- Kingsgate Bridge view from deck
- Kingsgate Bridge seen from Durham Students' Union, the Cathedral above
Kingsgate Bridge | |
---|---|
![]() Kingsgate bridge in front of Dunelm House | |
Coordinates | 54°46′23″N1°34′21″W / 54.7731°N 1.5726°W |
OS grid reference | NZ275421 |
Carries | Pedestrians |
Crosses | River Wear |
Locale | Co. Durham |
Owner | Durham University |
Heritage status | Grade I listed |
Preceded by | Elvet Bridge |
Followed by | Prebends Bridge |
Characteristics | |
Material | Reinforced concrete |
Longest span | 106.7 m (350 ft) |
History | |
Architect | Ove Arup |
Designer | Ove Arup |
Engineering design by | Ove Arup & Partners |
Construction end | 1963 |
Location | |
![]() |
Kingsgate Bridge is a reinforced concrete construction footbridge across the River Wear, in Durham, England. It is a Grade I listed building. [1] It was personally designed in 1963 by Ove Arup, [1] the last structure he ever designed. [2] Kingsgate Bridge connects Bow Lane on the peninsula in the centre of Durham to Dunelm House on New Elvet, which building Arup's studio also contributed, and opened in 1966. Kingsgate Bridge is thought to have been one of Arup's favourite designs of all: he had spent many hours working on every detail of the plans. [3]
Its construction was unusual. The two halves were each built parallel to the river, then rotated through 90° to make the crossing. [4] The meeting point of the two halves is marked by a simple bronze expansion joint using a linear gear bearing. [5] [6]
In 1965, the bridge was the winner of the Civic Trust Award. [7]
In 1993, it won the Certificate of Outstanding Performance (Mature Structures Category) of the Concrete Society. [8]
A bust of Arup, cast in resin, was installed on the side of Dunelm House, the students' union building adjacent to the bridge, in September 2011. The sculpture is a copy of a 1987 bust by Diana Brandenburger, held by the National Portrait Gallery. [9] [10] It is a replacement for a previous copy of the same bust, in bronze, which was unveiled by Karin Perry, Arup's daughter, on 16 April 2003, the 108th anniversary of Arup's birth, but which was stolen from its plinth during the summer of 2006. [11]
During a university rag week in the late 1960s students suspended a car beneath the bridge. [12]
Durham is a cathedral city and civil parish in the county of Durham, England. It is the county town and contains the headquarters of Durham County Council, the unitary authority which governs the district of County Durham. It had a population of 48,069 at the 2011 Census.
Durham Students' Union, operating as Durham SU, is the students' union of Durham University in Durham, England. It is an organisation, originally set up as the Durham Colleges Students’ Representative Council in 1899 and renamed in 1969, with the intention of representing and providing welfare and services for the students of the University of Durham.
Sir William Hamo Thornycroft was an English sculptor, responsible for some of London's best-known statues, including the statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Palace of Westminster. He was a keen student of classical sculpture and was one of the youngest artists to be elected to the Royal Academy, in 1882, the same year the bronze cast of Teucer was purchased for the British nation under the auspices of the Chantrey Bequest.
Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era but commonly known for its presence in post-war communist nations. Brutalist buildings are characterised by minimalist constructions that showcase the bare building materials and structural elements over decorative design. The style commonly makes use of exposed, unpainted concrete or brick, angular geometric shapes and a predominantly monochrome colour palette; other materials, such as steel, timber, and glass, are also featured.
Arup is a British multinational professional services firm headquartered in London that provides design, engineering, architecture, planning, and advisory services across every aspect of the built environment. It employs about 17,000 people in over 90 offices across 35 countries, and has participated in projects in over 160 countries.
A student center is a type of building found on university and some high school campuses. In the United States, such a building may also be called a student union, student commons, or union. The term "student union" refers most often in the United States to a building, while in other nations a "students' union" is the student government. Nevertheless, the Association of College Unions International has several hundred campus organizational members in the US; there is no sharp dichotomy in interpretation of union in this context. The US usage in reference to a location is simply a shortened form of student union building.
