Beams and arches – bridges to the future
Horsham has a problem, one which is long-standing and getting worse. The problem is the town is lopsided. Look at the map and you’ll see that the centre is all to the south with no built-up part below St Mary’s church at the end of the Causeway. Look further up and the town stretches away beyond the park, out towards Warnham and Crawley, in an array of suburban streets with only a few short shopping parades here and there.
When the plans were made public for the north of Horsham development, the very first reaction of many was that it breached the barrier of the A264. Up until then, this dual carriageway was regarded as the natural limit of the town’s development. Already more than sufficiently far out from the centre and it seemed a logical boundary to set. North of Horsham sits well to other side of the boundary and while it can be described as part of Horsham geographically, it is not likely to be part of the town socially or communally.
The positioning of this oasis brings in its trail the necessity for car ownership and regular use. There is no other easy way to
access the town and indeed once committed to the car, house owners might just as likely choose Crawley as Horsham, or even stray further afield.
Predictably, a bridge was promised to link the expanding north to the lopsided south. It would cross the A264 and the Horsham Society pressed for a bridge of some note, the result we hoped of an architectural competition.
Reflect for a moment on bridges worldwide and quite a number of places come to mind straight away. Tower Bridge is perhaps the first example most of us think of, and then London Bridge whose earlier form was sold to an American oil magnate who supposedly thought he was getting Tower Bridge. He denies the story and the bridge lies in Arizona now. Other towns possess famous bridges, the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, the Rialto and Bridge of Sighs in Venice; the Golden Gate links San Francisco to Marin County, and reportedly painters spend a lifetime on the Forth Bridge.
Bridges come in relatively simple basic forms, beam, arch, suspension, cable stayed and cantilever. Yet that simplicity doesn’t hinder wide expression of modern forms which will possibly come to be representative symbols of their hometowns in future. Examples range from Abu Dhabi, the Sheik Zayed Bridge by Zaha Hadid, to numerous works by Santiago Calatrava from Venice to Buenos Aires. It can be done, and a new icon can be fashioned for a place through original design for a mundane project.
For the A264 there was no design competition, although one was promised, no attempt to improve on necessity, no effort to strike a landmark. The banal bridge we’re getting didn’t even initially satisfy standard highway regulations, and had to be amended.
We deserved much better, and Horsham has added unimaginative dullness to its lopsided problem.