Tag Archives: calatrava

Margaret McDermott Bridge

Posted on by Bill Chance

“It’s creepy, but here we are, the Pilgrims, the crackpots of our time, trying to establish our own alternate reality. To build a world out of rocks and chaos.
What it’s going to be, I don’t know.
Even after all that rushing around, where we’ve ended up is the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
And maybe knowing isn’t the point.
Where we’re standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

Let me check the date on this photo – sometime mid 2015… six years ago. It actually seems like longer than that. They had already been working on the bridge/highway complex for three years, they started in 2012. This was the base of one arch, down in the Trinity River bottoms, near downtown Dallas. I was down there on my bicycle, riding the muddy gravel paths. The other half of the arch was further along – reaching up into the sky.

The arches of a second Calatrava designed bridge rise in the river bottoms. The Horseshoe, Dallas, Texas

These massive arches, designed by Santiago Calatrava were never intended to support the roadway. That would be too expensive and unnecessary – a simple concrete causeway was all that was needed. The immense, soaring arches would cost 125 million dollars and support a bicycle/pedestrian bridge – and look good.

As a cycling advocate I had very mixed feelings about this. Of course, another route across the river was welcome – but 125 million dollars was way too much – that money could do a lot of good in man other places. Well, nobody asked me – and they went ahead and built the Margaret McDermott Bridge – way behind schedule and way, way over budget.

And then things went from bad to worse. When the thing was finished, it was discovered that corners had been cut, the bridge cable fasteners were not properly tested, and the thing was in danger of falling down in high winds.

I had resigned myself to never having the bridge opened… after all these years, but I was wrong. A couple of weeks ago I received in invitation to ride my bike across the bridge during a grand opening ceremony. Now, truth be told, most of my cycling friends had already rode around the safety barricades and crossed the bridge over the last couple of years – but I never did. So I was excited to go down there and ride across.

I rode up right when a news camera was running.

There were about a dozen bike riders – we picked up our… what do you call them? The things that you pin to your shirt at an event? Running bibs? Yeah, that must be it – it says “Printed by Boulder Bibs.”

And off we rode. It was fun – I’ll be back. There are steep spots – especially on the north (pedestrian) side. I need to look at moonrise – the bridge will be fun at night – the view of the downtown skyline is spectacular.

Folks at the ribbon-cutting. The arches are spectacular from the bike/pedestrian lanes – maybe they are worth the money.

View of downtown from the bike lane on the bridge.

The ceremony made all the news shows. Here’s a good one – you can see me from behind riding my bike near the end, at the 1:56 mark.

Written In Mathematical Language

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Philosophy is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.”
― Galileo

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas

I Move, Therefore I Am

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Judging from the spiderwebs clinging to it, the emergency stairway was hardly ever used. To each web clung a small black spider, patiently waiting for its small prey to come along. Not that the spiders had any awareness of being “patient”. A spider had no special skill other than building its web, and no lifestyle choice other than sitting still. It would stay in one place waiting for its prey until, in the natural course of things, it shriveled up and died. This was all genetically predetermined. The spider had no confusion, no despair, no regrets. No metaphysical doubt, no moral complications. Probably. Unlike me.
I move,therefore I am.”

― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Trinity River Levee Dallas, Texas

Trinity River Levee
Dallas, Texas

Something Technically Unique

Posted on by Bill Chance

“There was a wish to get something exceptional, … I also wanted to deliver something technically unique.”
—-Santiago Calatrava

The arches of a second Calatrava designed bridge rise in the river bottoms. The Horseshoe, Dallas, Texas

The arches of a second Calatrava designed bridge rise in the river bottoms. The Horseshoe, Dallas, Texas

Masses of construction equipment in the Trinity River Bottoms are roiling the mud with steel and concrete. The work area, like a giant’s anthill, is called The Horseshoe.

A second Calatrava designed bridge arcs up into the air. I’m a bit confused – this one is in one sense only window decoration – the cars will be relegated to the conventional concrete causeway. On the other hand, the arches will support bicycle and pedestrian spans. That is a cool thing, in my mind.

I only wonder how people on foot or on pedaled wheels will reach the bridges. I guess we’ll all wait and see.

Two Vast And Trunkless Legs Of Stone

Posted on by Bill Chance

‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

calatrava_2

The Pain Of His Love

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Up on the Brooklyn Bridge a man is standing in agony, waiting to jump, or waiting to write a poem, or waiting for the blood to leave his vessels because if he advances another foot the pain of his love will kill him.”
― Henry Miller, Black Spring

"Large Marge" Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge Dallas, Texas (click for larger version on Flickr)

“Large Marge”
Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge
Dallas, Texas
(click for larger version on Flickr)

Clearly messed with using Illustrator and Photoshop.

Under the Bridge

Posted on by Bill Chance

People walking from the yoga event with their mats under their arms. All Out Trinity Festival - Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

People walking from the yoga event with their mats under their arms.
All Out Trinity Festival – Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

From above, the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge – the Dallas Calatrava-designed cable-stay signature bridge finally reaching across the Trinity River from Downtown to long-neglected, oft-reviled West Dallas – is an architectural marvel of geometry, steel, and curves.

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas

It has a dirty little secret, though. It isn’t really a bridge over much of anything. It’s more of a causeway with a huge, expensive, and dramatic sculpture tacked on overhead.

This is obvious when you venture into the vast stretches of the river bottoms. You can see the forest of columns holding up the span.

But still, even there, it is a thing of beauty. A different beauty – a more muscular, less soaring beauty – but beauty nonetheless.

I like it. If nothing else it offers up a vast strip of welcome cool shade.

Underneath the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. (click to enlarge)

Underneath the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.
(click to enlarge)

Underneath the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. (click to enlarge)

Underneath the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.
(click to enlarge)

Natural and Artificial

Posted on by Bill Chance

The Santiago Calatrava designed Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge rising over the trees of the Trinity River Bottoms, Dallas, Texas.

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
― Albert Einstein

Expanded Couple

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

Now that I’ve figured out how to carry my tripod on my bike, I’ve been experimenting with long exposures at night. Here’s a shot of a couple watching the Expanded Cinema show on the Omni Hotel in Downtown Dallas.

Couple watching the show. Dallas, Texas. Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in the background.

Couple watching the show. Dallas, Texas. The Calatrava designed Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in the background.
(click to enlarge)

“May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.”
― Franz Kafka

It’s a long exposure – look at the long, red lines that represent cars driving by in the parking lot. The bright white bar across the center of the photo are the headlights on Interstate Highway 35.

This is what it looked like live.

expanded_couple1

“When the Deep Purple falls,
Over sleepy garden walls,
And the stars begin to flicker in the sky,
Thru the mist of a memory
You wander back to me,
Breathing my name with a sigh.

In the still of the night,
Once again I hold you tight,
Tho’ you’re gone, your love lives on
When moonlight beams.

And as long as my heart will beat
Lover, we’ll always meet
Here in my Deep Purple dreams.”

—-Parish Mitchell, Deep Purple