Infrastructure + Bridges



Photo: Steve Hosey
Diagrams: Leni Schwendinger Light Projects
Kingston Bridge
Location
Glasgow, Scotland
Client
Glasgow City Council Department of Development and Regeneration Services
Team
McKeown Alexander Architects, Mott MacDonald
A public art commission to re-envision the most highly trafficked bridge in Europe at night. Chroma Streams; Tide and Traffic is a site-specific, integrated lighting installation for the Kingston Bridge in Glasgow, Scotland is part of the city’s lighting strategy and regeneration of the river banks.
Artist Leni Schwendinger with her Light Projects team collaborated with architects McKeown Alexander. The Kingston Bridge comprises five traffic lanes in each direction, supported by two monumental concrete arcs connecting the city masses over the River Clyde. The underside of the vast concrete slabs provides a canvas for the artwork.
Two great flows, seemingly antithetical, tidal, and vehicular traffic, are triggers for the illumination, color, and sequencing concepts. Glaswegian physicist Lord Kelvin's tidal graphs prompted the consideration of how these flows could be measured and illustrated through color on the bridge itself. Two great flows, seemingly antithetical, tidal, and vehicular traffic, are triggers for the illumination, color, and sequencing concepts.
Glaswegian physicist Lord Kelvin's tidal graphs prompted the consideration of how these flows could be measured and illustrated through color on the bridge itself.
This installation uses light in various ways: to illuminate and give resonance to the bridge's overlooked surfaces; to heighten its rapport with the flow of the river below it; and to, through a series of shifting and evolving real-time patterns, explore the relationship between the flow of traffic on the bridge itself and the slow change of the tides on the river below.
Providing a daytime element to the artwork’s nighttime presence is crucial to outdoor works in the medium of light. Four 20-foot-tall stainless-steel sculptural armatures, inspired by Lord Kelvin's curvy nineteenth-century graphs, are installed in sculptural pairs on each side of the river.