Published on: March 13, 2009

Triple Bridge is a project in New York/USA designed by  Leni Schwendinger Light Projects . It encompasses a bus ramp spanning above Ninth Avenue in a neighbourhood called Hell’s Kitchen.

It features coloured light with weekly rotations of lighting schemes.

All the photographs by Arch Photo.

A more thorough description by LSLP:

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After more than ten years of community planning, design and construction, the bus ramps above Ninth Avenue at 40th Street have been transformed into an infrastructural public-art illumination installation that is delighting residents, visitors, passersby and motorists.

Created in collaboration with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) by the design team of PKSB Architects and Leni Schwendinger Light Projects (LSLP), a formerly desolate stretch of Hell’s Kitchen roadway—shadowed by exposed steel and concrete overpasses—now shimmers with color-infused light.

The design process for Triple Bridge Gateway began in 1996. A series of mock-ups and installations continued from 2001 through 2008. The design choices-—metals, lighting and color pattern-—were conceived as emphasis for the bridges’ I-beam engineered structure. A chain-link containment system wraps the sides and underside of each ramp. This highly-detailed stainless-steel metal mesh works to reflect and diffuse light, as well as providing full-time maintenance access.

The lighting fixtures were selected for their capacity to withstand vibration and extreme weather conditions. Unique mountings were designed to achieve site-specific effects from industrial fixtures.

Multiple light sources illuminate the bridge structure and the area under the bridges without interfering with ramp-roadway lighting. Linear fluorescents emphasis the I-beam webs and bolted plates. Metal-halide CSI sources graze the mesh scrim, and wallpacks “wash” the bridge coffers with light.

A computer-sequenced illumination scheme brings this urban sculpture to life with a weekly rotating schedule of visual compositions:
• Chambers of Color—This formal composition focuses on the beam structure and corner shapes.
• Spectacle—A bright and bold composition.
• Reflections—Creates a connection of the street and the bridges’ underside through volumes of reflected
light on the roadbed.

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