Bridge-Building: Reinterpreting a Historic Typology

Abstract

The occupied bridge is a building typology from historic times that expressed interesting possibilities for habitation and urban connectivity. In modern cities, this building type has disappeared, but with the need for intensification and a new emphasis on transport, this is one building type a growing city could develop. It is important to explore and understand relationships between the building and the bridge, along with human interaction with the bridge on different levels (above, between, below) to enable possible developments to be adapted into the modern city. New possibilities to do with different levels of occupation could reveal a pattern to be expressed as an urban expansion system. There is the potential to improve the quality of the city's urban fabric, by modernising this building type into a form relevant to cities and citizens of the future. Most modern bridges serve only utilitarian purposes: they carry traffic. Exploring the merits and drawbacks of the historic, inhabitable bridge could allow new possibilities to be discovered, which in turn would have the potential to remedy defects and dysfunctions of the existing city. A thorough investigation into a broad range of bridges are explored and analysed to allow informed design decisions to be made appropriately and accurately.