Spectrum: A Copenhagen Bridge Where Light, Color, and Public Life Converge

What if a bridge could function like a prism, splitting the undifferentiated flow of city life into its constituent frequencies? In Copenhagen, a concept called Spectrum proposes exactly that: a crossing that treats cyclists, pedestrians, green corridors, and urban viewpoints as distinct wavelengths of a single continuum, giving each its own dedicated lane while allowing them to blend at carefully orchestrated moments. Positioned at the intersection of a river and a road, the bridge resolves two incompatible infrastructural systems into one shared surface, turning a transit corridor into a genuine public destination.

Spectrum is the work of designers Balázs Szigetvári, Szilvia Vereckei, and Hanna Szalai-Szabó. The project reimagines bridge infrastructure as an interactive, multifunctional space that draws its organizing logic from the visible light spectrum. Each color represents a different mode of urban movement or rest, and the architecture gives physical form to that metaphor through colored paths, wave-like segments, and modular zones for everything from pop-up exhibitions to bike repair stations.

A Prism for Urban Flows

The conceptual diagram lays out the project's central analogy with precision. A white wavelength coil passes through the bridge's structure and emerges as the full visible spectrum, while a lone cyclist figure provides immediate human scale. The diagram is more than decorative: it communicates the design's fundamental organizational principle. Just as a prism separates white light into its component colors, the bridge separates overlapping urban functions into legible, parallel channels. Bike lanes, pedestrian paths, green belts, and contemplative platforms each receive their own spatial frequency, reducing conflict between users without segregating them entirely.

The metaphor also carries a deeper social message. A spectrum has no hard borders between its colors; frequencies bleed into one another. The designers translate this into zones where different user groups can overlap: a cyclist pausing at a viewpoint, a pedestrian drifting into a green belt, a family stumbling into a temporary retail installation. The bridge's wave-like segments accommodate these transitions, keeping the overall composition visually cohesive while allowing each section to serve a distinct program.

Colorful Geometries on the Bridge Deck

The collage rendering brings the concept into lived experience. Cyclists and pedestrians share a surface articulated with bold geometric color fields, each hue corresponding to a specific function or pathway. What stands out is how the rendering depicts coexistence without chaos: families relax on open platforms, a cyclist follows a rainbow-hued route, and others simply pause. The geometry is not ornamental; it is navigational, guiding users through the space while signaling where different programs begin and end.

Public amenities like bike repair stations and restrooms are strategically embedded within the structure, serving utilitarian needs without disrupting the visual rhythm. Meanwhile, modular open spaces remain deliberately unassigned, ready to host events, markets, or moments of solitary quiet. The design insists that a bridge can simultaneously be a commute, a park, a gallery, and a meeting point. Each colored path also links outward to Copenhagen's broader urban highlights, including parks, viewpoints, and cemeteries, functioning as what the designers describe as a "treasure map" of the city.

Diamond Arches and Reflected Light at Dusk

The evening rendering reveals the bridge's potential as a landmark. Diamond-shaped colored arches rise above the deck, their illuminated surfaces casting vivid reflections across the water below. The doubling effect is critical: the bridge exists both as a physical structure and as an image of itself, amplifying its presence in Copenhagen's skyline. From below, the colored panels create an immersive canopy; from a distance, they read as a beacon signaling activity and openness.

The structural form is not arbitrary. The diamond geometry provides overhead shelter while maintaining sightlines across and beyond the bridge, ensuring that the crossing offers new views of the city at every point along its length. At dusk, the interplay of artificial light and water transforms the bridge into something closer to public art than infrastructure, inviting users to see it not just as a way across the river but as a cognitive journey through color, form, and urban meaning.

Why This Project Matters

Spectrum challenges the persistent notion that bridges are single-purpose connectors, useful only for getting from one bank to another. By treating the full spectrum of urban life as its program, the design makes a compelling case for infrastructure that generates public life rather than merely facilitating movement. The decision to locate the bridge at the intersection of a river and a road turns an engineering problem into a social opportunity, creating a node where different modes of transit and leisure can coexist and reinforce one another.

For Balázs Szigetvári, Szilvia Vereckei, and Hanna Szalai-Szabó, the visible light spectrum is not just a poetic reference; it is a genuine organizing system that gives clarity to a complex, multifunctional brief. The result is a proposal that feels simultaneously rigorous and joyful, proving that conceptual ambition and functional pragmatism can share the same surface.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Balázs Szigetvári, Szilvia Vereckei, Hanna Szalai-Szabó

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Project credits: Spectrum by Balázs Szigetvári, Szilvia Vereckei, Hanna Szalai-Szabó.