1998
Sound Wall designs, Richard Goodwin Pty Ltd.
Urban planning in association with Bates Smart and Oculus.
Category: Porosity
1999
steel
50m x 12m x 20m1999
Leichhardt, Sydney
The Charles Street Bridge design is a unique opportunity to punctuate the journey between Black Wattle Bay and Five Dock with a sculptural structure. Richard Goodwin has designed an 40m suspension bridge, which is enhanced by the use of fluid form curvilinear surrounding trusses. The net effect is a sinewy arm with a distinctive asymmetrically quality. It could become a defining marker on the journey west. It also serves as an indicator to the public that the freeway can be the location of design excellence. The client was the RTA.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: I have chosen to move the site of public art from the spaces between buildings to the very skin of architecture. The works operate as a means of transfer between the public and private. Architecture is the armature for public art which has function. Similarly the project of art in relation to freeways is the art of attachment. The prosthetic forms under the freeway at Pyrmont are one example of my work in this territory as are the sound wall projects. On a more ambitious level I have chosen the bridge as a site for the sculpture of attachment – in this case to the architecture of the freeway. The Charles Street Pedestrian Bridge is a unique opportunity to create a one off artwork with a particular and necessary urban function. The structure comprises the principals of suspension and cantilever. Its drama is accentuated by the use of flowing organic curves and intersecting truss lines.
Steel
50m x 12m x 20m
Leichhardt, Sydney
2000
Olympic Park, Sydney
This project is an elaborate skeletal sculpture which has been attached to the to the existing bridge. Bicentennial Park Pedestrian bridge forms a 70m long link between Bicentennial Park and the Olympic Stadiums. The parasite structure forms two new attachments to a smaller existing bridge. It was completed for the Olympic Games in 2000.
The concept for the bridge drew on the energy of the writhing mangroves the parasite bridge attachments transform the existing structure into a new bridge form. Thus public art performs the function of re-inventing and transforming an existing structure. The flowing curved trusses accentuate both the sense of movement of walking and the asymmetric organic energy of growth.