“Of all things that are man-made, bridges are, with dams, the most “structural,” single-minded, and imposing. As connectors at a breaking point, they have a heroic force that is aided by a challenging structuralism. As a strand of continuity in a non-continuum, the bridge is full of implied meanings. It is the opposite of devisiveness, separation, isolation, irretrievability, loss, segregation, abandonment. To bridge is as cogent in the psychic realm as it is in the physical world. The bridge is a symbol of confidence and trust. It is a communications medium as much as a connector.”
-Paolo Soleri, 1970, from “The Sketchbooks of Paolo Soleri”, published by MIT Press, 1971
“I do not know how much of this has caused me to be attracted by the design of bridges. It is possibly the clear-cut purpose of the bridge that permits reflection of the single-mindedness of the problem into the single-mindedness of the conceptual process. There is meaning aplenty grafted onto a simple purpose, an ideal subject for the imaginative mind if the mind accepts the discipline that gravity and matter impose. The bridge, like the dam, is very much of a bottleneck to which something pervasive converges and diverges. In the dam is the water with its load of vivifying power. On the bridge are people, software and hardware, a more loaded cargo already manipulated by life. As hinges to a vast network of stresses, they both imply and forecast compression and contraction on specific constituents of life.”
