Part 3: Kellogg: Greenwich Design Development
The original design for Greenwich featured four gateway towers
This last post in our series documenting the design process of our Kellogg project, see Part 1 and Part 2, deals with the design development for Greenwich Bridge. The initial design for Greenwich Bridge included four towers, curving barriers and shaped piers. The towers served as gateway identity elements and were developed with the concepts of blades of grass and aeronautic forms.
Greenwich is a composition or curves and angles suggesting the prairie wind
The walls, patterned in relief based on the concept of wind in the prairie, met the bridge with sloping shoulders. The combination of curves and angled lines made a dynamic composition.
The power towers conflicted with the gateway towers on Greenwich
As the Webb corridor went through a redesign, more information became available about the Greenwich site, including the high mast power lines crossing over the bridge. The power line towers visually dominated the bridge towers.
The lower brackets fit in better at the site
To resolve this competition for visual dominance at the bridge, the towers were replaced with brackets. The brackets, originally designed for Zelta and the other bridges to the east of Greenwich, hold the space, creating a complete form. The other changes during this development process include replacing the hanging curved concrete bridge façade with a cut metal grill, as successfully demonstrated by our Arlington project, and updating the wall patterning to reflect the current design iteration.
The wall patterning and cut metal grill pattering share the same “wind over prairie” concept
The simpler, shorter design unifies the bridge with graceful arches, both in the concrete and metal patterning and in the barrier and bracket forms. The grills use the base patterning of the concrete wall units as an influence for a more symmetrical design.
The current design is a unified whole
Having a strong initial concept allowed us to develop this design to meet the challenges of new site information and a reduced budget. Our design flexibility let us use successful techniques from our other work to strengthen our design at Greenwich. Knowing when and how to change a design to meet or exceed the demands of a changing project is critical to our practice.
Team Credits:
Alexandr Polzin
Client:
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