Sir Ove Nyquist Arup, CBE, MICE, MIStructE, FCIOB was an English engineer who founded Arup Group Limited, a multinational corporation that offers engineering, design, planning, project management, and consulting services for building systems. Ove Arup is considered to be among the foremost architectural structural engineers of his time.
Preston bus station is the central bus station in the city of Preston in Lancashire, England. It was built by Ove Arup and Partners in the Brutalist architectural style between 1968 and 1969, to a design by Keith Ingham and Charles Wilson of Building Design Partnership with E. H. Stazicker.
Oldbury Wells School is a coeducational secondary school located in Bridgnorth, England. having 800 pupils, 122 of whom are in the sixth form. The school's motto is "Aspire, Enjoy, Achieve.".
Sir Edmund "Ted" Happold was a structural engineer and founder of Buro Happold.
Dunelm House is a Grade II listed university building in Durham, England, built in 1966 in the brutalist style. It belongs to Durham University and houses Durham Students' Union. Its listing entry cites, among other factors, that it is "a significant Brutalist building that reflects the latest in architectural thinking for its date" and that it is "the foremost students’ union building of the post-war era in England".
The Institution of Structural Engineers' Structural Awards have been awarded for the structural design of buildings and infrastructure since 1968. The awards were re-organised in 2006 to include ten categories and the Supreme Award for structural engineering excellence, the highest award a structural project can win.
Sir Gerhard Jacob Zunz was a British civil engineer and former chairman of Ove Arup & Partners. He was the principal structural designer of the Sydney Opera House.
The Labworth Restaurant & Café is a modernist International style reinforced concrete building overlooking the Thames estuary at Labworth beach on Canvey Island, Essex. Built in 1932–1933 by Ove Arup to resemble the bridge of the Queen Mary, it exists as the only building solely designed by the distinguished engineer.
The Hulme Arch Bridge in Hulme, Manchester, England, supports Stretford Road as it passes over Princess Road, and is located at grid reference SJ838968. The construction of the bridge formed part of the regeneration of the Hulme district of Manchester, both by re-establishing the former route of Stretford Road, which had been cut into two halves by the construction of Princess Road in 1969, and by providing a local landmark. The location was previously occupied by a footbridge.
Durham University is a collegiate public research university in Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charter in 1837. It was the first recognised university to open in England for more than 600 years, after Oxford and Cambridge, and is thus, following standard historical practice, the third-oldest university in England. As a collegiate university, its main functions are divided between the academic departments of the university and its 17 colleges. In general, the departments perform research and provide teaching to students, while the colleges are responsible for their domestic arrangements and welfare.
A bronze statue of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, also known as Brunel Monument or the Isambard Brunel Monument, by Carlo Marochetti, stands on the Victoria Embankment in London, England, at the west end of Temple Place. The statue rests on a Portland stone pedestal, with flanking screens and benches, by the architect Richard Norman Shaw.
The Durham police mast was a structure that stood in the city of Durham in northern England. It was designed by county architect J. L. Parnaby and structural engineer Ove Arup and Partners. It was erected in 1968 and stood 162 feet (49 m) tall, providing radio communications to Durham Constabulary police officers. It was built to a tripod design in reinforced concrete to satisfy a requirement for a rigid mast that was slender enough to minimise impact on views of Durham Cathedral. The structure was dismantled in 2017 as part of a redevelopment of the police headquarters but was required, by a planning condition, to be re-erected. In 2022 Durham Constabulary applied for permission to dispose of the mast.
The Architects' Co-Partnership (ACP) is a firm of English architects, founded in 1939 as the Architects' Cooperative Partnership by recent graduates of the Architectural Association School of Architecture. It encouraged teamwork, and set out to be a practice in which all members would be equal.