Wandsworth council has unveiled the winning design for a new pedestrian and cycle bridge between Nine Elms and Pimlico in London – and the other side of the river really doesn’t want it

It takes two to tango, and two sides of a river to make a bridge. But in triumphantly unveiling the winning design for a new pedestrian and cycle crossing between Nine Elms and Pimlico in south London today, Wandsworth council has overlooked one tiny detail: the other side of the river really doesn’t want it.

“It’s nothing but a sales ploy to sell flats in the new Nine Elms developments,” says furious Pimlico resident Virginia Forbes, who has been rallying her neighbours to oppose the project since the competition entries were unveiled in February. “It is entirely for the benefit of the investors and developers, those that are trying to wash their money through the London property market. It will do nothing for Pimlico – apart from making it easier to walk to the new Waitrose.”

It will do nothing for Pimlico – apart from making it easier to walk to the new Waitrose

The arrival of a gleaming 18,000 sq ft Waitrose to the former industrial wasteland of Nine Elms is something Wandsworth has been keen to shout about. Indeed, it tops their list of the new bridge’s benefits, which will apparently cut journey times from the north bank to the supermarket down from 20 minutes to just three minutes. But the lure of an in-store sushi bar and “scan as you shop” service is clearly not enough to placate Westminster.

“Residents and local groups are furious, and with every justification,” says councillor Heather Acton, cabinet member for sustainability, saying their concerns focus on the loss of green space (the bridge is due to land on Pimlico Gardens, one of the area’s few riverside parks). Residents are currently trying to protect the space as an asset of community value. “A cycling and pedestrian bridge is not needed in this location,” she adds. “Cycle Superhighway 5 is already up and running across Vauxhall bridge, just a few seconds away. That should be the final nail in the coffin for this unneeded bridge.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Single spiral … the bridge proposes to whisk people up in a cantilevered loop, with minimal impact on the existing river banks. Photograph: Bystrup Architecture Design and/PA

It is a surprising level of ferocity for a project which, on paper, shows very little evidence of causing harm. The winning design, by Danish architects Bystrup (who also won the National Grid’s electricity pylon competition), is a model of elegance which goes to extraordinary lengths to touch the north bank as sensitively as possible; in fact, it barely touches it at all.

The bridge approach is proposed to follow the line of an existing path through the gardens, from which pedestrians and cyclists are to be whisked up in a spiralling ramp that projects out over the water in a cantilevered arc, not squatting on the existing park as many have feared. The architects stress that all the existing trees, lawn and the nearby Westminster Boating Base operations can remain where they are.

Wild designs – and fierce opposition – for another new bridge across the Thames Read more

“We’ve worked really hard to make the bridge as simple as possible,” says architect Erik Bystrup, speaking from his Copenhagen studio. “The Port of London Authority clearance regulations are incredibly tight, but we’ve tried to make the access arrangements on both banks as compact as we can. It’s about lifting people up, giving them a wonderful view over the river, and setting them down again with minimum fuss.”

It’s a classy design. Two slender vertical masts with gilded tips rise out of the water, like a pair of chopsticks implanted in the riverbed, from which an impossibly thin deck is strung from a fine web of cables. A single graceful loop at either end brings you back down to ground level. The design thankfully speaks more of refined Pimlico than brassy Nine Elms – a place of £5.5m penthouses that looks set to become a paranoid Ballardian realm. Here, developments include the £1bn Embassy Gardens, where a pair of green towers will be bridged by a glass-bottomed swimming pool in which brave oligarchs can frolic above the US Embassy’s bomb-blast zone.

By the standards of this obscene enclave of luxury, Bystrup’s scheme is bargain basement: the designers say it could be built for less than the suggested budget of £40m – £26m of which has already been made available through income from private developments in Nine Elms.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘As simple as possible’ … the design is as compact as Port of London Authority regulations will allow. Photograph: Bystrup Architecture Design and/PA

A glance at Bystrup’s back catalogue shows they are also eminently capable of achieving what they claim. The practice – which specialises in infrastructure – has built two lean pedestrian bridges in Copenhagen, as well as Denmark’s largest swing bridge, and they’ve come up with schemes for over 20 other bridge competitions elsewhere. “We’ve even done motorway bridges,” says Bystrup. “It might sound mundane, but it is these everyday pieces of the environment that surround us which really need improving.”

Revealed: the new Thames bridge proposal that's a 'no-brainer' Read more

Unlike some other central London bridge proposals, spawned from the improbable marriage of a celebrity’s whim and an icon-hungry mayor, this bridge is planned for a part of the Thames where the need for a crossing has long been identified. It is in the London Plan (the mayor’s master document for guiding development in the capital), as well as the more specific Opportunity Area Planning Framework for the area. Transport for London even went to the unusually sensible lengths of commissioning a feasibility study in 2013 (PDF) that confirmed the case for a pedestrian and cycle bridge here, given that 20,000 homes and 25,000 jobs are emerging on the south side of the river.

The people of Pimlico have argued – perhaps fairly – that the consultation process has been token to date, with scant details revealed and brief public exhibitions in hard-to-access locations. But once they have a chance to see the proposed design in detail, it’s hard to imagine that their objections will stick. It might simply reveal that much opposition to the project is founded more on a distaste for what the new-look Nine Elms represents than any rational reason to block something that makes it easier for people – whatever kind of people they may be – to cross the river.