This year's European Steel Design Awards awarded

The imaginative design of steel structures highlights the numerous benefits of steel in the fields of construction, manufacturing, economics, and architecture. The European Steel Design Awards, awarded by the European Convention for Constructional Steelwork (ECCS) every two years, promotes the creative and innovative use of steel in architecture and construction projects.

Elegance, art, and functionality can combine in today's steel building structures in almost countless ways. They offer new solutions and opportunities, allowing designers to unleash their imagination and realize some challenging constructions. Structural steel is financially accessible and due to its strength, durability, design flexibility, adaptability, recyclability, and longevity, it remains a sought-after material for construction structures. Within the framework of the European Steel Design Awards, the most exceptional European projects are honored, showcasing them to a wider, international audience.
This year, one of the thirteen awarded buildings from various countries in Europe was from the Czech Republic - the bridge over the Lochkov Valley on the Prague Ring Road. The bridge thus joins the ranks of the following buildings:

• Main railway station Salzburg, Austria
• Stadium Stade de Lille, Lille, France
• Bharati Research Station, Antarctica (nominated by Germany)
• Kopitnari International Airport, Kutaisi, Georgia (nominated by Hungary)
• High-speed train station, Turin, Italy
• CCK Conference Center, Kirchberg, Luxembourg
• Underpasses and footbridges at the main railway station, Arnhem, Netherlands
• National Tourist Route, Trollstigen, Norway
• Fonte Nova Stadium, Salvador de Bahia, Brazil (nominated by Portugal)
• Tullhus Bridge, Norrköping, Sweden
• Hans Wilsdorf Bridge, Geneva, Switzerland
• Radar Tower, Izmit, Turkey

The award ceremony will take place on October 3rd in Milan during the ECCS annual conference. In the Czech Republic, the award will be presented at the conference of the Czech Steel Structures Association - KONSTRUKCE 2013 - in Lednice on October 17, 2013.
 
The Lochkov Bridge in Prague was built as part of the expressway R1 (Prague Ring Road), specifically the construction of 514 Lahovice - Slivenec. It is the highest bridge in Prague (65 m), which is half higher than the famous Nuselský Bridge. The entire structure weighs around 20,000 tons, with 4,700 tons of steel used in the steel structure, and the total length of the bridge is 461 m. The authors of the architectural design are architects Patrik Kotas and Petr Šafránek, the project was developed by the companies Bögl and Krýsl k.s. and Stráský, Hustý and Partners, and the steel structure was manufactured by Max Bögl Stahl - und Anlagenbau GmbH & Co KG and MCE Slaný s.r.o.