the upper level, cyclists pass through on the dedicated route. Below and alongside, pedestrians sit, read, or socialize in generous seating areas tucked within the curved enclosures. The section makes it clear that these are not token rest spots: they are fully realized interior spaces with enough depth and height to feel like rooms, not corridors.

This layering is key to Bubble Link's ambition. By stacking movement and occupation vertically, the designers avoid the common trap of infrastructure that privileges one mode at the expense of another. Cyclists get speed; pedestrians get atmosphere. Neither compromises the other, and both benefit from the proximity. You can sit in a lounge and watch bikes glide overhead, or pedal across the harbor while glimpsing people gathered in the bubble below.

Programmatic Diversity Along a Floating Framework

The program diagram lays out the full inventory of uses: workshop, retail, library, café, and more, each assigned to its own bubble module along the floating bridge structure. What matters here is not just the variety but the distribution. Functions are spaced so that repeated visits yield different encounters. A morning commute might pass the library bubble; an evening walk might end at the café. The bridge becomes woven into the rhythms of daily life rather than sitting apart from them.

The modular nature of these bubbles also points toward future growth. Because each pavilion is a self-contained unit connected to the spine, new bubbles could theoretically be added as the city's needs change. Bubble Link is designed without a final form. It is an expandable framework, and that open-endedness is perhaps its most provocative claim: that a bridge can be a living system, not a monument frozen at the moment of its completion.

Horizontal Opening: Letting Boats Pass Without Breaking the Experience

Most opening bridges solve the boat problem vertically: they lift, swing, or split upward, creating a spectacle but also a hard interruption. Bubble Link sidesteps this entirely with a horizontal opening strategy. When vessels approach, bubble modules shift laterally to create navigable passages through the structure. The bridge never disconnects from itself. Spatial continuity is maintained even during the opening sequence, which means pedestrians and cyclists experience a reconfiguration rather than a rupture.

It is a small move with large implications. By keeping the bridge plane intact, the designers preserve the sense that this is a continuous landscape, not a drawbridge waiting to snap shut. The visual effect of bubbles gliding apart to let a sailboat through is also, frankly, beautiful in its strangeness, a piece of infrastructure that performs like a living organism responding to its environment.

Why This Project Matters

Bubble Link matters because it refuses to treat infrastructure as neutral. Most bridge proposals optimize for one thing: getting people or vehicles from point A to point B with structural elegance. Hu and Wakabayashi ask what happens when you optimize for public life instead, when the bridge becomes a place people choose to inhabit rather than simply cross. The answer, in their telling, is a structure that houses libraries and workshops, shifts to accommodate marine traffic, and leaves room to grow with the city.

The project also offers a sharp conceptual reframe for Copenhagen specifically. A city that has already proven the viability of cycling as urban transport deserves infrastructure that celebrates the culture surrounding it, not just the mechanics. Bubble Link imagines cycling not as a commute to be endured but as a phenomenological experience to be enriched, threading riders through misty, translucent enclosures with views of the harbor and the hum of public life on every side. That ambition, to make the journey itself worth taking, is what elevates this from speculative exercise to genuine provocation.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Shiyu Hu, Taisuke Wakabayashi

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Project credits: Bubble Link by Shiyu Hu, Taisuke Wakabayashi The City Link (uni.xyz).