What’s it all about bridges that fascinates us? Perhaps it’s their ability to connect two things. Or maybe it’s their potency (Brooklyn Bridge), majesty (Golden Gate Bridge) and sophistication (Sunshine Skyway Bridge).
Just enjoy their big-scale brethren, bridges that connect a home to its land can evoke the identical sense of joy and wonder. While some are tenuous and ethereal, others are all about force and motion. At times the power of the bridge splits the home in 2, and sometimes the home is sufficiently powerful to force the bridge to change direction.
Whatever the case, bridges that connect a home to its site have always intrigued me. So let us look at some home bridges.
Randy Brown
A celebration of light and elevation, a luminous bridge connects a radiant home to its site. Entering the tube-shape bridge, with its translucent skin, reinforces the idea that one is leaving the planet at large to enter a world of light and geometry.
Axis Mundi
Can it be an observation tower, sculpture or a home? In any case, the bridge supplies that ever-so-tenuous connection to the ground and continues on, dividing the home into up and down while forming an overlook.
Ian Moore Architects
This bridge becomes a walkway that creates a dynamism that splits the home in 2. With a hint of what’s past, the bridge beckons us to start the travel and charge full speed ahead.
Joseph T. Deppe, Architect, P.C.
Although this bridge draws us in, the stairs up ahead block our view of what lies outside. Can it be a view of the sea? Maybe it’s a view of a preserve. In any case, the puzzle won’t be solved until we traverse the bridge and climb the staircase.
MN Builders
While the simple, shallow gable roof juts ahead to invite us in, this simple and elegant bridge helps us browse the abyss. And there have to be some pretty pleasant views of the town from indoors, given the views we receive from the bridge as we all journey to the door.
Ken Gutmaker Architectural Photography
As we cross this bridge, the inside of the residence is laid out before us. We get to understand where we’re moving nicely before we arrive and know that we will be thrilled with the views of the town outside.
Though the medieval drawbridge was not meant to welcome, now’s version can, with a more friendly and welcoming layout. This one traverses the stream bed below.
Sagan / Piechota Architecture
So what happens if the bridge does not make it all the way over to another side of the ravine? Maybe all of the movement’s energy binds itself into a coil that unwinds as it finds its way into the floor.
Jeff Luth – Soldano Luth Architects
Maybe the bridge is a decompression chamber that allows one to relax before getting to the destination. An elevated and floating platform with a ribbon to get a roof and an articulated structure that creates a different rhythm all fortify the bridge as only such a chamber.
Levy Art + Architecture
Last, what goes on below the bridge is at least as important as the bridge itself and what it connects. So if a garden or a patio or a water feature lies under, make that distance special. Don’t, as T.S. Eliot bemoans at The Four Quartets, allow the “large, brown god” river below the bridge be “almost forgotten.”
More Architect’s Toolbox:
Roofs That Connect Earth and Sky
Locating the Space Between