Building Bridges

Red­ding, Cal­i­for­nia. Prior to 2004, Red­ding would not have been on my radar as a des­ti­na­tion lo­ca­tion. But since see­ing San­ti­ago Ca­la­trava’s Sun­dial Bridge pub­lished in the ar­chi­tec­tural jour­nals, it has been on my de­sign bucket list. As a res­i­dent of a small, rural town in Wash­ing­ton State, lo­cated along the banks of the Sk­agit River, I’ve been in many con­ver­sa­tions with com­mu­nity mem­bers and groups who for many years have dreamed of cre­at­ing a pedes­trian bridge over our river. And, of course, know­ing what an at­trac­tion the Sun­dial Bridge is for Red­ding, my de­sire would be to make it ar­chi­tec­turally spec­tac­u­lar, draw­ing vis­i­tors from all over the world to our beau­ti­ful, his­toric down­town.

I at­tended ar­chi­tec­ture school in Mil­wau­kee, Wis­con­sin, where the first Ca­la­trava pro­ject I had ever seen was lo­cated.  In 2001, the Mil­wau­kee Mu­seum of Art opened Ca­la­trava’s much-ac­claimed Quadracci Pavil­ion, in­clud­ing the en­try bridge over Lake Drive, and the fa­mous “brise soleil”, a sun­shad­ing de­vice that moves through the course of the day to the sun’s an­gle.  The pro­ject is stun­ning, and a ma­jor coup for Mil­wau­kee to claim a small pin on the ar­chi­tec­tural map next to its big sis­ter, Chicago.

It was no sur­prise to my wife that when plan­ning our trip to France in 2008, the route had to in­clude Bil­boa, Spain, which was host not only to Frank Gehry’s Guggen­heim Mu­seum, but a pedes­trian bridge by Ca­la­trava.  The theme con­tin­ued with a trip to Italy, where his bridge in Venice was a must on the itin­er­ary.  So, to have not seen one of his works that was clos­est in dis­tance and re­la­tion­ship to our home, made it all that much more at­trac­tive, and some­how more dif­fi­cult to reach.

I got the op­por­tu­nity to ex­pe­ri­ence this in­cred­i­ble in­stal­la­tion this year, on the way back from a road trip to Cal­i­for­nia.  We pulled up around 5:00 pm, as the sun was start­ing to set – which could not have been bet­ter tim­ing to take in the sculp­tural beauty of the bridge’s forms against the sparkling river wa­ter and land­scape be­yond.  I could­n’t stop tak­ing pic­tures.  Every cou­ple of foot­steps, there was a new view with a new pat­tern of light; a new sculp­tural form.  The strik­ing white con­crete forms con­trast­ing against the beau­ti­ful nat­ural back­drop is vi­sual eye candy to me.  There’s no one vista or or­thog­o­nal, sym­met­ri­cal com­po­si­tion here to frame.  It’s a never-end­ing or­ganic com­po­si­tion much like na­ture it­self.

Ca­la­trava has been crit­i­cized widely for his works hav­ing their is­sues, from leak­ing to hav­ing dan­ger­ous, slip­pery walk­ing sur­faces (for which law­suits have en­sued), and this is the ul­ti­mate strug­gle be­tween cre­at­ing pub­lic works of art and de­sign­ing fa­cil­i­ties re­quired to be weath­er­tight, durable, and pro­tect­ing the pub­lic’s health, safety, and wel­fare.  Ca­la­trava is a struc­tural en­gi­neer, and the en­gi­neer­ing as­pects of his fir­m’s work are in­cred­i­ble.  The meld­ing of the ar­chi­tec­t’s role in these pro­jects is where the rub­ber hits the road, and of­ten where the suc­cess or fail­ure of a pro­ject re­sides.  I’m con­flicted on where to stand on this.  On one hand, it’s easy to over­look some of these is­sues for the shear beauty of the ob­ject and ex­pe­ri­ence.  On the other, its our le­gal oblig­a­tion and re­spon­si­bil­ity to de­sign build­ings and struc­tures that do both – in­spire and pro­tect.  See­ing these pro­jects and how the peo­ple vis­it­ing them re­spond, in­spires me to con­tinue to strive to do both, to the best of my abil­i­ties.

Julie Blazek, AIA, LEED AP, CPHC®

Part­ner, HKP Ar­chi­tects