No news this weekend about the record attempts of Edwin van der Sar, the Dutch keeper playing for Manchester United who hasn’t conceded a goal for more than 1,300 hours. There’s nothing to report, because Van der Sar was rested during yesterday’s league game. His replacement promptly let a ball past, so that if Van der Sar keeps his net clean for at least one more minute he no longer has to share his league record with the rest of his defense.

The Flyswatter bridge we wrote about has been getting quite some attention in the blogosphere. Popular Mechanics talked a bit longer with architect Van Driel than we did and discovered some more flyswatter bridges in the Netherlands and France. But why, when mentioning in passing Dutch bicycle paths, do they link to a website about biking in Copenhagen?

Speaking of bikes in the Netherlands: people from Amsterdam use their bicycles more often than their cars. Worldchanging.com reports:

Between 2005 and 2007, Amsterdam residents rode their bicycle 0.87 times a day on average, compared to 0.84 trips by car. It was the first time on record that average bike trips surpassed cars, the research group FietsBeraad reported last month.

The ‘box of pixels’ at the top of this posting is not the lazy work of a photoshopper, but an actual office building made in 2007 by Dutch-Austrian architects Splitterwerk, and forms the headquarters for a firm called Prisma Engineering in Graz, Austria. Link: Bright.nl.

Architect John Körmeling has just won (Dutch) the pitch for a new bridge to the Pius harbour in Tilburg, beating two other agencies. His open design has a large, rotating counter weight house and big friendly illuminated letters that spell the name of the area. City hall thinks the view from the counter weight house will be “attractive.” Körmeling is the man from Eindhoven who designed and built the controversial rotating house artwork in Tilburg.

Building of the bridge should start in 2010. A small exhibition of the design will be displayed starting next Tuesday at Hoevenseweg 2 in Tilburg, near the other bridge across the harbour canal.

More imagery and background at Architectenweb (Dutch). Via Trendbeheer (Dutch). Photo John Körmeling.

Building bridges well is one thing, but how to maintain them? Rijkswaterstaat, the governmental entity concerned with building and maintaining roads and such, has offered a grand prize of 500,000 euro for the person coming up with the best scheme to renovate a bridge. Rijkswaterstaat isn’t satisfied with its own procedures. They especially don’t like the way their current methods hinder traffic.

According to the rules, anybody can participate, although if you read on you’ll discover that with anybody they mean anybody who is registered at a Dutch chamber of commerce. Another rule states that you must speak sufficient English and Dutch to be able to explain your plan. The ten best ideas will net their creators up to 100,000 euro to further develop their plans, and only one winner will get the grand prize of half a mil.

The deadline for the first round is April 10.

Link: Z24 (Dutch). Photo of the bridge to IJburg, Amsterdam by me.

This bridge, which looks likes a huge flyswatter, is in Leeuwarden. It was designed by Bruggenbureau Van Driel and built in 2000 by Ballast Nedam and BSB Staalbouw. The way I figure it, it works as an ordinary drawbridge, except when you’re in a hurry, then it’ll flip you like a pancake (which is what you’ll look like afterwards).

This is the Slauerhoffbridge, named after a local poet. I translated his “Voor de verre prinses” once, but not very well, so I’ll just link to it.

Via Jalopnik. Photo by Van Driel Bruggenbureau, used with permission. Much more (and more recent) photos after the links.