Sail Bridge
Swansea, Wales
Wilkinson Eyre Architects

Wilkinson Eyre’s Sail Bridge signals to all comers that this port city is in the midst of an energetic economic revival

© Nick Wood

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By Charles Linn, FAIA

Swansea’s Port Tawe industrial waterfront district is not unlike those in countless port cities throughout the world. Over the past century its shipping and heavy industries became redundant and fell into obsolescence. But this city on the Bristol Channel in southwest Wales is in some ways more fortunate than many others. The British government’s Welsh Development Agency (WDA) master planned the area and invested millions of pounds in its redevelopment. It commissioned the Sail Bridge, a pedestrian link spanning the Tawe River and connecting the new Port Tawe Innovation Village with Swansea’s business district, as a symbol of the area’s revival.

The purpose of the WDA’s redevelopment project at Swansea was to attract businesses at a reasonable price. Yet considering that the area was in need of costly improvements to its infrastructure, one might think the $5 million spent on the bridge would have been better put into sewers and power lines. But those work pretty much the same way everywhere—they don’t give one city a substantial advantage over the next. That demands marketing.

A marketing plan intended to show off a redevelopment should include a grand gesture, something to turn the heads of prospective tenants and investors and distinguish a particular place from all others. Now, what if that symbol could itself be a crucial piece of infrastructure?

In Swansea, the grand gesture is the Sail Bridge. Wilkinson Eyre, a London-based architecture firm, was selected for the project based on the strength of its preliminary design, a cable-stayed bridge that departs from conventional designs in several ways. Instead of creating a straight point-to-point span across the river, the deck curves gently around the mast. The 131-foot-tall tower leans toward the water at a significant angle, counterbalancing the deck in much the same way that a sailboat in the wind is kept from overturning by the weight in its keel. The bridge’s sculptural shape, along with its semiradially fanned stay cables, gives it its distinctive maritime character.

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Formal name of Project:
Sail Bridge

Location:
Swansea, Wales

Measurements:
Span: 465 feet

Total construction cost:
$5.3 Million

Client:
Welsh Development Agency

Architect:
Wilkinson Eyre Architects
Transworld House
100 City Road
London EC1Y 2BP
Tel: +44(0) 20 7602 7900
Fax: + 44(0) 20 7608 7901
email: info@wilkinsoneyre.com
www.wilkinsoneyre.com