It is a very cool bridge, but surely unless there are “things” at each end - ones that need to be connected by a bridge, cool or otherwise - then what’s the point?

6000

Well, I bet they had their reasons.  Twice in my blogging life I have said of bridges: what the hell’s the point of that?  Of the Millau Viaduct.  (Why not just go down and then up again, on a regular road?) And of a huge curved bridge in the USA.  (Why the hugely long route, instead of the obvious short one?) In each case there were reasonable answers.  In the latter case, I seem to recall that there had to be very high clearances to avoid interrupting aircraft carriers, and the only way to get up that high was to go round, so to speak.

I’m not about to make the same mistake again.  Nevertheless, I would love to hear why this bridge was so necessary.

The point of that bridge may not be anything to do with the mere function of allowing people to move from mountain top A to mountain top B. What could be more tedious? The point of this design surely is the fact that it makes moving from mountain top A to mountain top B a bit of an almost-shit-your-pants episode (as Brian’s title makes clear).

Oh - it’s certainly splendid to look at and must have been a real challenge to build.

[insert glowing comments about brilliant engineering here before posting comment]

But, if it doesn’t actually fulfill a role of joining two places together for ease of travel between them - if it isn’t functional - then doesn’t it rather become a sculpture that looks a bit like a bridge rather than… a bridge?