What does everyone think of this other design? Personally I think the design being built is much more elegant and timeless than this.
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Monday, 4 March 2013
Liam Mannix
YOU’RE looking at what could have been Adelaide’s new riverbank footbridge.
It’s about 55 metres wide and lined with the same tiles currently used on the riverbank plaza. It’s designed to be big enough that you could build a stage on the middle, grab a rock band and run a concert.
It’s covered in long, thin fissures to let light through, bathing the Popeye below in mottled sunlight.
The architect behind it is Urs Bette, an Austrian who recently relocated to Adelaide. When tenders for the footbridge project were announced, Bette assembled a team with national and international expertise, including an engineering firm from Germany, and made a bid for the project.
He didn’t make the shortlist. But being told he couldn’t build the bridge didn’t deter him from the project, and he mocked up the design anyway.
“I thought, hey, it’s so limited – they just invited five firms to be part of it. I thought that it should be an open competition where not just the people who always do stuff here get a go.
“I just thought, I’ll do it, and just kind of throw it into the discussion as a comment.
“You can’t just be criticising … if you can’t somehow show that other things would be possible.”
Bette says the final approved design, by Aurecon, is focussed solely on moving people from one side of the river to the other (a charge the State Government denies) and misses the potential to create something that redefines the riverbank.
“You see this bridge as a high-speed thoroughfare… so mono-functional in its appearance. We want to march people over there. But on most of the week, we don’t need that direct connection.
“It looks like it’s only doing something for the oval, but it’s not doing something for the whole community.”
Bette imagined the bridge as pulling together the two sides of the riverbank.
“The bridge is not a separate object that is placed above it, but kind of grows out of the existing material.
“You could achieve the same thing by doing something more democratic; by not adding a new object but taking the existing landscape and crafting the bridge out of the landscape.
“I’m not trying to add a new object, but rather transform the landscape and pull it over the river to create a kind of extended landscape that can also be used as such.”
He says the bridge could be more than just a piece of transportation infrastructure; it could be a place to be in its own right – hence the width.
“The central part of the bridge would lie flat, creating a space for events.
“You could use two-thirds for concerts or whatever and still have a thoroughfare on one side.”
Bette says the bridge would be pierced in places, allowing sunlight to fall through.
“You have to consider the water underneath.
“You can’t just make a black big stretch there; you have to let light through and make that space underneath interesting and gorgeous to go under.
“You have to perceive the water as a landscape in itself because people are using it.
“The issue I had with the original design that is on a high level is that you create a underpass situation – which are very often not so pleasant.
“If you have various contrasts underneath – spots of bright light coming through, spots of shadow – that’s quite a dramatic scenario.”
Bette says he is confident, after consulting with his engineering firm, that his bridge could be built for less than the $40 million the State Government is paying for the current design.
