Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #261834 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 255 pages

Customer Reviews

Structure - design - history
"Footbridges" is subtitled "structure - design - history". While those three little words may seem fairly obvious, this first ever major survey of fussgängerbrücken is unusual amongst coffee-table gephyrophilia in that it does actually address how (foot)bridges are designed, not just what they look like. And understanding whether a bridge design is any good relies in great part on understanding why it is how it is. In large part that's because coauthor Mike Schlaich is a practising bridge engineer.

The book includes a lengthy (40-page) history of footbridge design and construction. This is no small thing, as the history of footbridges is to a great extent the history of bridges - the earliest timber, stone and rope bridges were all footbridges, and many of the great experimental developments in bridge engineering were first attempted on footbridges, particularly the earliest suspension bridges. This historical survey introduces several great structures both well-known and little-known, with great photographs. I particularly enjoyed the coverage of vernacular bridge designs that were unremarkable historically but widespread, such as David Rowell's suspension bridge at Ilkley, one of a number of similar structures that dot the British Isles (and beyond).

The bulk of the book is taken up with descriptions and photographs (all taken specially for this book) of selected modern footbridges around the world. These include elegant designs by several of the greatest bridge engineers, such as Riccardo Morandi, Fritz Leonhardt, Ulrich Finsterwalder, René Walther and Jiri Strasky. There are bridges that are remarkable, beautiful, puzzling and inspiring, as well as one or two where the merits are much less clear. There are several works of sheer genius, an obligatory Calatrava and a good sampling of Wilkinson Eyre's oeuvre. The book also covers many lesser-known but even more delightful structures.

Schlaich and Baus have identified so many great footbridges that there's an entire chapter devoted to dozens of shorter portraits, including older structures, many of which would have merited three or four pages if space permitted, being every bit as good as the bridges given full coverage. Unfortunately the space restrictions limit the photographs in these pen-portraits to very small monochrome images, which struggle to do justice to several excellent structures.

Although the authors initially seem to have a good critical eye, I think they are too restrained in many instances, with bridges ripe for criticism given the kid-gloves treatment. There are numerous bridges where gentlemanly restraint has triumphed over the possibility of a less deferential critique.

Spliced in between the bridge portraits are a series of short pieces on key issues in the design of modern footbridges - stress ribbon structures; dynamics; curved ring girders; and moveable bridge types. I find it hard to judge how informative these will be to the non-technical reader, as they don't entirely manage to avoid mathematical formulae and force diagrams, but they do at least attempt to explain that the better bridges are the product of the careful consideration both of structural behaviour and construction methods, rather than just a pretty curve or gesture.

Overall, "Footbridges" is an excellent survey of a wide range of interesting structures, many of them not covered in other recent coffee-table assaults on the contemporary bridge, with plenty of excellent photographs that make you want to grab an atlas and plan your next holiday itinerary accordingly. For the professional bridge designer as well as the lay bridge enthusiast, this is not a book to sit proudly on the shelf, but to keep well-thumbed and close at hand.