070 INFRASTRUCTURE
AFTER 2020 AND 2021 were spent pretty much confined to our immediate quarters, many of us will have emerged much more appreciative of the smaller or previously overlooked delights of the landscapes around us, whether urban or rural. And a vital part of those landscapes, especially for city dwellers, is infrastructure: roads, bridges, tunnels, stations, walkways, parks and playgrounds. Tey form the connective tissue that makes our cities and neighbourhoods not just liveable but loveable. And the more thoughtfully these pieces of infrastructure are designed, the more we enjoy using them. Bridges don’t generally receive a huge amount of attention from the design and architecture media, though their impacts on previously disconnected communities or landscapes can be huge. When Tintagel Bridge (see case study) was nominated for a Stirling Prize in 2021, a lot of media coverage centred on the surprise factor that a bridge was considered of equal value to a building. But it’s not the first time that has happened. In fact, a bridge won the Stirling Prize back in 2002: Wilkinson Eyre’s Gateshead Millennium Bridge, uniting Newcastle with Gateshead across the dividing river Tyne. Tis bridge, combined with the Baltic contemporary art gallery and Sage Gateshead, activated a whole new cultural quarter around and across the river, bringing new life, social activity and economic opportunities to this unsung corridor of the city.
Wilkinson Eyre has been designing bridges since 1994, when its South Quay Footbridge in Canary Wharf first established the language of structural clarity, innovation and grace that is common to all their bridge projects. Tis elevation and consideration of the look and feel of a bridge was a welcome return to almost Victorian values, according to critic Jeremy Melvin, writing in Wilkinson Eyre’s 2003 book Bridges. He says: ‘Making bridges beautiful as well as useful is something designers would have taken for granted up until the middle of the 20th century but, as engineering split from architecture, it increasingly pursued economy and efficiency above all else. Te importance of aesthetics became downgraded and the results impoverished our environment as the splendour and awe that bridges could inspire, and their potential as landmarks, was passed over.’
Very true. But now we have seen the light. And those architects with a flair for bridge design are being invited to deploy their bridge- building expertise all over the world. For Wilkinson Eyre, notable recent examples include a cycle and pedestrian bridge in Copenhagen (see case study). Tey are currently designing two bridges for Brisbane to open up new pedestrian and cycle links across the huge, grey river that snakes through this big Australian city.
This image The look of the steel Nissen sheds is unmistakably reminiscent of wartime shelters, and were used as accommodation
Above right The interior of the arches provides ample space for start-ups, while providing a modularity in that they are demountable and transferable
Key to Wilkinson Eyre’s approach, says Jim Eyre, is a sense of bridges as unique space for inhabitation and enjoyment, with the whole journey considered – from the distant views as you approach it to the mid-bridge vista, as well as the way it lands on the embankment or streetscape. He tells me: ‘We love designing them. We have always felt these bridges are like public property. It’s the community that owns a bridge. Tey should care what bridges look like. Tey are highly visible parts of the city. Tat means it’s more important they
should be well designed. When we design them it’s not just about joining up A to B. It links in to desire lines, how it connects to landscape elements, and allowing that promenading aspect to bring moments of interest and joy. Bridges that we’ve done have become sociable gathering spaces. With our very first one (Canary Wharf) we started hearing that people were using it as a place to meet, to go and stand on this bridge. And in Northern Ireland, after we built the Peace Bridge, we heard extraordinary stories about
THIS SPREAD: ED REEVE
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129
