Danish architects designing Chinese experience

Elsewhere, MIT names Aalborg University as an elite engineering institution, but two places below itself

Apr 11, 2018

The Danish architecture firm Dissing+Weitling has been commissioned to design a considerable project in Xiamen in south China entitled ‘Xiamen Footpaths’.

Dissing+Weitling, known in Denmark for designing the Great Belt Connection and the Cykelslangen cycling bridge in Copenhagen, will design seven bridges and 20 km worth of footpaths that will lead pedestrians across the city and away from car traffic.

The footpaths will also provide pedestrians direct access to the stunning mountainous area surrounding the big port city, which has a population of about 3.5 million.

The Chinese city has apparently taken quite a liking to Dissing+Weitling and Danish design. The Danish firm only recently completed the Xiamen Bicycle Skyway – the longest elevated cycleway in the world.

“The project will just as much be an attraction for the city – an icon that can attract tourists from around the world. The finished product will be a connecting system of walkways that snake through the city and across the island like a naturally-beautiful recreational traffic vein,” Steen Savery Trojaborg, the head of Dissing+Weitling, told Politiken newspaper.

Dissing+Weitling has developed a bit of a reputation for designing bridges in Asia, including the Stonecutters Bridge in Hong Kong and the Shenzhong Link.

Aalborg among the best
In other news, prospective engineering students might want to take a serious look at what Aalborg University (AAU) has to offer, according to the elite US university MIT.

Based on interviews with almost 180 experts, MIT ranked AAU as being the fourth-best university for engineering in the world.

“It was singled out as having taken a more coherent and robust approach to measuring its institutional impact on student learning,” stated the MIT report ‘The global state of the art in engineering education’ (here in English).

“Indeed, interview feedback suggested the systematic approach to assessing program impacts, the demonstrable quality of the programs and the external visibility given to the university’s achievements all played a role in Aalborg University’s identification as a ‘current leader’ in engineering education.”

The ranking was topped by three US establishments: the Olin College of Engineering, MIT and Stanford.