Features / clifton suspension bridge
This is what the Clifton Suspension Bridge could have looked like
Bristol could have been a very different city indeed if this design for a bridge across the Avon Gorge had been built.
Now for the first time, the span designed by the aptly-named William Bridges in 1793 has been digitally recreated to see what it would look like today.
Bridges’ bridge would have almost been a small town. The arch was to be flanked by six 40-foot storeys of rooms and galleries, containing homes, a granary, corn exchange, chapel, tavern, museums, general market, library, marine school, offices and stables.
is needed now More than ever
Two windmills were housed in the spandrels (the almost triangular space between one side of the outer curve of an arch), and the structure would have been surmounted by a lighthouse with a wind-vane.
But the social and economic impact of the Bristol Bridge Riot and the French Revolution made the proto-steampunk construction impossible, and young Isambard Kingdom Brunel would have his day instead.
If you want to find out more about buildings in Bristol that were never built, get your hands on a copy of the book Unbuilt Bristol: The City that Might Have Been 1750-2050 by Eugene Byrne, which gives fascinating insights into schemes that never made it off the drawing board.
The CGI above is just one of a number of glimpses of unbuilt cities created by QuickQuid.
Here are the others:
Sir Misha Black and Hilton Wright’s design on what is now London’s Royal Festival Hall would have dominated both the riverbank and the skyline, its imposing glazed spiral ramp leading to a 1500-ft high viewing platform across London
David Bryce’s 1862 sketch for a Memorial Keep in honour of Prince Albert would have been a major change to Edinburgh’s skyline. But Queen Victoria, Albert’s widow, disapproved of the construction, and the tower was never erected.
CHR Bailey’s entry to the 1959 competition for Liverpool’s new Catholic cathedral looks like it was ripped from the film set of sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet, released just three years previously. The design is centred on a rocket-ship or “icing-bag nozzle” of a tower wedged in the grip of a circle of giant bird beaks that echo the curves of Sydney Opera House.
The architecture of Piccadilly Gardens has long been a site of controversy for the people of Manchester. But few realise it could have been settled once and for all with the construction of an art gallery on the spot back in the 1930s. While the gardens were re-landscaped, a competition was held, with the forerunning gallery design provided by 29-year-old E Berry Webber. His was a dignified, austere vision which would double as a memorial to the fallen soldiers, and the columns of which would have echoed Manchester Art Gallery around the corner on Mosley Street.
In an effort to separate pedestrians from the modern blight of ubiquitous automobiles, Newcastle’s city planners of the 1960s looked up. Designs were drawn and work began on a system of overhead walkways between raised buildings. Like in Bristol, glimpses of these semi-realised walkways can still be spotted around the city centre, but the overall vision became lost as construction was delayed by corruption and the city’s economic woes.
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
