I'm pretty sure that there must be bridges that are designed other than just a straight a to b line across a river in some places around the globe but if there are they've escaped my notice.
capital cities and even large affluent cities may like to attract visitors by spelling out their names along the river and how great would it look from the air...
existing bridges would need a certain amount of modification; here in London, they are pretty much close together - not leaving much room for manoeuvre but hey ho!
for sentimental reasons, I suggest we leave Tower Bridge as it is and work backwards from London Bridge which would be re-worked to form an N - shifting it around diagonally and adding two more crossings of the river easing traffic congestion in this busy part of town.
Southwark bridge becomes a complete circle as does Waterloo bridge - car drivers who find themselves heading in the wrong direction can just keep going to rectify their error.
The Millennium bridge, pretty as it is, would have a semi-circle added to mark out the capital D. If they'd done this in the first place it wouldn't have wobbled and no expensive repair work would have been necessary.
o.k. where did we get to? oh, yes, Blackfriars will duplicate what we did to London Bridge and it only remains to bend Westminster bridge to an L shape and there you have it.
I'm sure if I have my bridges in the wrong order someone will put me right.-- po, Feb 23 2008 I think that this place will need lots of bridges http://www.facstaff...du/rbeard/gales.jpg [skinflaps, Feb 25 2008] Here's your modeling and simulation http://www.blutrack...sygallery&Itemid=35and have some fun too. [dentworth, Feb 25 2008] for Glasgdow http://www.flickr.c...851@N00/2289302098/ [calum, Feb 25 2008] Are these bridges stoney or irony?Perhaps if the Millennium Bridge had sufficient 'n's, it might feel happier to be a size D.And yes, you may want to revisit the order of the bridges.Otherwise [+]-- AbsintheWithoutLeave, Feb 23 2008 "We must put a stop to this egotistic trivialization of architecture!" said the Sri Lankan president today, speaking from the site of the latest bridge-building project in the the nation's capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 23 2008 Ian, is that text speak or something?-- po, Feb 23 2008 WcW, we're not limited to anything here at hb! tsk, newbie! what are you talking about?-- po, Feb 23 2008 I'm just providing gentle resistance po. Yes we could include bridges in the shape of the letters like G but we really cant call that an improvement of the bridge so much as utilizing the medium of a river for a tiresome uber-art, best-seen-by-god, textual statement. It just has a different flavor when you put it in that light.-- WcW, Feb 24 2008 This would have been a tremendous help to the hun during the war. They could have rid the world of those parasitic royals once and for all.
"Fritz! Das grosse L! Das grosse L! Es zeigt gerade auf Buckingham Palast! Bombardieren Sie die Scheiße aus ihnen heraus!"-- ConsulFlaminicus, Feb 24 2008 + I like this, but would not want to drive on an L...or a U.-- xandram, Feb 24 2008 "Today's London is brought to you by the letter "D" said Elmo into the camera.-- dentworth, Feb 24 2008 Good idea, but lacking in grandeur - a truly ambitious metropolis would divert the river itself to spell its name. [+]-- coprocephalous, Feb 24 2008 Has [po] got ideas about a caps-lock, too? just wondering-- Dub, Feb 24 2008 I think you can do this on a halfbaker's budget using the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth.-- lurch, Feb 24 2008 That's an excellent idea! But why not use it to build an entirely virtual Halfbakersfield, Nebraska?-- Dub, Feb 24 2008 Viewed from above, the Millennium Bridge in Gateshead looks like a letter D.-- angel, Feb 25 2008 Before I vote on this, what font are you proposing? What on Earth are people going to think of London if they see "LONDON" spelt out in "Comic Sans"? And what if the architect chooses "Wingdings" by mistake? It would lead to traffic chaos. Traffic Chaos, I tell you.-- hippo, Feb 25 2008 //what font are you proposing// sp. "typeface"-- coprocephalous, Feb 25 2008 I was going to mention my preference for comic sans but thought the better of it.-- po, Feb 25 2008 The Most Excellent Link award goes to Mr.[skinflaps]!!-- xandram, Feb 25 2008 hah, that crossed my mind as well but its generally known as llanfairpg these days. lovely pic sf.
//Two American tourists were driving through Wales. At llanfairpwllgwyn gyllgogery chwyrn drobwll llantysilio gogogoch, they stopped for lunch and one of them asks the waitress, "Before we order, could you please settle an argument for us? Would you please pronounce where we are... very slowly?"
The blonde waitress leaned over and enunciated beautifully: "Burrr-gurrr Kinngg..." //-- po, Feb 25 2008 Let's see... there have been quite a few very un[po] capitals inserted in this idea. In order, we have I,L,I,T,B,L,B, N,S,W,T,M,D,I,B,L,B,W,L and I. ...Hidden message!
"I Love Ian Tindale. Beautiful Lovely Bloke. No Sense Waffling, The Man Does Intensity Beautifully..Loquacious, But With Lightning Intellect."
Coorr Blimey!-- ConsulFlaminicus, Feb 25 2008 prize is in the post, cf. <reverts to lower case>-- po, Feb 25 2008 There are various characters in the standard charset that would not make good bridges.
I'm trying to think if there are structures that might form an @ from above.
Brighton & Hove might be tricky too.
But! The problem could be solved (to some extent) by instead labelling the river across which the bridges span - THAMES is much less circuitous in terms of travel times than LONDON. However, MISSISSIPPI may yet be a bridge too far.-- zen_tom, Feb 25 2008 For smaller municipalities there could be a Readers Digest un-abridged version.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Feb 25 2008 // MISSISSIPPI may yet be a bridge too far. //
No, your're thinking of ARNHEIM.-- 8th of 7, Feb 26 2008 or a
.-- po, Feb 26 2008 Basingstoke could just have a :-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 26 2008 is that rude?-- po, Feb 26 2008 It's a colon.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 26 2008 and...
do you live in Basingstoke / colon?-- po, Feb 26 2008 I don't think anyone does. But no.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 26 2008 Basingstoke had an estimated population of 80,477 in 2006...-- po, Feb 26 2008 Yes. Nobody was prepared to go there to check.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 26 2008 [po] can design bridges for eastern bloc countries which are nyet into capitalism.-- lurch, Feb 26 2008 Incorrect; they went to check, but they never came back. That's why the area South of Reading is just blank space except for "Heer bee Dragns"......-- 8th of 7, Feb 26 2008 //Just to surprise the unfamiliar traveller in London, you should also have a bridge shaped like an exclamation mark//I read once that BBC TV Centre was built to resemble a question mark from the air, but for some reason, the full-stop (period) was never built (probably ran out of licence money).-- coprocephalous, Feb 27 2008 we can always sell them (the wrong ones) to the americans...-- po, Feb 27 2008 At various times of the day, Tower bridge must look like all manner of punctuation marks starting with |, and ending up as a :
If you only opened one side, you'd be able to get an !
Of course, if Tower Bridge ever fell over, it would kind of look like a #-- zen_tom, Feb 27 2008 //I read once that BBC TV Centre was built to resemble a question mark from the air, but for some reason, the full-stop (period) was never built //
So it's a line then?-- Germanicus, Feb 27 2008 Only if you use very strange question marks, Germanicus. Do you!-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 27 2008 How did Dr Bob manage to get his name buried in that llanfair town? Is it some kind of hidden message?-- RayfordSteele, Feb 29 2008 random, halfbakery