2002 – Unbuilt Dublin – DDDA Pedestrian Bridge

Architects: Van Wylick, Sengupta, Chiu

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Dublin is a city in the middle of a renaissance. It is currently enjoying one of the largest and most successful regeneration projects in Europe. Industrial areas are being transformed, waterways given a new lease of life with recreation and major Art’s events being used as urban magnets drawing people from the city-centre and redistributing them along the river. Yet, the fabric of Dublin has still to collect the longer term folds and creases that become a part of its character and being , not just temporary cosmetic facelifts. In cities as in dreams, everything imaginable is possible. We strive for the ‘essential’. Not some Platonian idea of ‘pure forms’, but rather as those interpretable in dreams. To capture fantasy in a moment, where there is neither pure repetition nor invention, but rather the realisation of the end of a long search. To grasp something that has been just out of reach. Cities are collections of assumptions, ones containing that accepted as necessary and ones imagined as possible. The very next moment negates this one and we must reconcile ourselves with new images. Images signify other things and the meanings of objects change. To capture just for a moment an image that is ‘essential’ is the dream. Not something by addition or by absence, but something that should be or ought to have been. Our proposal aims to mould a living, working piece of cityscape that provides pleasure with the awakening of half dreamt possibilities and unrealised memories, combining images from not immediately traceable sources using the moment. The ambiguity of closing by opening combined with lightness and elegance creates an image that is already remembered.