<p>Bridge of Aspiration</p>

Twisting high above Floral Street in Covent Garden (Central London), the 'Bridge of Aspiration' provides the dancers of the Royal Ballet School with a direct link to the Grade I listed Royal Opera House. The award-winning design addresses a series of complex contextual issues, and is legible both as a fully integrated component of the buildings it links, and as an independent architectural element.
The skewed alignment and differing levels of the landing points dictate the form of the crossing, which is geometrically and structurally simple. A connection of twenty-three square portals with glazed intervals are supported from an aluminium spine beam. These rotate in sequence for the skew in alignment, performing a quarter turn overall along the length of the bridge. The result is an intervention in Floral Street intended to delight with its evocation of the fluidity and grace of dance.

The work of the London duo Wilkinson Eyre represents a fairly wide spectrum of realizations. In one area, however, they have become masters who break static myths. They build from transport bridges, through pedestrian walkways to small gems within buildings. An example of a gem is a built-in bridge made of hundreds of prestressed wires that secure a walking surface consisting exclusively of pushed glass strips. They usually use metal. The structures sometimes move. The 9.5 m long bridge above Floral Street is not movable, yet it emanates dynamics. At the height of the fourth floor, they connected two places that were both vertically and horizontally off-center. The authors added one more eccentricity and quickly turned a disadvantage into an advantage. 23 frames in a combination of aluminum, wood, and glass rotate against each other by 4 degrees each time.
At the 9th biennale, another project of their bridge was showcased, where the supporting structure was taken care of by tensegrity, popularized by R.B. Fuller. You can come and see it in a few years in Washington.