ALTERNATIVE USES OF BRIDGES
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AUTHOR Anna Strizikova STUDENT NUMBER w18020820 TITLE ALTERNATIVE USES OF BRIDGES DATE 23.01.2020 DEGREE BA (Hons) Architecture SUPERVISOR Bob Giddings
MODULE CODE KA5004
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Table of contents Introduction 4 Multi-functionality of bridges throughout history 4 Precedents 5 Application to Design Project 6 Conclusions 8 Bibliography 9 Illustrations 10
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Introduction Bridges have been used for centuries to solve problems, not only regarding the need to cross a river or a valley, they were also widely used to expand building sites in crowded cities. Along with walls, they have always been a large part of human architecture, as people frequently had to overcome natural obstacles, and bridges are often an appropriate solution. People today might not even realise it, because of the abundance of brides everywhere around us, however bridges have not always been this common. They were actually very rare, so much so, that some of the largest cities today have been built just because of presence of a bridge, which was often the only point of crossing over a river for miles away. For the beautiful purpose of bridges, that is to connect people, they inspired not only architecture but also literature, bridging all differences and interdisciplinary gaps once again. A good example of this is Scottish novelist and historian John Buchan: ‘The Bridge, even more I think than the road, is a symbol of man’s conquest of nature… From the most primitive times it has been a dominant fact in life of each community. A bridge ruled the life of traffic. There might be a dozen roads of travel but they all drew to a point at the river crossing. Cities grew up around them, and castles were built to command them. Battles were fought for their possession, and schemes of strategy were based upon them. With them are linked many of the great feats of arms, from Horatius at Rome to Napoleon at Lodi. History—social, economic, and military—clusters more thickly about bridges than about towns and citadels.’ (John Buchan in Eric de Maré, 1975, p.8) As mentioned above, walls are equally as important as bridges, and even though they are often described as antonyms, since one connects and the other divides, there are several examples throughout old and new history, where combination of those two gave the design new found meaning and purpose. And that is what this illustrated account is focused on. To show how bridges with walls on them or within them can accommodate more functionality and be more powerful that a mere building.
Multi-functionality of bridges throughout history Most modern bridges serve one and only purpose, that is transporting traffic from one side to the other. However, it was not always like this, until approximately 200 years ago, bridges were often expanded, modified and build upon to serve multiple purposes (Blackstad, 2002, p.19). Especially Medieval Europe was fond of inhabited bridges with different building extensions, such as industrial buildings or even chapels. There are thirty-five examples of such bridges in France only. This phenomenal occurred mainly because of defensive walls around cities which restrained urban development into relatively small areas, therefore any uninhabited space was rare and valuable, including the open space above bridges connecting town’s river banks (Murray, 1996, p.36).
Fig. 1, John Hilbert, Newcastle Bridge, 1727, engraving, Newcastle City Libraries and Arts (Murray, 1996)
In England, regarding the number and variety of buildings built on a bridge, Newcastle was home to one of the most important examples of inhabited bridges, along with Bristol and London. The Old Tyne Bridge (Fig. 1) in Newcastle, which was providing an essential connection between the east of Scotland and the South, was damaged beyond repair in 1771 and replaced by an ordinary bridge shortly after as need for a city extension decreased (Murray, 1996, p. 37). The Old London Bridge (Fig. 2) across Thames, possessed even wider range of functionality—from industrial structures and warehouses, through domestic dwellings, to the Chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury (Murray, 1996, p. 47). Even though it was in need of frequent repairs, this bridge lasted over six hundred years as the City’s only crossing. However, as priorities and needs of people changed just like in Newcastle, all the buildings were gradually pushed back in order to make more space for the passage-way, until it was eventually demolished completely and replaced by a new, traditional bridge built upstream by Sir John Rennie in 1823-31 (Jackson, 1925, p.69). Fig. 2, Seven phases in the evolution of Old London Bridge, 1209-1831 (Murray, 1996)
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Another famous example is The Tower Bridge in London. Even though it never held any functions unrelated to the passage of traffic, this was due to be changed in 1943 after bomb damages during World War II., when W. F. C. Holden proposed a ‘Crystal Tower Bridge’ (Fig. 3), which would accommodate almost 24,000 square meters of office space, this project was however turned down and Tower Bridge was restored to its original state, housing only the complex machinery that was initially required to open and close the bascules (Murray, 1996, pp. 98-99), proving once again the redundancy of such expansions. It would seem that inhabited bridges fell out of fashion completely, as people no longer have the need for them and only few last cases from this trend remained in Europe. One of those is for example Ponte Vecchio in Florence (Fig. 4), which is now a mere popular tourist attraction. Even though inhabited bridges are not as common as they used to, the idea of them has Fig. 3, W. C. Holden, The Tower Bridge: suggested reconstruction– elevations not perished completely. As value of property goes higher and plan, 1943 again, inhabited bridges might just be experiencing their renaissance. A 1996 initiative in London investigated this possibility by opening a competition for central London. One of the two joint winners was Zaha Hadid with her living bridge (Fig. 5) proposal. Even though it was never built, the public liked her design, which shows that there might be space and time for such bridges (Blackstad, 2002, p.19).
