UAL Extended Diploma L3 : SINGAPORE HELIX BRIDGE

The Helix Bridge is located in Singapore at Marina Bay. It was opened in April 2010. The bridge provides a pedestrian connection from one end of the river to the other. The Helix Bridge was entered into an international design competition which was held in 2006. The design won the completion and was made. There were two different firms that were working on this bridge which are the COX Group Pte Ltd (Australia) and Architects 61(Singapore). The principle architect from COX Architecture was Michael Rayner. The client was the Urban Redevelopment Authority. The owner of the bridge is the Singapore Land Transport Authority.

It is the first ever bridge that uses the double- helix structure and it uses five times less steel than a conventional box girder bridge. The helix structure is meant to represent renewal and growth. Even though the bridge is 280m long, the steel tubes that were used to make the helix structure were almost 10 times big if laid out end to end. The tubes spiral around the bridge in opposite directions. They rise up to a height of 8.8m and spiral back downwards. Shade on the bridge is given by glass and steel canopies. As well has the helix shape, the bridge has a few pods coming out. This is for people who want to catch a view of the city. It also has LED lights around the outside to the helix structure to make to look good and catch people’s eyes.

The advantage of the helix design is that it uses less steel compared to cable bridges or box girders, which saved millions of dollars in construction costs. An estimate of how much the bridge cost is $68 million.

"The Helix is truly an engineering marvel. While the structure is incredibly delicate and intricate, it’s been engineered to support more than 10,000 people at a time. The Helix is the first example of this structural solution applied to a bridge – there is nothing else like it." -Dr See Lin Ming, Arup project leader.

I really like this bridge because it is different to what you would normally see. I also like how they made the tubes go abound the bridge to make it look like a helix. By making it go all the way around it looks more like a helix rather than making it look like a random design. In addition to this I also like how there are lights both inside the bridge and outside the bridge.