Product Idea |

Millennium Bridge, London

31 comments
The Millennium Bridge is a pedestrian bridge that crosses the River Thames in London. At the southern end of the bridge is the Tate Gallery of Moden Art, a world-renowned museum. At the northern end of the bridge you reach St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The bridge was completed and opened in 2000. Norman Foster (design architect), Chris Wise (civil engineer) and Anthony Caro (architect) are considered the bridge's builders.

Due to restrictions on the height of the bridge and to improve the view for pedestrians, the eight support cables are located next to the footpath. This makes the bridge very flat. That's why you only notice at second glance that it's a suspension bridge.

The bridge stands on two pillars and has three sections with a length of 81, 144 and 108 meters (from north to south); the entire length of the bridge is 325 meters.

It is common knowledge that if many people cross a bridge in unison, it will vibrate and collapse. Over 150,000 people passed the bridge on the opening weekend. The bridge began to vibrate horizontally so much that it had to be closed again and retrofitted just two days after it opened. For this reason the bridge was nicknamed “the wobbly bridge”.

The scale of the model is about 1:220. It took me about 3 weeks to recreate the bridge. The model consists of approx. 2,200 bricks. The key element is the pillars. Because of this, the model should actually have been much longer (approx. 2-3 meters). Since in my opinion this is too long for a bridge model, I reduced the length of the bridge at the expense of its slenderness. I am still convinced that the slim and beautiful character of the bridge will be retained.
 
I'm a civil engineer and I particularly like bridges. I love the slim and graceful nature of bridges. I always admire how people can create such structures. Nowadays in real life, huge buildings/contructions often run out of time and out of costs because of a big (too big) complexity and so many different conflicting interests. This makes it all the more satisfying to be owner, builder, planner and construction company in one person if your building project is made of Lego. And voilá – it works.

Lego has already released two impressive architectural models from London: Tower Bridge and Big Ben. But London has so much more stunning architecture to offer. And engineering art can be seen particularly well in bridges: in the perfect interplay of compressive and tensile forces. Two good reasons for a new Lego model.

Opens in a new window