The 4.5-ton bridge is made of eight segments joined together by hinges. Its articulated balustrades act as trusses, with the deck-floor elements acting in tension and the handrails in compression. Seven vertical pistons above the deck hinges form part of the balustrades. They also control the bridge’s opening motion, which is powered by underground hydraulic equipment.
It isn’t every day that you see a steel bridge that lifts upward like a trained seal standing on its front flippers and curls itself into a ball — or, more precisely, an octahedron. The almost-40-foot-long remote-controlled hydraulic bridge — which spans an offshoot of the Grand Union Canal — is one of three that were commissioned for Paddington Basin, a mixed-use development in Northwest London. Popularly known as the Rolling Bridge, it was designed for foot traffic by Thomas Heatherwick, a 34-year-old Briton whose multidisciplinary design studio has ventured into the realms of sculpture and architecture.
”The job of a bridge is to get out of the way,” Heatherwick explains, but he says that most drawbridges look ”broken” when angled in the air. ”We were looking for something more transformative.” And more theatrical. Heatherwick deliberately made the bridge structure appear ordinary, so that when it lies flat you won’t give it a second look — until, that is, it begins its graceful gymnastics. ”How it works is the extraordinary aspect of it,” he says.
Heatherwick loves to confound expectations. In 1997, he designed a window display for Harvey Nichols in London that kept going, right onto the sidewalk. He is just a few weeks away from completing the tallest sculpture in England, outside a stadium in Manchester. A bit taller than the Statue of Liberty minus its base, it has been compared to a giant porcupine, and because people will drive under it, Heatherwick sees it as a piece of urban infrastructure. On a much smaller scale, his tote bag for Longchamp features a spiral zipper that allows the bag to expand. This is thoroughly in keeping with Heatherwick’s belief that ”it’s not enough to make a nice shape — it has to challenge in some way.”
Curling Bridge
Curling Bridge 혹은 Rolling Bridge라 불린다. 영국 출신의 젊은 예술가인 Thomas Heatherwick의 작품으로 보도교용으로 제작되었으며 사진에서 보는 것과 같이 다리가 동그랗게 접힌다. 관련 기사 및 사진은 Architectural Record 및 New York Times에서 인용.