December 21, 2004

Click image to see it larger. Image Courtesy Foster and Partners

Foster and Partners’ $412 million new Millau Viaduct stretching across the Tarn gorge in southern France opened on December 17. With the highest elevation road deck in the world (1125 feet), and at 1.6 miles long, it connects the motorway from Paris to Barcelona, relieving a notorious road bottleneck through the old town of Millau at the bottom of the Tarn Gorge.

Foster and Partners were selected by the French Ministry of Transport after a concept competition in 1994, and designed the Viaduct in collaboration with Michel Virlogeux who proposed the basic engineering scheme. Their objective was to ensure that the structure’s huge proportions would be elegant and harmonious with the dramatic landscape setting.

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The Viaduct is multi-span, cable-stayed, with seven evenly spaced concrete piers from which the deck is suspended by cable stay fans, giving it a delicate appearance and elegant silhouette, as well an economy in use of material. Its road deck is steel, allowing the number of stay cables to be reduced, with a gentle plan curve. Slender piers ending 109 yards below the deck have evolving geometrical profiles, giving an eye of the needle effect. The facetted sectional form also disguises their size, all of which was critical to allow the design to blend into the landscape.

Lucy Bullivant