New Parisian bridge named after French feminist

Simone de Beauvoir

From the distance, the newest bridge to grace the river Seine looks like a brassiere which has been flung on the floor.

Alternatively, it looks like the bones of a graceful forearm, reaching across the river.

The bridge is called the Pont Simone de Beauvoir, after the feminist novelist and philosopher. It is, perhaps, appropriate that it looks like a discarded bra or an outstretched woman's arm.

Paris can now claim the world's first feminist bridge.

The Pont Simone de Beauvoir is revolutionary in other ways. It is an asymmetric, implausibly long roller-coaster of a footbridge with no immediately obvious means of support.

The bridge is both chaotically modern and graceful, preserving a long tradition of epoch-making but beautiful Parisian bridges going back 400 years. (Bridges existed in Paris for at least 1700 years before that, but no trace of them remains.)

The French capital has more river bridges than any other city in the word. The latest, the 37th, is a worthy addition to a catalogue stretching from 17th century masonry masterpieces, to a bridge that changes colour several times a day, to a bridge copied from a village in England.

The Pont Simone de Beauvoir spans one of the widest stretches of the Seine without benefit of pillars. It is an arched bridge and a suspension bridge plaited closely together.

The two strands - steel frames with oak planking - prop each other up. They provide several alternative pedestrian or cycle routes, which rise and fall gently as you cross the Seine.

The bridge brings to life a newly-developed but rather arid stretch of the river in eastern Paris. It links the new national library, the Bibliotheque Francois Mitterrand, and the entertainment complex at Bercy.

A new, floating swimming pool has just opened close by.

Paris Plage - the summertime conversion of the right bank quays of the Seine into a mock beach - will extend to the left bank either side of the new bridge for a month from Thursday.

The bridge's architect, Dietmar Feichtinger, 45, is a Paris-based Austrian and a rising star of European architecture.

"The naming of the bridge after Simone de Beauvoir is very appropriate," he said during a tour of his structure.

"She was a great writer and the bridge leads to a library. She was a very modern thinker and the bridge is very modern.

"She was a woman and the bridge is very feminine. It is slender and elegant and does not show off its muscles."

The Pont Simone de Beauvour, 12m across at it widest point, has been criticised as too broad for a footbridge. Width, however, formed part of the original concept.

The Paris town hall wanted a bridge that would become a public space, recalling the medieval bridges of London and Paris which had houses and shops built into them.

The twin decks in the centre of the Beauvoir bridge provide a sheltered area on the lower level which can be used for fairs and exhibitions and, no doubt, less officially approved activities in the hours of darkness.

"I did not want a suspension bridge, which would have been the obvious thing because there is no tradition of suspension bridges in Paris," Mr Feichtinger said.

"I wanted to pay tribute to the arches of the classic Parisian bridge but also to do something which would break new ground.

"We ended up with a design which is an arch superimposed on a suspension bridge. One part supports the other and both parts offer different walks across the river.

"This, as far as I know, has never been done before."

There may be some irony in the fact Simone de Beauvoir, one of the mothers of feminism, should end up being walked over by the whole of Paris. In every other way the new bridge does her - and the French capital - proud.

Simone De Beauvoir

* French author and philosopher (1908-1986).

* Best known for her 1949 book Le Deuxieme Sexe (The Second Sex) - a foundation work on feminism.

* Her reputation as a French thinker has grown since her death.

- INDEPENDENT