Ultralight, Amsterdam proposal
Concept & Theme
In response to the “When Nature Calls” brief, we offer the Ultralight: a lantern the size and shape of a footbridge, to span one of Amsterdam’s canals. Consider us firmly committed to the optimistic side of the brief, but with a twist. Our optimism, like yours, is a little complicated. We are just about ready to accept McKibben’s thesis that nature either has already ended, or is about to, in the sense of a world beyond the reach of human intervention… but that only brings us back to our own favorite optimist, Voltaire, whose Candide, ou l’Optimisme parodies one optimism as silly (Pangloss), another as uninformed (Candide), but ultimately uses both as foils for a heartfelt conclusion: the tending of one’s garden. A couple of hundred years later, that garden is the world itself. This new scale of care may seem like a lot of work, but we don't equate “anthropocene” with “apocalypse”…
Visitor Experience
The Ultralight is an idea about building and stepping much more lightly than we have before, working innovatively with wood and textiles where our grandparents expected glass and steel and concrete; yes, it’s going to take some good will and some effort and some inventing to make it work and keep working; but no, it’s not all sacrifice and tedium. We expect to have some fun with it, and to leave "as much and as good" fun for our successors.
The Role of Light in the Ultralight
The bridge is illuminated from within like a paper lantern emitting hope and remembrance; like a tent or igloo lit from inside at night; like a digital billboard calling out to the canal and the streets all around it, but softly.
The Technical Principle
The project is literally an Ultralight, to be built using materials and techniques associated with historical (treated fabric stretched over a wood-and-cable spaceframe) and contemporary (photovoltaic cells, lithium batteries, LED’s) technologies associated with ultralight aircraft and atmospheric probe construction.
The 25 m. structure will be constructed of spruce “gluelam” beams and birch plywood. Together with cable stiffeners. The sides and bottom of the bridge are covered in strong waterproof and windproof translucent textile. The top surface will be a lightweight rigid laminate partially covered with photovoltaic cells connected to batteries housed in waterproof containers in the anchorage elements on either end. The Ultralight can recharge itself all day, to light its surroundings every night, without external connections or fuel other than the sun itself.
