Irish Bridges: 3. James Joyce Bridge, Dublin

Dublin is the lucky possessor of not one but two bridges by the renowned Spanish engineer, Santiago Calatrava. Both are highway bridges, spanning the River Liffey, built in steel and painted white. The James Joyce bridge is, by Calatrava’s flamboyant standards, an essentially modest design, completed in 2003. The other structure, the Samuel Beckett Bridge, is a case of extravagance at its most extravagant, a hugely gymnastic cable-stayed bridge with a passing resemblance to a harp, which is not only a piece of spectacularly ambitious sculpture, but adds to the spectacle by swinging open from time to time. On this very quick trip, I only had time to visit the simpler of the two bridges.

Designed in collaboration with Roughan O'Donovan, the James Joyce Bridge is one of Calatrava's better structures. It is relatively straightforward in conception, with two steel arches inclined outwards from a central highway, supporting the road and footways and helping define attractive and generous pedestrian spaces.

High strength Macalloy steel bars connect the deck to the arches, each hanger consisting of a pair of bars in a manner typical of Calatrava designs. The footways are supported on crossbeam cantilevers, and have a glass-block deck and glass-panel balustrades.

The overall form of the bridge is attractive from almost every perspective, but what I admire most about this bridge is the detailing, which has clearly been done with considerable care. It's a bridge simple in overall concept yet complex in the detail; I like it a lot.

Further information:

• Google maps / Bing maps
• Wikipedia
• Structurae
• Bridges of Dublin
• Project History of Dublin's River Liffey Bridges (Phillips and Hamilton, ICE Bridge Engineering, 2003)
• Lowering the James Joyce Bridge at Blackhall Place, Dublin (Campbell Scientific, undated)
• A Critical Analysis of Santiago Calatrava's James Joyce Bridge, Dublin, Ireland (Mulkeen, University of Bath Bridge Engineering Conference, 2009)
• Ireland's Bridges (Cox and Gould, 2003)
• Calatrava Bridges (Tzonis and Caso Donadei, 2005)

Irish Bridges: 2. Millennium Bridge, Dublin

There's a website set up to document Lancaster’s Lune Millennium Bridge, built in 2001, which also attempted to chronicle a number of other Millennial Bridges built thanks to funding fever in Britain at the turn of the century. Some of these are significant and well known structures, such as the bridge between St Paul’s Cathedral and Bankside in London. Others are obscure, and of at best local significance, such as the Pennyferry Bridge in Durham.

Dublin's contribution to this array of structures unfortunately fell closer to the latter type than the former. It spans the River Liffey to the west of the Ha'penny Bridge, a river already blessed with a very large number of spans in much closer proximity than is the case in most other capital cities. Designed by Price and Myers with Howley Harrington Architects, it seems to have been drawn from a bottle of imagination which had already been thoroughly drained.

The bridge is a 41m long, 4m wide triangulated metal truss, deeper at its ends than at its middle, a form of structure which often seems clumsily industrial rather than lightweight and high-tech. That's no different here, and it's one of the least visually attractive of central Dublin’s bridges.

Remarkably, this seemingly prosaic design was the winner in a design contest with some 157 entries, and has since gone on to win multiple awards.

Perhaps this is a good thing, reminding us that designs don't have to be absurdly spectacular to merit selection. It's clearly trying to be slender and elegant, but one unfortunate consequence of slimming down all its constituent members is that they more closely resemble scaffold tubes.

The design seems to echo a number of other Liffey bridges by being arched, albeit extremely gently. In fact, it's a two-pinned portal bridge, with chunky portal legs hidden within "balcony" extensions to the river bank at either end, and supported on steel hinges.

I am torn between my initial impressions of this bridge, which are overwhelmingly negative, and a sense that it is perhaps in some way admirable in its restraint. Other opinions would be welcome!

Further information:

• Google maps / Bing maps
• Wikipedia
• Structurae
• Bridges of Dublin
• Bridge Builders (Pearce and Jobson, 2002)
• Project History of Dublin's River Liffey Bridges (Phillips and Hamilton, Proc. ICE Bridge Engineering, 2003)

Irish Bridges: 1. Ha'penny Bridge, Dublin

I had a flying visit to Dublin late last year, and have three bridges to cover here on the blog, all of them spanning the River Liffey.

The first, variously known as Liffey Bridge, the Metal Bridge, or the Halfpenny / Ha'penny Bridge, was built in 1816, Ireland's first iron bridge. It was imported from the Coalbrookdale foundry in Shropshire, England, and comprises a cast iron arch spanning 43m. When first built, a half-penny toll was charged to bridge users.

The bridge was extensively refurbished in 2001, but so far as I could tell on my visit, the bridge appears to have been very little altered.

I think this is a bridge which has aged well. The shallowness of the arch is bold and attractive, as is its shaping, with the slender crown and stout abutments. The pattern of the arch ribs seems more open and appealing than the criss-cross arch webs used on many other bridges of the time, and closely echoes Cantlop Bridge, built in England three years previously, and which was possibly designed by Thomas Telford.

I like the "two-layered" parapets, but the overhead ornamental lighting brackets are not to my taste.

Further information:

• Google maps / Bing maps
• Wikipedia
• Bridges of Dublin
• Structurae
• Halfpenny Bridge Refurbishment
• Ha'penny Bridge Restoration (video, 2001)
• The Ha'penny bridge in Dublin (De Courcy, The Structural Engineer, 1991)
• Civil Engineering Heritage: Ireland (Cox and Gould, 1998)
• Ireland's Bridges (Cox and Gould, 2003)
• Project History of Dublin's River Liffey Bridges (Phillips and Hamilton, Proc. ICE Bridge Engineering, 2003)