The City Link: A Pierless Bascule Bridge That Turns Its Structural Trusses into a Public Building

Most bridges ask you to keep moving. The City Link asks you to stay. The project takes the deep structural members a bridge needs anyway and hollows them out for people, so the crossing becomes a place to repair a bike, order a coffee or watch a concert over the water. The central argument is that structure and programme should occupy the same volume, and the design holds to that idea with discipline.

Designed by Alexander Malyshev and published as a project on uni.xyz, the proposal spans a historically significant waterfront. It responds to three pressures at once: the city's need for better mobility links, the requirement to keep the channel navigable, and the sensitivity of the water below. The result is a hybrid of transport corridor and public realm, framed explicitly as an exercise in sustainable urban bridge architecture.

One Span, No Piers, and a 25-Metre Gap That Opens to the Sky

The opening rendering shows the bridge at its most theatrical: both leaves raised, a sailboat slipping through the gap beneath heavy cloud. That moment is made possible by the decision to cross the channel in a single span with no intermediate piers in the water. Keeping the riverbed clear preserves water flow, reduces ecological disturbance and removes collision hazards for vessels. The central 25-metre section works as a bascule, while the remaining deck projects from concrete abutments as solid cantilever trusses roughly three metres deep.

The dusk view of the closed bridge reveals what those trusses look like at rest. Their angular sides read as a single horizontal band stretched across the harbour, low enough to sit comfortably against the brick and green-roofed buildings behind. The three-metre depth is a structural necessity, and it is also the dimension that makes the rest of the project work: it is tall enough to stand inside.

The Deck as a Rooftop Above the Water

Seen from above, the bridge stops looking like infrastructure and starts looking like a roof terrace. Café tables and planting occupy the upper surfaces of the cantilevered volumes, with moored sailboats on the dark water below. Malyshev places cafeterias and viewing platforms directly over the channel, giving residents panoramic views of the cityscape from a position that previously belonged only to boats. In summer, these upper terraces are intended to host cultural events, musical performances and public gatherings.

This is the core move of the project rendered legible. Rather than bolting kiosks onto a deck, the programme lives inside and on top of the truss systems, so every square metre of structure earns a second use. Elevators and barrier-free access connect these levels, which matters: a raised terrace that excludes wheelchair users or parents with strollers would undercut the civic ambition of the whole scheme.

A Mobility Hub Built into the Abutment

At the quayside, the concrete end pavilion meets a brick-paved embankment shaded by young trees, and the rendering fills it with a cyclist, dog walkers and people pushing strollers. The bridge gives priority to low-carbon movement. Dedicated cycle lanes run in opposite directions along both sides of the structure, separated from pedestrian flow to keep circulation safe and fluid.

The trusses also house bicycle parking, repair workshops and rental facilities. That turns the crossing into a mobility hub rather than a simple connector: a place where a commute can begin, pause or be fixed. Locating these services inside the structural volumes is a smart economy, since it avoids cluttering the embankment with separate buildings and keeps the historic waterfront visually open.

When the Leaf Rises, It Becomes a Screen

The night aerial is the most surprising image in the set. A raised bascule leaf carries a projected film, with a lit café terrace below and illuminated facades beyond. Malyshev is candid that lifting the span interrupts circulation: when vessels need to pass, pedestrian and cycling traffic temporarily stops. Instead of treating this as dead time, the proposal keeps the upper terraces active as flexible event spaces, and the vertical leaf becomes a backdrop for the city.

This addresses the obvious weakness of any bascule bridge, the pause, and recasts it as part of the experience. Closed, the bridge offers a refined horizontal line that respects the historic embankments. Open, it produces a sculptural silhouette on the skyline. The structure has two distinct identities, and both are deliberate.

Reading the Crossing in Plan

The site plan strips the proposal back to its logic. The bridge crosses the channel with a 100-metre dimension line marking its reach, while yellow bike lanes and directional arrows trace the two-way cycling system along both edges. The drawing confirms what the renderings suggest: the cycle routes are continuous through the structure and tie into the quays on either bank, rather than ending abruptly at the abutments.

The plan also clarifies the symmetry of the scheme. Two cantilevered halves reach toward a central opening, each carrying its own share of programme, so neither bank is treated as the back of the bridge. That balance supports the claim that the City Link is a shared civic asset for the whole waterfront.

Why This Project Matters

Cities keep building bridges as single-purpose objects, then spend years trying to animate them with temporary markets and pop-up furniture. The City Link starts from the opposite position. It recognises that a cantilever truss deep enough to carry a load is also deep enough to occupy, and it designs the programme into that depth from the outset. Workshops, cafés, bike storage and terraces are part of the structure, not additions to it.

The proposal's environmental logic is equally direct. Eliminating piers protects the water, while prioritising cyclists and pedestrians places the bridge firmly within the shift toward low-carbon cities. Questions remain about how the inhabited trusses would handle the loads and movement of a working bascule, and these would need development. As a conceptual position, though, the project makes a clear and persuasive case: a bridge can be a public building that happens to cross water.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Alexander Malyshev

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Project credits: The City Link by Alexander Malyshev.