The Bridge Begins

Tonight I began work on a concept model for my bridge. The framework for this idea extends from the wing that I extracted from Zaha Hadid's Riverside in my last post. My initial judgement is that a school of architecture can be a bridge without being literal. This conviction is tied directly to the theory developing from my initial mash-up that an architecture should seek always to invert accepted typologies and explore the facts that are before us without wedding them strictly to reality.

Keeping this in mind, my bridge is a conceptual one rather than a literal one. It branches from one side of the valley, but it does not literally touch the other side. This bridge will, however, transport students from a position of minimal skill and relative ignorance to a point from which they can establish an architectural practice of their own.

The form that I will begin to explore as I develop my architecture school will be one of a wing. Just as the bridge will take my students forth, so will a wing allow them to soar. It is also a reminder to go lightly, softly.

I began by patching in a chunk of Google Earth topography from Milford Sound.

I began to explore potential sites, and the initial shape is responding to a spur down one of the many valleys of Milford Sound.