Kurilpa Bridge by Cox Rayner Architects

Brisbane's iconic Kurilpa Bridge, designed by Cox Rayner Architects, was named the 2011 World Transport Building of the Year, beating competition from international practices including Zaha Hadid Architects and TFP Farrells.

The award win reinforces Queensland architects' place as world-leading designers, with Cox Rayner Architects having won the same award last year for the Helix Bridge in Singapore, now becoming the only dual winner of the award in the history of the WAF.
Michael Rayner, Director at Cox Rayner Architects said: "We are extremely excited to win this award for a second year. As the first project in Queensland, Australia, to win a World Architecture Festival Award, we hope Kurilpa Bridge will demonstrate how Queensland architecture has reached a clear world standard."

Kurilpa Bridge, designed in collaboration with Arup, is the world's largest, and first major pedestrian bridge, to be constructed using tensegrity engineering – a term coined by Buckminster Fuller – balancing tension and compression.

Measuring 470 metres long and 6.5 metres wide, the pedestrian and cycle bridge connects Brisbane's Central Business District with the city's South Bank and major cultural precinct, carrying thousands of passengers daily.

The jury at the World Architecture Awards commended the originality of the design and its site specific relationship to location and context, recognising Brisbane as a subtropical walking and cycling city, saying: "The bridge appears to 'float' over the river. The structural elements seem to be abstractly suspended in the air making the bridge very different, functional, unique and sculptural."

Simon Finn, Queensland Minister for Government Services, Building Industry and Information and Communication Technology, said: "The World Architecture Festival is the world's largest global architectural awards program attracting hundreds of entries and visitors from all over the world. The Kurilpa Bridge stood out as the best against a field which included finalists from China, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates. To win the award is a shining example of the high level of design and engineering talent in Queensland. Since its official opening in October 2009, the bridge has stood out as a striking piece of infrastructure and has been a wonderful addition to the Brisbane landscape."

Both Kurilpa and Helix Bridge demonstrate the strengths of Queensland architects in creating world class, long-term, sustainable solutions. Whilst solar powered LED lighting at Kurilpa Bridge amounts to savings of around 37.8 tonnes of carbon emissions each year, the environmental performance of the innovative stainless steel Helix Bridge is implicit in the use of 5 times less steel than a conventional bridge of its size.

This WAF Award win builds on a series of initiatives pioneered and promoted by the Queensland Government's HEAT Architecture Program – which aims to open new national and international markets for the state's architecture and related design businesses.

Speaking in a recently commissioned documentary Andrew Borger, National Head of Commercial at the Australian development company Leighton Properties, said, "Again and again we find Queensland architects are not just dominating the local field, they're also providing world class standards."