Bridges across the Albert Canal. A walk.

In the mid-1990s, the ‘Flemish Waterways’ decided to ensure the future of inland navigation on the Albert Canal by raising existing bridges and building a significant number of new ones. Ney & Partners won the design brief in 2009 with the proposal for a generic steel arch bridge. The brief, the procedure, the design and its technical elaboration are explained in this book. Thirteen years later, Corentin Haubruge has created a photographic inventory for Ney & Partners of the 21 bridges that have since been realised. It is a remarkably beautiful series of photographs. They show the visible presence of the infrastructure and its users in the natural and built environment. At the same time, the images resonate because they capture the invisible dimensions of time, light and matter. This book is an unusual combination of a portrait of a part of Flanders and a comprehensive record of the processes behind a generic bridge design.