Monday, May 9, 2011

Australia's Bridges: Kurilpa Bridge across the Brisbane River in Queensland (3)

March 2011 (-27.469 deg., 153.018 deg.) Kurilpa Bridge

The Kurilpa Bridge is 1540 ft long and 20 ft wide. It was completed in October of 2009 at a cost of 63 million dollars (or about $2000 per square foot). The bridge includes a canopy, solar cells, viewing and rest areas, and a nighttime lightshow. 

Ian Ainsworth of Arup writes
"The structural design achieves the unusual appearance of a seemingly random array of tensegrity elements”
That reminds me of the Bird's Nest (National) Stadium in Beijing which appears to be randomly wrapped in steel, but was actually carefully designed and analyzed. The Kurilpa Bridge is a similar kind of design that gives the appearance of randomness that actually requires a great deal of effort. Perhaps that's not such a bad thing.


Creative Commons License
Australia's Bridges: Kurilpa Bridge across the Brisbane River in Queensland (3) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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