A missing bicycle connection becomes a ribbon over the harbour.

Follow the curve

Designed by Dissing+Weitling, the 230-metre cycle bridge connects Dybbølsbro with Bryggebroen. Its elevated route negotiates the change in level while leaving space for pedestrians beneath. The architect describes the bridge as both a connection for cyclists and a way to remove the need for people below to yield to passing bikes.

The photograph makes the arrangement easy to read. Riders follow one continuous strip; the waterfront remains a different space underneath. Instead of asking everyone to negotiate the same narrow ground-level route, the design gives the movements separate paths.

A landmark with a daily workload

Copenhagen’s Bicycle Account 2022 lists 17,700 bicycle passages per day for Cykelslangen in its overview of the city’s bridges, on printed pages 22–23. It identifies the bridge as cycle-only and dates its opening to 2014. This is a figure published in that report, not a live count or a count of distinct riders.

The number adds something the award photographs cannot: evidence of substantial use. It does not tell us how many trips replaced a car journey, or isolate the bridge’s effect from the surrounding network. It does show why this small piece of infrastructure deserves to be read as part of daily transport, rather than only as a scenic destination.

Design the gap as carefully as the destination

Our reading: the valuable move is to make an ordinary connection feel deliberate. The bridge’s distinctive form serves a route that already has places to go at both ends. For another city, the transferable question is where people currently have to stop, detour or negotiate conflicting movements—and whether that gap deserves a better design.