It's been a long re-construction ride up at Lincoln Center, where the creative team at Diller Scofidio and Renfro has led a total transformation of the cultural campus. Now the final piece of that six year, $1.2 billion redevelopment puzzle has been put into place above West 65th Street: the President's Bridge, connecting all the recently revamped spaces. While this new pedestrian passageway seems to float above the street, the sucker actually weighs in at a hefty 58 tons.
Engineered by Dewhurst Macfarlane and Partners PC, the span runs 83 feet long and is basically a big box girder in a modernist mode. It's framed with a series of thick steel plates, joined with a continuous weld, together forming the load-bearing exterior skin of the bridge. The east face has been cut away, with thick glass forming a curved protective railing that allows folks crossing over to see and be seen from down below. It's the last surprise in the architects' bag of tricks, changes that have both deconstructed and reconstructed this Acropolis of Culture.
The transfiguration of this swath of land, once the mean streets where the old West Side story was told, began in 2006. That was the site's second groundbreaking, coming 47 years after shovels originally hit the ground in 1959. The Diller Scofidio and Renfro plan aims towards openness and connectivity, rethinking the original, more Brutalist design that first opened to the public in 1962. Over the past six years we've chronicled it all, covering everything from sod in the sky to dancing waters (with some fashion-free arboricide in between). Take a gander through the gallery to relive it all.
· Lincoln Center Completes Its Redevelopment Project [About Lincoln Center]
· Memories of Lincoln Center, Fifty Years On [Operavore]
· Grand Finales [Curbed]
· Lincoln Center Renovation coverage [Curbed]
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