This Bridge (2008)



This Bridge maquette (c.2007)
Photo by Michelle McFarlane
S600001 / Bambuco Archive



This Bridge was a posthumously realised project. Simon Barley had had the project in development prior to his death in August 2007. The conceptual work for This Bridge was finished by Anna Cordingley, Flynn Hogan and Michelle McFarlane, who, with support from Bambuco crew members, built the structure in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2008. However, it was Simon’s obsession with bridges that drove this project from the start: 

“A bridge cannot be successfully made without a determination to see the project to its conclusion, the moment of connection. In this way bringing a bridge into being resembles a story, a narrative having a beginning, middle and end.” Simon Barley


The structure was built to interact with the many other bridges in the area, including the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and the Tyne Bridge, which it was built between. It spanned 120m across the Tyne and was made from 800 lengths of bamboo. The bridge was truly ephemeral, it opened on the first day of the SummerTyne Festival and was dismantled a few days later.


Proposal for This Bridge (2007)
Drawing by Anna Cordingley
S100010 / Bambuco Archive

Mark