The new wave-like pedestrian footbridge links Tradeston on the south bank of the river Clyde with Glasgow's financial services district. It was devised by Glasgow-based civil engineers Halcrow in partnership with Scandinavian architects Dissing & Weitling, and reflects Glasgow City Council's objective to improve cross-river accessibility and create a landmark waterfront structure.
LTP's expertise and penchant for intricate and detailed installations (which recently includes the London Eye and Sidings Bridge, Swansea) was called into the project by Martin Architectural, who tasked them with delivering the lighting and providing their direct client BAM Nuttalls with a fully project managed scheme. This included the supply, technical fit-out and commissioning, plus three years of site-based warranty support.
The primary aesthetic challenge was to ensure the lightsource was invisible along the 104m long bridge's wave like double curvature. The Rail Light was custom shaped in three dimensions to fit the contours of the structure's handrails perfectly, thereby maintaining a complete visual integrity and spatial harmony with the lateral and horizontal planes of the architecture.
LTP's project manager Jonathan Adkins worked closely with Ian Steele from BAM Nuttalls to engineer and realise the lighting installation, which involves 80m of Rail Light in approximately 60 bespoke curved and straight lengths. The product was specified by Dissing & Weitling who used it successfully for Bryggebro, a 190m long, 7m wide bicycle and pedestrian swing bridge in Copenhagen.
Rail Light is a highly contemporary flat modular system based on dimmable T5 fluorescent tubes and is specially designed for the illumination of bridges and walkways. The high efficiency, long-life T5 features control and power cables wired through the luminaire via waterproof connectors, with the profiles of each fixture joined end to end.
Jonathan Adkins concludes, "It was a real pleasure to work on something as high profile, beautiful looking yet functional and accessible as this and to collaborate with BAM Nuttalls and Martin Architectural. Intense planning and thorough calculations certainly paid off as we delivered on time and in budget."
(Jim Evans)
