LIVERPOOL ANGLICAN CATHEDRAL ANNIVERSARY GLASS BRIDGE ( length 10.5km )
Inspired by the silk thread of a spider’s web weighted by droplets of water, our Glass Ribbon took an innovative structural system and made it unique through the use of glass as the main compressive stress carrying material. The deck in effect becomes a solid ribbon of glass, some 250 mm thick, used also as a light-carrying medium, with coloured light ‘shot’ into its mass, including moving laser images. The engineering and aesthetic beauty of this concept lies in the fact that the suspended glass walkway is the structure. The structural principle of a stress ribbon utilises the tensile strength of contemporary materials in an economic manner. Its stiffness and stability result from its geometry. While modern, it is also the most vernacular and ancient, almost atavistic, way of building bridges. The large horizontal forces created at abutments can be balanced by the use of an arch propping the ribbon.
With Dewhurst MacFarlane and Partners, and Professor Jiri Strasky of SHP
