Pabellón Puente

Part footbridge over the river Ebro  and part exhibition  space this remarkable structure was designed  by Anglo-Iranian architect Zaha Hadid, who, in 2004, had become the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Prize. The bridge was built for the 2008 Expo held in Zaragoza, Spain, and remains a highly admired structure in a city blessed with numerous fine buildings both old and modern.

The exhibition space it includes was used for the "Water a Unique Resource " exhibition during the Expo and it currently  hosts the "Motor City" exhibition,  an exhibition  of cutting edge electric vehicle technology.

The basis of Hadid's design is said to be a single Gladiolus plant streched out over the  Ebro with a single stem at one side branching into three stems at the other. The 270 m long bridge is anchored  on both banks but makes use of only one other support,  resting an a natural island in the middle of the Ebro. The foundation for this structure was excavated to  70 metres, the deepest foundation ever constructed  in Spain. This was caused by the very poor ground conditions in the fluvial deposits. Remarkably, the whole bridge/building was constructed  on land and moved into place over the Ebro once completed. The structure is based on a rhomboid metal  mesh clad in glass plates (2900 of them) in 10 separate shades of grey and intended to represent the scales of a shark.