Fig. 4, Ponte Vecchio, Florence (Blakstad, 2002)
Fig. 5, zaha Hadid, An inhabited bridge for the twenty-first century: entry for the Thames Water vHabitable Bridge Competition, 1996, 1:200 model (Murray, 1996)
An example of bridges that are used, on the contrary, more as walls, and are creating more barriers and separators than connections, was Le Corbusier’s urban planning and his proposal of Radiant City (Fig. 6). In this utopian proposition, he divided the streets into different levels and gave them each different purpose. Elevating the sidewalks on bridges above the roads, as he was concerned about pedestrian’s safety in such revolutionary time of first automobiles (Le Corbusier, 1946). However, this ideology had not been widely accepted, possibly as a result of limitation of the human nature to choose an appropriate environment. That is the most important way in which the environment affects human behaviour, but also a crucial way in which people assert a piece of mastery and take control over their own environment which is a prominent influence when it comes to their well-being which can also affect social relationships among people. Hence, public’s decision to reject Le Corbusier’s urban plans, which were indisputably going against human intuition, was well justified (Rapoport, 1977, p.368). Even though the radical Radiant City plan never came into fruition, more unconventional uses of bridges arose and the number of unordinary and original ideas dramatically increased with new technology of the twentieth and twenty-first century. As materials get lighter and easier to acquire and one of the main limitations when building a bridge is the weight and integrity of used material, this development in technology has proven beneficial for the bridge building industry. And not only regarding building on and expanding existing bridges but also using buildings as bridges has become popular as it offers solutions to many issues, that may emerge from a site (e.g. steep slope, body of water), especially for smaller buildings.
Fig. 6, Radiant City (Le Corbusier, 1933)
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Precedents A vast amount of today’s architects has adapted this strategy of using buildings as bridges in their design, some to solve problems on the site, such as lack of space or difficult terrain, others more for the metaphorical meaning of connecting people and bridging social gaps. The two examples below were chosen for the reason that they used a form of a bridge to resolve the issues on their sites, resulting in qualities that could have never been achieved by a regular grounded building, which later on informed the Ouseburn valley proposal. Bridge House—Van der Merwe Miszewski This project from 2004 takes advantage of the topography of Higgovale (district in Cape Town, South Africa) steeply sloping towards the north, which provides views of Table Mountain, Devil’s peak, Lion’s Head and Signal Hill. Miszewski divided the site into three parts, all of which are crossed by a dry riverbed called donga. The highest floor is the bridge (Fig. 7), which accommodates the living spaces and the entry accessed by a gangway, elevated above the tree tops. Below, connected by triple-height stairwell, lay two floors of bedrooms and a garage. The third and lowest part is a separated guesthouse, located above a small pond at the bottom of the site, connected to the main building by a set of narrow wooden pavements. Those three structures sit on the perimeter of the site, leaving the middle for a private garden, known as werf. Miszewski was working with landscape architect Tarna Klitzner on the garden whose main natural focus Fig. 7, looking up towards the bridge from the guest house (VDMMA, is the donga and a stream set in the dry riverbed, traversing the site no date) into the pond beneath the guesthouse (Gregory, 2007)The lower levels are heavy masonry forming a wall between the werf and public street in south, whereas the bridge is formed by lightweight steel. This change of structure and materials throughout the building creates a contrast between massive monolith and frame. Miszewski used similar strategy before, for his Tree House, built not too far away, from the Bridge House, in Bo-Kaap district, in 1999 (Barac, 1999, p.82). This specific site and house are mainly focused on privacy and changing of its intensity through the floors, from the shared rooms by the entry in the bridge, light structure and private ones in the lower, heavier, masonry floors. Using a bridge form in this steep slope also provided the building’s residents with wide view even though they are completely surrounded by Bridge House—Max Pritchard Architect In this particular case of bridge house (Fig. 8), the whole building assumed a form of a bridge, spanning a deep waterhole on a small private property in Adelaide, south Australia. The bridge form here, once again, helps to solve absence of land and difficult terrain, while thanks to its high position and open sides, it offers views to both sides, giving the feeling of ‘living amongst the trees’. Because of the character of the site, most of the structure of the building had to be constructed off site. PriFig. 8, The Bridge House over the waterhole (Noonan, no date) mary structure consists of two steel trusses anchored by four small piers. Building it self is very sustainable as most of the materials were produced locally, are reusable or recyclable, do not need heavy machinery to be installed and created little waste. (Pritchard, 2009). This bridge residence is a proof that difficult sites can work to architect’s favour if handled properly, which here was by taking an advantage of existing circumstances of the site, allowing Pritchard to design above ground so the building would not be taking any more space from already small site and was therefore able to offer the residents this unique experience of living in the tree tops.
