Scale Lane Footbridge
Scale Lane Footbridge
We engineered this opening, 50m long pedestrian bridge across the River Hull.
The bridge was conceived as a place for people to inhabit and enjoy Hull’s riverscape, not just a way across it. Won in international competition, it allows up to 1000 people to ride on the bridge while it actually rotates – a world first. Its form is sleek, sensuous and brightly coloured, and its curvaceous horizontality complements the verticality of Hull’s riverside architecture.
The bridge’s most distinctive feature is its rotating opening mechanism. Its curved steel spine rises over the river to allow smaller boats beneath, while the whole structure pivots to let larger vessels pass. Unusually, the circular geometry keeps the walkway in contact with the west bank as it rotates, allowing pedestrians to step on and off while the bridge is moving, turning a functional operation into a public experience.
Structurally, the 35-metre cantilevered spine uses a hybrid system: an internal diagrid and outer shell near the root, transitioning to a pure shell at the tip. The 15-metre-diameter hub contains a café and viewing deck, and is counterbalanced with concrete around its perimeter. Rotation is achieved by three electric motors, but because the centre of rotation is at one end of the bridge, this results in large variation in wheel loads, generating a variety of engineering challenges which we overcame through hydraulic adjustment. The project also emphasised sustainability and connectivity, by promoting walking and cycling, incorporating flood defence improvements, using a low-energy operation, and being designed for disassembly and reuse.
It has become a destination and now forms a key element of masterplanning within the city centre and – by providing a new link – its eastern river bank.
“Scale Lane bridge is not just a way of getting from A to B, but something in itself. It's not a gleaming white rebuke to its industrial surroundings but – robust and black – an extension of a place…” - Rowan Moore, writing in The Observer (2013)
Awards:
World Architecture Festival Transport Award
Civic Trust Award and Special Award for Community Impact & Engagement
AIA Excellence in Design Award
RIBA Yorkshire Award
Living Waterways Award
Structural Steel Design Award
Hull Civic Society Award
Architectural Digest ‘World’s 20 Most Impressive Pedestrian Bridges’
Watch:
Client: HCA, Yorkshire Forward, Hull CC
Architect: McDowell+Benedetti