Hovenring

A suspended circular bicycle bridge hovering above a busy road intersection, held aloft by cables from a single 70-metre pylon. The Hovenring was the first suspended bicycle roundabout in the world when it opened in 2012, and the engineering is as elegant as it is practical: 72 metres in diameter, lit from below at night, it looks like a glowing halo floating above the traffic.

The bridge is between Eindhoven and Veldhoven and carries thousands of cyclists daily. It is functional infrastructure rather than a tourist attraction, but for anyone interested in Dutch cycling culture or urban design, it is worth a detour — a symbol of a country that takes cycling seriously enough to build this kind of infrastructure for it.

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The Hovenring was designed by ipv Delft after a competition to improve a dangerous road junction. The suspended roundabout keeps cyclists completely separate from car traffic using a single central pylon and 24 cables — an engineering approach borrowed from suspension bridges and applied, for the first time anywhere, to a bicycle roundabout. It was shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016.

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