St Louis has its arch. I've seen it, and been in it. It's time London had an arch too. The St Louis arch is made from stainless steel (I believe), but London has a much more iconic material - hundreds of redundant Routemaster buses.

The idea is to create a large parabolic arch formed out of Routemaster buses. At each end there would a substantial number of buses to anchor the structure, which would taper in increments with the buses being like large pixels. A specially modified single humpbacked bus would form the keystone apex of the curve.
-- xenzag, Jul 16 2012

Routemaster http://2.bp.blogspo...d%2Broutemaster.jpg
[xenzag, Jul 16 2012]

TfL may no longer be using them but they're far from "redundant". That includes the one that the RMT have stolen to give Boris Johnson their version of a Viking funeral, but in his case while he's still alive. There's a steady demand for them to be converted into campaign buses, tour vehicles for pop groups, deluxe campers (RV's), mobile clinics, libraries or laboratories ...

They are pretty rugged, and there's a wealth of knowledge on how to drive, maintain and repair them. Relatively speaking, spares are attractively priced. And they have a kinematic envelope that allows them to travel on the majority of roads without problems, low bridges permitting.

You'd be better off making your arch from things that are cheap, trashy, disposable aand genuinely redundant and unwanted. Apparently there's a glut of pre-owned News Corporation journalists just now … some of them even come with accessories like pre- owned politicians, police officers and judges …
-- 8th of 7, Jul 16 2012



random, halfbakery