London Design Silver

2023

Bridge as a Breach

Entrant

Ruichen Xu & Yunshi Chen

Category

Architectural Design - Conceptual 

Client's Name

-

Country / Region

United States

About The Entry

We believe that Architecture is an extraordinary and eternal way of understanding the world. Trying to create a dialogue with the user of the building by inserting our vision and expectation of the world. We envision the post-COVID life of London over the River Thames with the unique tool - Architecture - and explore possible solutions to the possible changes in people's behavior and even mental barriers because of COVID. This project is a contemporary simulation of the changes happening with social distances and public activities when people are more open to enjoying the outside world again. We are more open to the programs on the bridge we designed, and the spaces created by the bridge are not acting as constraints to size people in particular areas but offer more freedom for them to explore the precious space on the bridge. In this way, we believe that we are respecting the users of the architecture and spreading positive influences on the world.

Our key takeaway from Rosalind Krauss's Klein Diagram is to resist defining a domain. The tensions between the pair happen at the periphery where architecture, non-architecture, landscape, non-landscape, structure, and non-structure coexist. The ambiguity between each of the two terms generates the concept that a mixture of landscape, structure, and architecture can be in a formal expression. Habitable Topography, the artificial topos weaving and interacting creating the space consisting of Architecture and Landscape. The orientation of the bridge is to challenge the existing segregated districts in zoning and propose an idea of “breaching” the geological obstacles. It has a large cross shape with two perpendicular wings. This tangential and far-reaching gesture hovers above the River Thames, introducing a pedestrian experience to the mixture of commercial, residential, recreational, and urban landscape programs. The bridge not only provides effortless circulation across the River Thames, which has been historically regarded as the main division between north and south demography but also provides a variety of open and flexible experiences of entertainment and sports. All spaces are flexible, ambiguous, and lack of domain. It functions as an urban fabric, a living bridge.

Credits

Architecture Designer/AECOM Technical Services, Inc.
Ruichen Xu
Architecture Designer/MENG Architects
Yunshi Chen
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