Both architects were working on a terrain difficult sites, with water bodies and both resolved them with a building designed in the form of a bridge. This provided the residents with view that would have been impossible without a bridge design tailored to their site with all the aspects of the site in mind, however, not as limitations, but as challenges that need a creative solutions. Obstacles here aren't a detriment, they are an opportunity.
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Application to Design Project The site in Ouseburn Valley is defined by the river Ouseburn in the Northeast, the Byker Bridge in the south and a small thicket of small trees in the west. The terrain is an uneven steep slope oriented towards the Ouseburn river, pierced in the middle by an artificial pond, which has been visibly neglected just like the orchard, which itself looks overlooked and unused. The whole site is significantly overgrown, so much so, that the pond is barely visible on the first sight. What is truly remarkable about this place are the three bridges that overarch the valley (Fig. 9). As the project required to place three separate buildings on this relatively small site and the aim was to maintain, if not expand, the original apple orchard and preserve the pond, it was necessary for the buildings to take up as little space as possible, leaving most of the site clear for the orchard and private gardens by each house. Based on this analysis, an idea arose to create each building taking inspiration from one of the bridges, therefore creating a visible connection to the site. And, more importantly, offering a solution to the scarce of space, since two of those buildings were suspended over water, one Fig. 9, looking towards the orchard from underneath the Ouseburn Viaduct (Strizikova, 2019) across Ouseburn and one above the pond. Each of the bridges has got a different structure, is made of different materials, and serves a slightly different purpose. The oldest one, with stone pillars and ribbed steel arches, is the Ouseburn viaduct, carrying train rails just like Metro Byker Bridge, which is made from precast concrete. Last one, the Byker Bridge is formed by thirteen deep roman arches made of bricks and is one of the main routes connecting Byker and central Newcastle for automobile transport and pedestrians. However, only one of them was eventually of interest, the Byker Bridge.
Fig. 10, exterior perspective of the proposed house (Strizikova, 2019)
Fig. 11, ground floor plan in context (Strizikova, 2019)
Fig. 12, North Elevation (Strizikova, 2019)
The house (Fig. 10), which has been inspired by it, is reaching into the pond, minimizing this way its footprint above ground (as seen in fig. 11), leaving more space for the expanded orchard and a garden. This was made possible because of the steep slope of the site that allowed the ground floor to be connected to the ground while, several meters further, it would be floating mid-air. Main component of the building that was influenced most by the bridge design, is exactly the ground floor, which is the only masonry, loadbearing structure of the house. It is formed by two and a half brick arches (Fig. 12) where the half arch serves as a porte-cochere. Concrete floor in suspended underneath, which, along with thick outside walls, enhances a feeling of being inside of the bridge, rather than on it. This was inspired by the deep arches of the Byker bridge, which themselves can be seen as walls enclosing outside space into sort of a room with the arches above acting as a ceiling. The thick walls also allow deep windows, framing the views into the valley, and providing shading for extensive glazing between the arches.
