HERITAGE & HABITAT:NOW THAT "development" is a dirty word in Ireland, and building projects are too often seen in the light of destruction rather than construction, there is one kind of building project that is still a good thing – almost a morally good thing – and that's bridges, writes GEMMA TIPTON
It’s easy to get carried away by bridges, but with Irish architects winning competitions to build bridges around the world, and global architects creating new ones here, it’s time we all started celebrating the not-so-humble bridge. Where does the morality come in? Can bridges be moral? If you can ascribe such qualities to inanimate objects, I believe they are – how else could you view such a means for bringing people together, closing distances, and linking communities, countries, and sometimes even continents? Take the Oresund, which you can see from the air as you fly into Copenhagen. It was opened in the year 2000, and spreads out like a dancing ribbon across the sea, connecting Denmark and Sweden for the first time since the Ice Age. Then there’s the Bosphorus Bridge that joins Europe and Asia. Venus Williams once played a tennis match here, against Turkish player Ipek Senoglu, it only lasted five minutes, but was the first tennis game in history to span two continents. Perhaps more excitingly (Europe and Asia already being attached by land elsewhere) is the proposed Bering Straits Bridge, which would link Asia, Africa and Europe with North and South America — meaning you could drive around much of the world. The Bering Straits Bridge proposition has been around for a while, and at the same time as the dreamers are planning their bridges, their perhaps more practical colleagues are thinking of tunnels. Tunnels also do their work of joining and bringing together, but they don’t seem to have the romance of bridges. Novelist JG Ballard put it best, when he was asked about the, then newly-opened, Channel Tunnel: he agreed it was amazing, but imagine . . . he said. Imagine if it had been a bridge.
In Ireland we have some pretty good bridges – although no world-beaters yet. Sir Edwin Lutyens’s plan to build the Hugh Lane Gallery as a bridge across the Liffey might well have been one, had it gone ahead. Instead, we have the beloved Ha’penny bridge spanning the Liffey, as well as, among others, O’Connell Bridge – actually two bridges side by side, and almost as wide as it is long. Further north there is the Boyne Bridge, which glows an ethereal blue at night, and, possibly the most beautiful of the new, soaring breed of bridges: the Foyle Bridge in Derry, which although it has to close in high winds, seems to be like an inspiration for the imagination to start to soar.
Opening later this year in this country is the Suir Bridge, which will help the N25 bypass Waterford. Regulars of Waterford’s traffic jams might find this thrilling enough on its own, but the Suir Bridge, designed by Spanish firm Carlos Fernández Casado, is a pretty glorious feat. The pylon holding the cable-stays took two years to build and is almost twice the height of Liberty Hall. Hang out with bridge-fanciers for a while, and you hear an awful lot of statistics and comparisons, as people wax lyrical about arches, spans, tonnes of reinforced concrete and numbers of rivets. Perhaps it’s their way of coming to terms with all that majesty and wonder.
It all starts to make sense when you come across a bridge like the Millau Viaduct. It’s the tallest in the world, taller than the Eiffel Tower, and it floats in the clouds as it crosses the Tarn Valley in France. It’s architect, Norman Foster, said he wanted it to have “the delicacy of a butterfly”, and people have said that driving across it is like “flying a car” – and they go there to do just that. Traveling to see amazing bridges has a distinguished history. Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge, and Thomas Telford’s Menai both drew the Victorian crowds when they were built – the Menai actually being a direct response to the Act of Union in 1800, as suddenly there was more traffic between the ports of Ireland and Wales. Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge, has the additional, unfortunate distinction of being a spot for suicides, and plaques along the bridge display the Samaritans’ phone number. In 1885, however, a 22-year-old woman was saved from her plunge by her skirts, which caught the wind and acted as a parachute. Sarah Ann Henley lived on into her 80s.
While people travel to bridges, bridges have been known to travel too — famously London Bridge, which millionaire Robert McCulloch bought and transported, brick by brick, to Arizona in 1962. Ireland’s other newest bridge has traveled too: Santiago Calatrava’s Beckett Bridge floated, fully formed, into Dublin on a barge from Rotterdam earlier this year, and will be open for business in early 2010. I’m not completely convinced by the Beckett Bridge, the architect insists it looks like a harp, in deference to Ireland, but I think it looks like a great many of his other bridges – lovely, but by no means unique.
Meanwhile, Irish architects Heneghan Peng are building bridges abroad – one at Mittelrheinbruecke, in the Rhine Valley, on a site famed for its beauty; and the other, a footbridge for the 2012 London Olympics. Heneghan Peng’s German bridge is a thin sliver in the landscape, and like the best bridges, doesn’t detract from its setting. Some actually add to theirs – framing views in valleys, and giving new ones from their decks. One such will be Buro Happold’s winning design for the proposed Metro West across Liffey Valley – proving that sometimes man and nature can work in harmony. And finally, now is our last chance to see (for 2009 at least) the gorgeous, and a little scary, Carrick-a-rede rope bridge near Ballintoy, Co Antrim. It is taken down at the end of October/beginning of November every year, and goes up again in March.
Stunning And Romantic
Millau Viaduct, Tarn Valley: flying a car above the clouds in France.
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco: iconic, mist shrouded, it was once the longest suspension bridge in the world.
Oresund, Denmark/Sweden: connecting countries separated since the Ice Age.
Ponte Dom Luis:Porto, in Portugal, is famed for its bridges, but this one proves that iron work can be wonderful.
Clifton Suspension Bridge: turned Bristol into a Victorian tourist attraction.
Pont Neuf:the "new bridge" is now the oldest in Paris
Charles Bridge:begun in the 14th Century, a Prague tourist attraction
Rialto Bridge:all the bridges of Venice are romantic, but this one stands out.
Five-pavilion Bridge, Beijing:the Chinese are brilliant at bridges, and this one is very special.
Ponte Vecchio:the only one of Florence's bridges not to be blown up by the Nazis. Hitler deemed it too beautiful.