The Sixth Street Viaduct is a 3,500-foot bridge crossing the Los Angeles River, connecting the Boyle Heights community to the east with the Arts District and downtown to the west. Replacing the original 1932 structure, the new viaduct operates as both infrastructure and urban architecture—accommodating vehicular traffic, bicycles, and pedestrians while establishing new spatial and programmatic relationships between the bridge, the river, and the neighborhoods it links. Rather than serving solely as a thoroughfare at a single elevation, the project creates continuous connections along its entire length, opening access to the structure and the landscapes beneath it.

The viaduct is defined by ten pairs of arches that rise and fall along the north and south edges of the bridge as it extends from east to west. Each pair of concrete arches supports a cable lattice from which the roadway deck is suspended, creating a thin, efficient profile. The arches incline outward from the deck and are constructed segmentally, while the piers beneath angle outward in plan, resolving the geometries of the bridge’s inner and outer profiles. Because the spans are similar in dimension, the foundations at each pier are nearly identical, streamlining construction and maintaining formal consistency across the structure.

The structure’s generous spans create large areas of open space below the viaduct that accommodate new recreational green spaces and public programming. Five pedestrian stairways distributed along the length of the bridge connect the deck to the ground plane, enabling access at multiple points rather than only at the bridge’s endpoints. Two dedicated bicycle ramps link the viaduct to Boyle Heights in the east and the Arts District in the west. At the western terminus, a sloping River Gateway path connects the Los Angeles River to a future Arts Plaza in the heart of the Arts District, extending the logic of connectivity beyond the bridge itself.

The project was developed in collaboration with HNTB as Engineer and Executive Architect, Hargreaves Associates as Landscape Architect, and AC Martin as Urban Planning consultant.