All the world loves a bridge that moves. Usually, the point of a bridge is that it is fixed – when so much trouble has been taken to overcome gravity and tame nature, instability is the last thing that you want – so there is surprise and delight when it confounds its own rigidity. I give you as an example Tower Bridge.
In an overlooked part of east London, weed-strewn and still industrial – a district un-steamrollered by the giant apartment blocks going up in much of the old docklands, close to where the River Lea joins the Thames – two curve-cornered squares of steel frame the view. They look like heavy metal sculptures. They are actually essential elements of the recently completed Cody Dock Rolling Bridge, designed by the architect Thomas Randall-Page and Tim Lucas of the engineers Price & Myers, which moves in a way that no bridge has done before. Its purpose is to make good a missing link in the Leaway, a “green corridor” that runs from Hertfordshire then along the Olympic park towards the Thames. It also serves as an emblem for the Gasworks Dock Partnership, a charitable social enterprise that has created a “community-based arts and creative industries quarter” on what was derelict land.
