Dancing bridge: an ingenious intervention into London's ballet complex adds unexpected richness to a humdrum street.Floral Street is a tall narrow thoroughfare THOROUGHFARE. A street or way so open that one can go through and get out of it without returning. It differs from a cul de sac, (q.v.) which is open only at one end. 2. Whether a street which is not a thoroughfare is a highway, seems not fully settled. in London's Convent Garden in which the massive white neo-renaissance bulk of the Royal Opera House suddenly obtrudes into a small-scale streetscape street·scape n. 1. An artistic representation of a street. 2. Surroundings composed of streets: the urban streetscape. of pubs and little shops. Most people do not look up as they hurry down the street or loaf along window shopping (jargon) window shopping - A term used among users of WIMP environments like the X Window System or the Macintosh at the US Geological Survey for extended experimentation with new window colours, fonts, and icon shapes. . But the few who do, glimpse a magical phenomenon: a crystal that twists and shimmers across the street against the sky. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This is the new bridge between the Royal Ballet School The Royal Ballet School is a specialist, co-educational school located in premises at White Lodge, Richmond Park, in the London Borough of Richmond; and an upper school at premises in Covent Garden. It combines a mainstream academic education with an intensive dance training. and the Opera House, created so that dancers can go from the practice rooms in the school to the Opera House without having to rush across the road in the rain. The twisted geometry is necessary because the school level from which the structure sets out is higher than the opening in the huge blind wall of the Opera House, and it is a small distance to the east. The Opera House is a Grade I-listed historic building which the architects were bound to change as little as possible, so one of E.M.Barry's blank attic windows became the point of entry. The ballet school to the north is a much less distinguished building, recently constructed under one of the new forms of government procurement Government procurement, also called public tendering, is the procurement of goods and services on behalf of a public authority, such as a government agency. With 10 to 15% of GDP in developed countries, and up to 20% in developing countries, government procurement accounts that more or less guarantees mediocrity, but internal planning necessitated only one location for the spring point of the bridge on that side. The spring points meant the bridge had to be gently ramped and skewed skewed curve of a usually unimodal distribution with one tail drawn out more than the other and the median will lie above or below the mean. skewed Epidemiology adjective Referring to an asymmetrical distribution of a population or of data away from the orthogonal At right angles. The term is used to describe electronic signals that appear at 90 degree angles to each other. It is also widely used to describe conditions that are contradictory, or opposite, rather than in parallel or in sync with each other. . A simple long glass box would not do, so Jim Eyre evolved a proposal that involved creating a tube out of square portal frames that are rotated, ensuring that at each end the bridge is level and square to the facade it addresses. Each frame is rotated by three degrees in relation to its neighbour and is slightly different in height. Glazing is held between each pair of frames. As a result of pursuing these simple rules, a wonderfully complex object has been created. Both from inside and out, the object alters with every movement you make. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Structurally, the essential proposition is simple: a welded and bolted aluminium box beam Noun 1. box beam - a beam built up from boards; has a hollow rectangular cross section box girder beam - long thick piece of wood or metal or concrete, etc., used in construction spans simply from one building to the other; its section changes according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. stresses and the geometry of the frames. At the Opera House end, the beam has a sliding bearing to allow for thermal movement and, as a result, loads at that end always bear vertically down on Barry's wall. The aluminium portals are supported on the primary beam and have oak slats on each side of their webs so that the glazing can be fixed with the necessary degree of stiffness. As much prefabrication prefabrication, in architectural construction, a technique whereby large units of a building are produced in factories to be assembled, ready-made, on the building site. The technique permits the speedy erection of very large structures. as possible was used to minimise disruption to the street, and to reduce working at high level. The beam with the portals erected and the central part glazed was rapidly set in place by crane, after which the final glazing panels were fitted and the abutments finished. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Glazing is both transparent and translucent. Translucency is used to prevent overlooking the terrace of the neighbouring house to the west, and to give people on the bridge a degree of privacy as they go over the road. Contrast between transparent and translucent adds to the visual complexity of the object, Internally from some angles, the walls appear almost opaque, as the frames crowd together in perspective and seem mostly to be made of oak. Move a few feet further and the wall suddenly becomes full of light, or transparent (with the aluminium frames exposed full on), offering dramatic views up and down Floral Street. Externally, the bridge alters in a similar way from semi-opaque to transparent as your angle of view changes. In the last century, most of the incidental additions to London's streets have been coarse and clumsy: here at last is an addition that shows how contemporary technology and architectural invention can rival the elegance and dignity of anything the Victorians did--and be much lighter too. P.D. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BRIDGE, ROYAL OPERA HOUSE, LONDON ARCHITECT WILKINSON EYRE Wilkinson Eyre Architects is a high-profile, international architecture firm based in London, UK. The firm has received many awards for outstanding and original solutions to design and engineering problems. Architect Wilkinson Eyre Design team Jim Eyre, Annette von Hagen, Martin Knight Structural engineer Flint & Neill Partnership Photographs All by Nick Wood except 4, which is by Edmund Sumner. Copyright Wilkinson Eyre |
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