Pierre-Simon Girard footbridge, Écocité development zone on L’Ourcq Canal, in Bobigny

The Pierre-Simon Girard footbridge crosses the L’Ourcq canal in the north of Paris. While being 5 metres above the canal it has been globally designed as a crossover adapted for persons with reduced mobility with an ensuing wide layout. The “backbone” of the structure comprises a steel box beam associated to a guy-wire supported tower dissymmetrically positioned in relation to the apron. The box apron has the task of taking the torsion resulting from the geometry of the mechanism and the guy-wire supported tower the bending resulting from the span. Dividing up load bearing enables the column of the apron to stand out and produces the effect of a slender structure over the void.