Fig. 13, Ground floor interior perspective (Strizikova, 2019)
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Top two floors, which are made out of significantly lighter steel frame, are as though sitting on top of the bridge ground floor, looking down, towards the Ouseburn River. The lightness of this structure is enhanced even more by its façade, which is composed out of different sizes of glass panels in light tones of blue, blending in with the windows. This creates a strong contrast with the heavy the masonry, such as the one in Miszewski’s house. Just like Pritchard’s and Miszewski’s bridge houses, even here this unusual form helped with the scarce of space on the site and a difficult steep terrain, while creating something unique, allowing those special rooms above water, turning what some might see as a disadvantage into an advantage. However, the bridge element in this case does not just solve obstructions of the site, it also creates a visual reference to an existing structure, the Byker Bridge, which itself has several buildings attached to it in a way one might not even notice, as the buildings are not on top, but underneath, ‘hidden’ between the arches.
Conclusions As demonstrated above, bridges have been playing a significant part in human history, even though their use has been changing through time, the essential purpose has stayed the same—they are connecting people, carrying them from one place to another. They reached their peak in medieval times, when cities have been build around them and on top of them. Everything revolved around bridges, however, later on, as people built more bridges, their importance has decreased along with their scarcity, and they almost lost meaning in the twentieth century with Le Corbusier wanted to use them to create barriers in his Radiant City proposal. However, this changed again in World War II. when a large amount of bridges has been destroyed, and they became an asset once again. However, people are not finding new purpose in bridges only in architecture, but also in their metaphorical meaning, which is often used in literature or politics. In conclusion, even though bridges have always been here primarily to connect people, they have been doing so much more, and should never be taken for granted. When especially in the right combination with walls they can help us, not only to overcome physical obstructions, but also improve the way we use space and address difficult sites, which would have never been inhabitable before.
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Bibliography: Ashley, P. & English Heritage (2001) Bridging the gap : bridges, London: Everyman Guides.
Barac, M. (1999) Urban Gazebo. The Architectural Review, 206(1233), pp.82–84.
Blakstad, L., (2002) Bridge : the architecture of connection, London: August Media.
De Maré, E. (1975) Bridges of Britain New and rev., London: B.T. Batsford.
Faulkner, T.E., Beacock, P. & Jones, P. (2006) Newcastle & Gateshead : architecture and heritage, Liverpool: Bluecoat Press.
Gregory, R. (2007) Bridge house (House, Higgovale, Cape Town, South Africa, Van der Merwe Miszewski). Architectural Review, 221(1324), pp.84–87.
Jackson, A.E.E. (1925) Last house on London bridge. Notes and Queries, 168(31), p.69.
Le Corbusier (1946) Concerning Town Planning, Kingston-on-Thames: Knapp, drewett and Sos Ltd.
Le Corbusier (1933) Radiant City, London: Faber and Faber Ltd.
Locke,Tim, Locke & Locke, Anne (2008) Bridges of the world : an illustrated history, Basingstoke: Automobile Association.
Pearce, M. & Jobson, R. (2002) Bridge builders, Chichester: Wiley-Academy.
Murray, P. et al. (1996) Living bridges : the inhabited bridge, past, present and future, London : New York: Royal Academy of Arts ; Prestel.
Max Pritchard Architect (2009). "Bridge House / Max Pritchard Architect" ArchDaily. Available at: <https:// www.archdaily.com/27470/bridge-house-max-pritchard-architect/> ISSN 0719-8884. Accessed 20 Jan 2020.
Rapoport, A. (1977) Human Aspects of Urban Form: Towards a Man—Environment Approach to Urban Form and Design, Oxford: Prgamon Press
Ratcliffe, J. (1992) An introduction to town and country planning 2nd ed., London: UCL Press.
Rosenau, H. (1983) The ideal city : its architectural evolution in Europe 3rd ed., London: New York: Methuen & Co. Ltd.
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Illustrations: Fig. 1, 2, 3, 5: Murray, P. et al. (1996) Living bridges : the inhabited bridge, past, present and future, London : New York: Royal Academy of Arts ; Prestel Fig. 4: Blakstad, L., (2002) Bridge : the architecture of connection, London: August Media. Fig. 6: Le Corbusier (1933) Radiant City, London: Faber and Faber Ltd. Fig. 7: VDMMA (no date) B R I D G E H O U S E by Van Der Merwe Miszewski Architects , Available at: http:// www.benevivit.com/article/Bridge-House-by-Van-Der-Merwe-Miszewski-Architects (Accessed: 22 Jan 2020) Fig. 8: Nonnan, s. (2002) Bridge House. Available at: http://www.maxpritchardarchitect.com.au/ (Accessed: 22 Jan 2020) Fig. 9-13: Strizikova, A. (2019) 'Dwelling'. Assignment for KA5002, BA Architecture, Northumbria University. Unpublished.
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