Yesterday I just finished visiting Docklands. It took me several weeks to walk thru and see how big area was changed for ship yards, warehouses. The first – St Katherine’s dock was created in 1828 and the last was closed the Royals in 1981. It is only 150 years in history of London but huge area was recreated and then abandon. For last 20 years this area see big changes and in some places like Rothehithe most of docks were filled with ground again and serve as wetland and parks. In other place like Millwall dock in Isle of Dogs you can see the dock in full size. Canary Wharf was the biggest investment in whole dockland which change waste land into new London business center.
Visiting docklands was inspiring and convinced me that the most of my living bridges should be created there, especially that this area have hunger for vivid places where people not only could but wanted to meet.
The living bridge is a place where people could enjoy looking at river which has magic that is hard to replace. For me it has a lot in common with spending on the sea front beach. Then could spend their time walking in park among trees and sculptures. The living bridge could be the sculpture and fine art piece which people wanted to see. There could be restaurants, cafeterias, shops, galleries that would make this place more attractive. There could be also museums – like in one created using shape or construction of liner ships which were reaching Thames docklands in previous past. Maybe we could use one of old liners which could find it final destination in London but in new form.
Recently after selecting collection of pictures I takes in London since September 2006 I started to make compositions for the moment in Photoshop only. But few bridges I want to create from my sketches only and will need using 3D programs. I start 2 months – 20 hours 3D Studio Max course today. I hope you will see the first results sooner.
In a meantime I found book – “Bridges – three thousand years of defying nature” by David Brown which made me familiar with history of bridges around the world including technical aspects. It will be helpful in creating visualizations and knowing the basic problems when constructing superstructures.
It was exiting experience to follow the development of bridges from primitive beam bridges and ending with state of art Santiago Calatrava constructions and on future projects like The Strait of Messina – connecting Italy and Sicily with 3 km the world’s longest single suspended span bridge.
Docklands
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