Rotterdam’s Crowd-Funded Pedestrian Bridge

The International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) and Rotterdam-based architecture firm ZUS have launched the project I Make Rotterdam, a spectacular temporary pedestrian bridge between the city’s Central and the North districts that will be financed through crowd-funding.

The bridge, which should be completed during the 5th International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam this Spring, has to help pedestrians to get from Rotterdam’s Central Station to some of the biennial’s locations. But how long this new pedestrian bridge is going to be depends completely on the amount of money that crowd wants to spend on it.

On the project’s website everybody can contribute. Pay for instance €25 and contribute one plank to the bridge. That particular plank will have your name written on it, or any other text as you wish. The participants don’t seem to be very humorous so far (too many architects?). They generally stimulate the initiative to promote themselves or their company among the community that will visit the biennial. All contributions can be seen on the crowd-funding section of the website. When you pay more, let’s say €1,250, you can have a complete section of the bridge named after you. Isn’t that an honor?

For an optimal result €440,000 is needed. But for only €80,000 one first section of the bridge will be already built. As we speak 4% of the bridge has been funded, which is clearly not sufficient. Reason enough to give this initiative a boost and tag Rotterdam with a great text. What about a marriage proposal, your company’s website, or very simple but effective to generate rumor in Rotterdam: “Who are the champions? Ajax Amsterdam!”. When completed this will be one of the first crowd-funded architectural constructions, so let’s get this done!

One tip for the organization would be to translate the website to English in order to open up the project for foreign money. Isn’t this an International Architecture Biennale? The 5th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) is themed ‘Making City’ and is a call and argument to the architecture and planning and its more central place in the improvement of city and society.

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