Light Column
Light Helix
Chapel for the Salvation Army HQ
Crown Place Screen
Apple London - Light Ceiling
Apple Nagoya - Light Ceiling

 

 

The proposed bridge seen from street level in Floral Street
Underground Passage
Periscopic Passage
Plantation Place Galleria

The Royal Opera House Bridge
The Royal Opera House, London
Competition with Arup Facade Engineering, London
2001

Ballet as Performance and Illusion

Upon the stage, the dancer creates the illusion of lightness, produced for the audience through great strength, discipline and choreography.  The body appears to effortlessly touch and float above the stage, momentarily suspending our accustomed beliefs and allowing us to enter a world of imagination.

The glass bridge also produces an illusion of lightness, and a similar delight, through a deep knowledge of materials, geometry and structure, all interacting with the phenomena of light.

For the audience, viewing the bridge from Floral Street, the east facing wall and floor of the bridge are of a translucent glass, acting as a projection surface that captures the images of the dancers as shadows and semi-hidden forms through natural and artificial backlighting.  Due to the position of the bridge, it is always seen against the sky, producing a natural silhouette.  The walking surface of this floating bridge is to be of a sky-blue, translucent glass, thereby conceptually capturing a fragment of the sky and making it a part of the procession between the buildings.

Sketch view from Bow Street into Floral Street with the proposed footbridge
Concept sketch of the backlit bridge turned into a performance space for viewers on the street

Like the Opera House stage, the bridge has an 'audience side' against which the shadow images are projected, and a 'back of house' side where the illusion is created.  From Bow Street the abstract screen of translucent and semi-reflective glass captures the daily movement of the students back and forth on their way to classes while from the Covent Garden direction, one sees the figures framed clearly through the transparent surface against the translucent 'stage' wall.  One can well imagine this bridge being considered as an additional 'stage' upon which specially commissioned works might be performed for audiences seated within Floral Street, thereby revealing and extending the Royal Opera House/Royal Ballet School activities to a wider public.

For the students, a remarkably individual experience is created by this bridge.  The inner surfaces of the translucent and transparent side walls of the bridge have a semi-reflective coating applied to them which, when considering the transparent ceiling, internally reflects the image of the sky overhead.  In a related fashion to practising at the bar in front of a mirror, the students will see their own reflection merged with the reflected image of the sky.

Daytime computer image
The sunlight creates a distinct shadow on the diffused front panels
Nighttime computer image
Elevation from Floral Street
Plan
Section through the bridge