About this
project.
Hi! I'm a student at Institut auf dem Rosenberg in St. Gallen. This whole site is a school project — a concept I came up with for a small wooden bridge on our campus that produces its own electricity from people walking on it. Nothing here is built yet — it's an idea I designed, drew, and tried to make as realistic as I could.
Why I made this.
I walk across campus every day, and I kept thinking: that's a lot of footsteps doing nothing. In some train stations in London and Tokyo, the floor tiles already turn footsteps into electricity. So I asked myself — could a school have something like that, but smaller and made of wood?
That question turned into this project. I'm not an engineer (yet 🙂) — most of the numbers are estimates I based on real products and papers I read. But it was a fun way to learn about timber construction, energy storage, and how a real architect puts a project together.
How I worked on it.
≈ CHF 1.4 M
Honestly, I'm not 100% sure about this number. I added up average prices I found online for similar small wooden footbridges and the kinetic tile technology. It could easily be ±30% off — I just wanted to show roughly where the money would go.
People who helped me.
A school project is never really one person. Big thanks to my teachers, classmates and family who answered my (many) questions.
What I'd still like to figure out.
I used 5–8 W from product datasheets. I'd love to actually measure it on a small prototype.
St. Gallen gets snow. I need to think more about ice on the deck and how the panels behave at −10 °C.
Who fixes a panel when it breaks? I'd like to design a cover that any caretaker can pop open.
My number is a guess. I'd love to get a real quote from a Swiss timber workshop one day.
That's my project. Hope you liked it.
If you're a teacher, a classmate, or just someone curious — feel free to click through the other pages. The "Live data" page is my favourite: it pretends the bridge is already built and shows what it would be measuring right now.