In the fall of 1994, the City of Wichita organized an open design competition to select a design team for the Douglas Avenue and Lewis Street Bridges. Twenty-eight teams from across the nation submitted designs. Each team consisted of an engineer, an architect, a landscape architect, a public artist and a historian. PEC was part of the successful team selected.

The general physical parameters of the bridges were established before the design competition and were incorporated in the design. The bridges carry five lanes of traffic, with a walkway on each side. Under the bridges on either side of the river, plaza spaces were constructed that enhance the Water Walk.

One of the parameters of the competition was to enhance the usability of the river for recreation. The bridge structures were arched to maximize the clear height from water level. The structures themselves were designed to minimize as much as possible the depth required to span from pier to pier.

The bridges were enhanced at the walkway level with precast poured-concrete panels at the safety barrier, imprinted with a tire-tread pattern. The pattern, like most of the artistic enhancements, have different meaning for everyone. Some see the concrete pattern and think of tire treads, others think of fossils. Some see the shadows that are cast on the panel and see seahorses. The walkway surface is composed of concrete pavers and poured-in-place concrete in an undulating pattern that suggests movement.

The guardrails on the bridge structures are meant to evoke thoughts of the “spars” on an airplane or ship. The rails are made of anodized aluminum pipe with stainless-steel rod infill, materials that are common on a ship or airplane. During the day, the rails cast deep shadows on the walkway in a pattern that further suggests movement.

There are two “lookouts” on each walkway, and each one projects from the face of the bridge to form unique spaces, not unlike the prow of a ship. Theses spaces were designed to give the user a reason to stop and view the area that surrounds the bridge pause points on the walkway. The sidewalk paverpatterns and railings change at the lookouts to further define the special nature of the spaces and further enhance the experience.

The overall design of the bridges was created to be inherently linked to the context. Colors are in the same palette as the surroundings. The width of the bridges relative to their length (roughly one-fourth as wide as they are long) presented an aesthetic challenge unto itself. The massive horizontal components of the bridges needed to be offset by equally dominant vertical elements. The bridge towers serve as these elements. The towers are incorporated into the sidewalk viewing areas. The upper and lower sidewalk viewing areas are used for numerous river related community events and are ADA accessible.

The bridges were designed to give Wichita structures that set the city apart from its peers – bridges that are not simply homogenized, purely functional pieces of infrastructure, but pleasing, contextual links that draw Wichita to it downtown.

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