Seasonal Connection
Typology: Pedestrian, vehicle bridge
Location: Yongxin, China
Year: 2020
Stage: Competition
Result: Honorable mention
Team: Adrian Aguirre
Seasonal connection
In architecture, typology is the assemblage of types of buildings or elements, it is a method that provides structure and order, it communicates functions, provides coherence and meaning. Typologies were tools for reasoning and produce the urban plan, they established the standard of the dominant style throughout the years, …“maybe the conventional histories get it right, maybe contemporary architecture is influenced most by a score of canonical buildings about which we all have read countless times” (L. Woods). The bridge, as a typology is a structure which carries a road, path, etc. over an obstacle, serving a use rather than becoming the event itself.
The integral proposal for the Yongxin Old City Wenxing Bridge, the Linjiang building and the Hunan-Jiangxi Wharf considers the bridge as a central element for the urban and strategical development of the area.
Seasonal connection, spans at variable heights over the Heshui River, aiming to provide a contemporary typology through curvilinear geometry, material coherency and structural innovative solutions.
The bridge splits the pedestrian experience from the vehicular experience: the pedestrian experience firstly brings the users as close as possible to the river, rather than alienating them from the “obstacle”, shifting from witnesses to active members of the landscape, fostering social interaction and secondly, it envelops the division with a central green garden, which comprehends seasonal flowers, creating a diverse landscape, unceasingly changing ever colourful.
The Old city area adjacent to Hunan-Jiangxi Wharf where the style commercial street is located, along with the surrounding area for the Linjiang building was subdivided according to internal connections represented as a grid following the existing city grid and a disjunction of 45 degrees which creates a connectivity between city and Wharf.
The Linjiang building is located strategically at the intersection of the Bridge path, the old city grid and the new Wharf grid, rising from the ground as a truncated oval, mirroring materials selected from the Bridge.
Seasonal garden
According to Chinese tradition, there are four flowers which represent each of the seasons: orchid represents spring, lotus represents summer, chrysanthemums represent autumn and plum blossom represents winter; each of these flowers is located according to their needs either at wharf level or inside the garden at the centre of the bridge, the landscape proposal combines a colourful scheme which changes according to seasons, becoming an active member of the event.
Orchid. Spring (transition from winter)
Lotus. Summer
Chrysanthemum. Autumn
Plum blossom. Winter
A secondary level of flowers or trees is proposed to create a wider color scheme for the visitors/users and are selected as well based on a seasonal cycle.
Bridge typologies
Single arch, pedestrian at highest point at bridge centre; triple arch, pedestrian at highest point at bridge centre; quintuple arch, pedestrian at highest point at bridge centre; single arch, longer span, pedestrian at highest point at bridge centre.
From five pedestrian bridge typologies from several existing an average an overlap of forms results on a single arch, long span typology with no decoration, however it is explored a profile where the user is closer to the water, transforming regular users from witnesses of the event to active participants, considering the event the act of transit, interaction and connection over a body of water.
Architecture Agency 