Simone Veil is considered one of the most important liberal politicians in modern French history and an ardent champion of the European Union (EU). In Bordeaux, on the heels of the French left’s recent electoral victory—and Marine Le Pen’s epic defeat—a new bridge by OMA opened this month in Veil’s honor. The project is congruent with OMA’s extensive advocacy work for the EU, a mission that dates back several decades.
Simone Veil Bridge—designed by Rem Koolhaas, Chris van Duijn, and Gilles Guyot—spans the Garonne River with a low-lying structure that “abandons any interest in style, form, and structural expression in favor of a commitment to performance and an interest in future use by the people of Bordeaux,” the architects said.
The 1,800-foot-long bridge connects three polities: the city of Bordeaux, Begles (a suburb immediately south of Bordeaux on the west bank), and Floraic (another suburb on the east bank).
Half of the bridge’s 140-foot width is given over to pedestrians and cyclists, while the middle sliver is a dedicated bus lane. The remaining quarter is for cars. On both ends of the bridge, parks were built with hundreds of trees.
Generic City Bridge
If Simone Veil Bridge looks boring, that’s the point. Koolhaas and van Dujin opted to oppose the “current obsession with bridges as triumphant feats of engineering or aesthetic statements.” (Think of it as the antithesis of a bridge by Santiago Calatrava or Norman Foster.) Instead, OMA created a blank canvas that privileges foot traffic. The ample amount of pedestrian space is meant for farmers’ markets, art fairs, bicycle rallies, car club meetings, and “festivals for music, or wine drinking.” (This is France, after all.)
Simone Veil Bridge, OMA said, takes inspiration from Venice’s Rialto Bridge and Istanbul’s Galata Bridge. “This bridge is for the people, not for connoisseurs. Rather than concentrating on form, the project focuses on performance,” Koolhaas said.
“Instead of spending its budget on structural gymnastics, it doubles the width with a public space to serve and connect the two adjoining communities that so far have not developed a strong [identity],” Koolhaas continued. “On the model of bridges like the Rialto in Venice, this extra public space can be used for any purpose: popular, commercial, cultural, political…”
Commemorating Simone Veil
A Holocaust survivor, Simone Veil (née Jacob) survived the Vichy regime and then Auschwitz as a young Jewish girl. She eventually earned a law degree from the University of Paris, and served as Health Minister for many consecutive French governments. In 1975, she legalized abortion in France with a law that’s today called the Veil Act.
Four years later, in 1979, Veil became the first woman president of the European Parliament. She remained an MP in the European Parliament until 1993, chairing several of its human rights commissions. Veil later served on the International Criminal Court’s board of directors.
In 2018, after she died, Veil was buried in Paris’s Panthéon; making her one of just 70 people to hold this honor. There, she rests with Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others.
OMA and the EU
OMA’s structure honoring Simone Veil is one of several projects by the firm with importance for the EU. In 2001, after Brussels was made the EU’s capital, OMA unveiled a new flag for the EU in the form of a polychromatic bar code.
Three years later, in 2004, Rem Koolhaas and Wolfgang Tillmans rolled out The Image of Europe, an exhibition in Brussels meant to improve the EU’s global image; a rebranding exercise of sorts. “We must never forget that the New Right is well organized and is operating transnationally,” Tillmans said. They want nothing more than to see the European Project fail.”
Bordeaux’s new Simone Veil Bridge adds to this legacy. To commemorate a remarkable woman, OMA chose to create something poetically mundane. “Our design for the Simone Veil Bridge is like a stage but without the theatre. In an era of icons and landmarks, it is very special that the city of Bordeaux decided to build this anti-iconic design,” said Chris van Duijn, a partner at OMA.
Gilles Guyot, a project manager, added: “To do its duty the project needs to fade away, to be an open table for possibilities. The ruban has become urban.”
