The island of Manhattan is one of the most recognizable urban centers in the world. For the past four hundred years, the island that so many New Yorkers call home has changed and evolved depending on the needs of its inhabitants – today totaling over 8 million.
2019 has already witnessed a series of bridge-related milestones marked, from the world’s longest bridge nearing completion in Kuwait to the world’s largest 3D-printed concrete bridge being completed in Shanghai. As we remain fixated on the future-driven, record-breaking accomplishments of realized bridge design, "911 Metallurgist” has chosen to look back in history on some of the visionary ideas for bridges which never saw the light of day.
Whether stopped in their tracks by finance, planning, or engineering difficulties, the four bridge designs listed below embody a marriage of art and engineering too advanced for their time. From a proposal for a EuroRoute Bridge between Britain and France, to a 12-rail, 24-lane bridge across the Huston River in New York, all four designs share a common, ambitious, yet doomed vision of crossing the great divide from pen and paper to bricks and mortar.
A historic hotbed of architectural styles and a current architectural capital of the world, cities in the United Kingdom are awash with iconic buildings from the Georgian, Neoclassical, and contemporary era. Such buildings, from the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol to the Southbank in London, have come to define the cities in which they stand, drawing the eyes of tourists and designers alike from around the world.
It is therefore an interesting exercise to examine what these cities would look like if such structures didn’t exist. To this end, Neomam Studios has partnered with QuickQuid to produce a series of images demonstrating what six British cities could have looked like, resurrecting some of Britain’s most surprising unbuilt structures.
Architectural styles derive their uniqueness by demonstrating the construction techniques, political movements, and social changes that make up the zeitgeist of a place in a particular moment of time. Whether it was the rebirth of art and culture with Renaissance architecture, or the steel skyscrapers that emerged in the post-war movement, each stylistic change tells us something different about the transitions of architectural history. But what if architecture rejected a critical regionalist approach, and buildings took on the characteristics of another place? These seven images made for Expedia by NeoMam and Thisisrender provide a glimpse into what some of our favorite architectural icons would look like if they were built in a different style.