Sunniberg Bridge

The Sunniberg Bridge is a curved multi-span extradosed road bridge with low outward-flaring pylons above the roadway edges, designed by the renowned Swiss engineer Christian Menn and completed 1998.

It is notable because of its innovative design and aesthetically pleasing appearance sensitive to its surroundings.

The bridge was designed by Christian Menn (conceptual design) together with Dialma Jakob Baenziger (final design) as a challenge of integrating the structural form of a curved multi-span extradosed bridge into the larger rural Alpine landscape, given the prominent location of the bridge in the Landquart valley, "but with a certain elegance".

Four slender H-shape piers rise up from the valley floor (8.80m × 4.25m at the base), like the tall trees nearby.

Instead, it was used only to access the excavation sites for the tunnel in the interim, until 2005 when the Klosters bypass, including both the bridge and the tunnel, was opened for traffic in a ceremony with Prince Charles, a frequent visitor to Klosters.

View from above Gotschna Tunnel looking north: Sunniberg Bridge and its four pylons P1, P2, P3, P4 (left to right). [ 1 ] The Landquart–Davos Platz railway line runs across the top of the picture.
Sunniberg Bridge elevation with geology, from Tiefbauamt Graubünden (1998)
View looking south: northern portal of the Gotschna Tunnel to Klosters and Davos (far left), Sunniberg Bridge and pylons P4, P3 (right)