Most bridges have a simple mission: to transport people and vehicles from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible. But where is the fun in that? Bridges are wonderful pieces of architecture in and of themselves, not only providing crossings of water and over dangerous roads and cliffs, but in the best cases pleasing to the eye and the mind.
We look here at some of the most unusual and also aesthetically unique bridges in the world.
The Most Unusual Bridges in the World:
Bridge of Moses, The Netherlands, 2011
Where is: Fort Rovere, West Brabant Water Line, The Netherlands
Type: Console, pedestrian
Length:51 m
Fort Rovere where this most unusual of the new bridges of the world was built in the XVII century as part of Brabant line installations, guarding Holland against invasion by France and Spain.
During large-scale reconstructions of the fort in front of the designers was given more than a trivial task: to throw a bridge across moat to tourists, making it virtually invisible. Architects brilliantly coped with this task, based on the design history of how the Prophet Moses parted in front of the seawater.
The bridge is almost completely submerged in water so that the pedestrian deck is below the water level. From a distance, it is invisible and emerges when approaching a narrow gap in the water. Almost entirely made of specially treated and resistant to an aqueous medium of wood, Bridge of Moses was among the finalists of the prestigious contest Dutch Design Awards.
Bridge Royal Gorge, USA, 1929
Where: The Grand Canyon of the Arkansas River, Colorado, USA
Type: suspension, hiking
Length: 366 m (268 m main span)
Height above the lowest point of the canyon:321 m
The Grand Canyon of the Arkansas River has been known since the middle of the XIX century when it found native silver. During the silver to close the gorge of the Arkansas River (the width of the canyon at the lowest point of 15 m) was built by the railroad.
The field is quickly exhausted, but soon, archaeologists found there remains of dinosaurs: it is the prototype of Royal Gorge. Very quickly, Canyon City has become a popular tourist town, especially for which was built a unique suspension bridge, a boardwalk with amusement.
In the 1960s Royal Gorge was infamous as bridge suicide: specially came here wishing guaranteed to take their lives. At the beginning of the XXI century, they were replaced by tourists’ extremals, which are attracted by the opportunity to perform with the legendary bridge jump on the insurance of a rubber rope.
Leonardo da Vinci’s bridge, Norway, 1502/2001
Where: Aas, Akershus, Norway
Type: arch, walking, and cycling
Length:50 m
In 1502, Leonardo da Vinci worked for the Sultan Bayezid II project stone bridge across the Golden Horn with a total length of 360 m, with an arch span length of 240 m. Sultan considered the project unscientific fiction, and it was long forgotten, preserved in a few sketches in the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci.
In 1996, the bridge design found Veborn Sand artist who founded the public later Leonardo Bridge Project, supported by the administration of public roads in Norway. The truth turned out not so bridge the giant, as he is conceived by Leonardo, but his unique minimalist design three-bearing arches, wide at the base and thin at the junction with the blade of transition has remained intact.
The bridge is made using a unique technology laminated wood in a special way of glued Norwegian pine. This same technology was used in 1994 during the construction of the rink Winter Olympics in Lillehammer.
Storsesundetsky Bridge, Norway, 1989
Where: Atlantic Road, District Romsdal, Norway
Type:console, car
Length:260 m (main span 130 m)
This is the longest of the eight bridges the Atlantic Road five-mile route that connects the island to the mainland by Avery. The need for this road keenly felt in the first third of the XX century, when the plans were studied seriously the construction of the railway line, from which had to be abandoned because of the weakness of the soil of small islands.
Until the mid-1970s between Romsdalem and walked Averoem car ferry, and only in 1989, there was a long-awaited highway, which is also the first 10 years have been paid. Then, starting from 1999, about five years to the bridges were added additional scaffolding of the original architecture for photography, recreation, and even fishing, resulting in the Atlantic road was one of the most visited tourist attractions in Norway, and in 2005 received the title of Construction of the century» (Norwegian Construction of the Century).
Storsesundetsky bridge perhaps the most famous of its elements. He is well known optical illusion bridge to nowhere: from a certain angle, it seems that the entry for falling to sea level (23 m) piece of the bridge as if dropped into the abyss.
Bridge Slauerhoffbrug, Netherlands, 2000
Where: River Harlingen, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
Type: lift on a moving farm road
Length:15 m
An extremely strange bridge, remotely from a distance looked like a giant excavator, named in memory who was born in Leeuwarden Dutch poet and novelist Ian Slauerhofa XX century.
Another called flying bridge, although, strictly speaking, it is automatic, adjustable lifting, moving on a farm with a pylon-counterweight (kind of a giant spool of thread, lurking at the side of the road on the bank of the river).
From an architectural standpoint, the bridge a distant descendant of the drawbridge in medieval castles took the guise of an industrial robot. A square platform of the bridge 10 times a day on the river rises almost vertically. In this position, it is clear that the lower part of the platform is painted in the colors of Leeuwarden blue and yellow.
Source: ColossalPlanet
