Chapter Four Planning – Skybridges

About time I started figuring out a bit more about the look of the new locations in Chapter Four. It’s going to be pretty rough and scrappy-looking architecture but with some aspects that are innovative bits of engineering thrown in – my favourite combo. One of those is the bridges that connect things at an upper level, between trees. I based it on the Canopy Walk at the UBC Botanic Gardens that we visited last year, and I got Tim to get some photos of the hardware so I could use similar ideas. The sketch above is me getting a feel for where everything goes so it holds together properly, but I think I’d like to change up some aspects of it to give it a more unique look – things like the materials used, the way the walkway itself looks (probably not as much metal involved), whether they’d bother with netting or not… so I’ll likely be revisiting it. Below is the photo I sketched it from.

And then we got some shots for how the wires are connected to the trees to hold it all up securely – and important, but often overlooked little detail. I like the sort of cable web they have gripping the tree. Not one anchor point, but lots of points where it holds on, for stability’s sake.

And then there were these funky bumper they were using so the platform wasn’t actually drilled into the tree or anything but just resting securely against it. There was some sway and wiggle while we walked around on it, but it was relatively steady, considering.

All ideas I want to see if I can make use of. My goal is essentially to take this cool engineering I saw and develop it a bit backwards – make it function the same, but have it put together in a much less elegant and safe-looking way. They might break sometimes, for example, whereas I’m sure the UBC Botanic Gardens bridges aren’t going to any time soon.

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