BRIDGE, ROYAL OPERA, HOUSE, LONDON

architect
Wilkinson Eyre

Floral Street is a tall narrow thoroughfare in London’s Covent Garden in which the massive white neo-renaissance bulk of the Royal Opera House suddenly obtrudes into a smallscale streetscape of pubs and little shops. Most people do not look up as they hurry down the street or loaf along window shopping. But the few who do, glimpse a magical phenomenon: a crystal that twists and shimmers across the street against the sky. This is the new bridge between the Royal Ballet School and the Opera House, created so that dancers can go from the practice rooms in the school to the Opera House without having to rush across the road in the rain. The twisted geometry is necessary because the school level from which the structure sets out is higher than the opening in the huge blind wall of the Opera House, and it is a small distance to the east. The Opera House is a Grade I-listed historic building which the architects were bound to change as little as possible, so one of E.M.Barry’s blank attic windows became the point of entry. The ballet school to the north is a much less distinguished building, recently constructed under one of the new forms of government procurement that more or less guarantees mediocrity, but internal planning necessitated only one location for the spring point of the bridge on that side. The spring points meant the bridge had to be gently ramped and skewed away from the orthogonal. A simple long glass box would not do, so Jim Eyre evolved a proposal that involved creating a tube out of square portal frames that are rotated, ensuring that at each end the bridge is level and square to the façade it addresses. Each frame is rotated by three degrees in relation to its neighbour and is slightly different in height. Glazing is held between each pair of frames. As a result of pursuing these simple rules, a wonderfully complex object has been created. Both from inside and out, the object alters with every movement you make. Structurally, the essential proposition is simple: a welded and bolted aluminium box beam spans simply from one building to the other; its section changes according to stresses and the geometry of the frames. At the Opera House end, the beam has a sliding bearing to allow for thermal movement and, as a result, loads at that end always bear vertically down on Barry’s wall. The aluminium portals are supported on the primary beam and have oak slats on each side of their webs so that the glazing can be fixed with the necessary degree of stiffness. As much prefabrication as possible was used to minimise disruption to the street, and to reduce working at high level. The beam with the portals erected and the central part glazed was rapidly set in place by crane, after which the final glazing panels were fitted and the abutments finished. Glazing is both transparent and translucent. Translucency is used to prevent overlooking the terrace of the neighbouring house to the west, and to give people on the bridge a degree of privacy as they go over the road. Contrast between transparent and translucent adds to the visual complexity of the object, Internally from some angles, the walls appear almost opaque, as the frames crowd together in perspective and seem mostly to be made of oak. Move a few feet further and the wall suddenly becomes full of light, or transparent (with the aluminium frames exposed full on), offering dramatic views up and down Floral Street. Externally, the bridge alters in a similar way from semi-opaque to transparent as your angle of view changes. In the last century, most of the incidental additions to London’s streets have been coarse and clumsy: here at last is an addition that shows how contemporary technology and architectural invention can rival the elegance and dignity of anything the Victorians did – and be much lighter too.