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Forthside Pedestrian Bridge

Stirling, United Kingdom
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This bridge designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects greatly improves pedestrian connections between Stirling's town centre and railway station. The bridge is aligned to better suit pedestrian desire lines and promote physical and visual connectivity with the town to establish an enhanced sense of place.

As a result of the visual and geographical detachment of Forthside, the bridge was required to bind two disparate places, acting as a signal for the new development area while maintaining respect for the old City.

Structure

This is a contemporary interpretation of the traditional 'fink truss' structure, which is inverted here to support the deck from above. It's not strictly an inverted Fink truss - such a structure would have large diagonal compression struts holding it up - but never mind, that's just a term popularised by the similar Royal Victoria Dock Bridge.

Another way to think of it is a series of cantilevering cable-stay spans, each cantilever acting as the root of a subsequent cantilever. The trusses are arranged asymmetrically and change size incrementally along the length of the bridge to create an organic twisting form.

The resulting structure is both dramatic and visually 'light', the steel masts and cables contrasting with laminated glass infills at parapet level. At night these appear to glow, creating a shifting 'glass ribbon' of colour along the length of the bridge.

The bridge is a 113.4m long three span asymmetric inverted fink truss with a main span of 88.2m, spanning seven rail tracks, service road and car park adjacent to Stirling Station.

Pedestrian parapets across the bridge take on a cranked form of minimum 1.5m in height and comprise laminated glass infill panels. Access to the bridge deck is provided at each end by both stairs and lifts.

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  1. Gifford
  2. The Happy Pontist Blog
  3. Architect's Website
mariathuroczy, November 24th, 2011
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