IMMIGRATION BRIDGE AUSTRALIA

In an unprecedented community project, we are going to build a pedestrian bridge across Lake Burley Griffin in the nation’s capital to commemorate the contributions of migrants to Australia. In all probability you or your ancestors are among the more than 10 million migrants who have permanently settled here in Australia since 1788. So this project is about you and your families.

We have designed the handrails of this 400 metre long bridge so they can be engraved with the names of over 200,000 immigrants. We want you to take part in this project by paying to have your or your ancestors’ names among them.

To make this truly a People’s Bridge, we urge you to tell your family’s stories of migration so they can be recorded on the surfaces of the Bridge for future generations, and in the Migration Book for display on the Bridge and published online.

IBA has invited Architects Bligh Voller Nield, engineers ARUP Australia, composer Ross Edwards and poet Peter Skrzynecki to form with them a unique discussion forum to address the challenges of producing a design that will be world recognised.

The design team is ensuring that the Immigration Bridge will be one of the most significant constructions in Australia, a source of great national focus and pride with major benefits to Australian tourism.

This bridge will fulfil the recreational plans of the original designer of Canberra, Walter Burley Griffin in joining Acton Peninsula, home of the National Museum of Australia, with the Parliamentary Triangle.

IBA IBA is a community project, an incorporated body with a Board chaired by Lieutenant General Laurie O’Donnell AC (Retd).

IBA is setting out to create the most spectacular and beautiful bridge ever conceived in Australia, capable of world recognition. The Bridge will be imaginative and inspiring, a national monument in conception, design, function and promotion.

The Bridge will incorporate features that highlight Australian research and development – a continuation of the cutting edge technology that was a feature of the Snowy Scheme. The links with the Snowy Scheme, and that new chapter in Australian multi-cultural cooperation, are very strong. The Snowy set the tone for future Australian multi-racial harmony with over 30 nationalities working together on Australia’s greatest engineering undertaking.