The collection of nineteenth century iron and steel suspension footbridges over the River Dee is unsurpassed anywhere else in Britain. Their slender white spans, luminous against wooded backdrops at Cambus O’May, Polhollick, Crathie and Garbh Allt Shiel punctuate the journey up the Dee, each a radical counterpoint to the mostly ordinary masonry or concrete highway bridges nearby.  

If we include structures of the same typology and period that have been washed away or span the tributaries of the Dee, the list doubles in number: Abergeldie, Birkhall, Glen Tanar, Aboyne, Feugh Lodge and more. These bridges were all designed or fabricated by the local North East firms Blaikie Brothers, James Abernethy & Co. and, most notably, Harpers of Aberdeen. The latter firm was responsible, first from their Albion Street Ironworks and later from Craiginches in Torry, for over sixty suspension bridges in the UK and worldwide with examples (or their remains) still to be found in India, Nepal, Malaysia, Africa and the Baltic.

The portability of bridge expertise is nothing new. This can be attributed to those aspects of bridges that also make them attractive to a designer — like buildings, bridges must negotiate the complexities of site and circumstance, but in each case they also are a response to a singular design problem: span the gap and make the connection. 

The UK bridge design community is quite small and it is hyper competitive. As architects and engineers we know and respect one another but there is also an unusual intensity both to the dialogue and the pursuit of opportunities. I think this also stems from the same instrumental purpose that these structures embody — and we have all been bitten by the bug. In contrast to most of our peers we (Moxon) do not exclusively specialize and remain just as engaged in other aspects of architectural practice, however we all share an enthusiast’s eagerness and not coincidently an international outlook. 

Furthermore, just as bridges extend well beyond their abutments in effect and physical impact, it is important to extend this passion beyond bridges to encompass an involvement in civil infrastructure generally. Today from our Deeside studio we are currently working on the design of bridges and associated infrastructure at varying scales in Scotland, England and Wales — but also the Republic of Ireland, Germany, Norway, Singapore and Vietnam. 

Our involvement in infrastructure design is the result of a decision made before the practice was established in 2004. For reasons that were partly creative; because of the predilections described above; but also strategic and commercial, the direction was set for a significant part of our output. Infrastructure design can be seen as a niche and as a result is often overlooked by architects, but as a sector it is enormous with upper end projects of such a magnitude as to feature as line items in national budgets. Although not quite recession proof, and sometimes highly political, these projects can span decades in the design and making and have lifespans measured in centuries if not millennia. 

It is also striking that throughout modern and ancient history these types of projects, individually or as a wider program, have been used by governments of every conceivable type to spur the regeneration, or resuscitation, of local and national economies. An obvious instance of this universal tendency is the US Public Works Administration under whose auspices the 1930s Roosevelt New Deal was 'literally stamped on the American Landscape' or looking to the future, President Biden’s recently enacted $1.2tn Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.  On a practical level the realization of these larger programs invariably relies upon international involvement — both to obtain and take advantage of the best technical expertise and, more prosaically, to be sufficiently staffed.

We therefore see an international horizon to this side of our practice as concomitant with the fascination. The big trick is therefore to turn the interest into involvement at an international level and for us this has picked up pace in recent years. It is a long game, but we have approached international work with the following strands which hopefully have relevance / resonance for others:

As enthusiasts being enthusiastic comes naturally. We seek and positively engage with opportunities wherever we find them, and it doesn’t matter so much if this is local or international because the field itself is marked by an internationalist mindset. We try to maintain this positivity through the inevitable dips, for example by thinking of a competition loss as still a win of sorts — it contributes to the portfolio and over time people get used to seeing the name of the practice in relation to the design of infrastructure.  

Be international to work internationally. Amongst the seventeen of us in the practice we have native speakers of Portuguese, German, Spanish, French, Korean (and American). While on the face of it this might seem trivial we think that it again reflects the internationalist mindset. Whether bridges or otherwise the knowledge that comes with this background is invaluable.

A single built example can be transformative. Our first was a tiny footbridge at the foot of Mount Keen in Glen Tanar. The scope was exceptionally constrained by budget and location, however it still deserved to be done properly with care and thoroughness. Every detail was considered, modelled and built in this spirit. I believe this established our credentials in the ‘craft’ of bridge making just as effectively as a more exuberant structure might have done. Maybe more so.

Exercise those design muscles. At the same time that we were working on smaller bridge projects we also made a point of entering open international design competitions. Open design competitions receive quite bad press, almost on principle, but as a practice we are fans.  The odds can be very long for winning, and sometimes diminish to nill for the actual realization of a project, however the possibility of success remains and, crucially, a design proposal demonstrates an international outlook far more than words do.  

Share and listen. In the bridge community there is significant interest in a methodological approach to the pooling of ideas and lessons learned. This results in the writing and sharing of technical papers and presentations at international bridge design conferences. The contributors are engineers, architects, fabricators and occasionally commissioning bodies and we have found it to be vitally important to contribute to this multinational discussion. It is a lot of fun and can be extremely valuable.  

Embrace foreign ideas. As a practice we have been the highly fortunate recipient of imported knowledge in relation to our viaducts for HS2 where we have learned from our French and Spanish colleagues respectively to improve the efficiency of steel/concrete composite viaducts at Wendover, and the speed and safety of construction at Aylesbury and Edgcote. These lessons are now taking physical form on site and we hope to soon return the favour in future technical papers when they are complete.

Collaborate and piggyback. All projects rely on teamwork, so fostering strong and enjoyable relationships with fellow designers is key wherever the work is taking place.  But when these relationships are with consultancies that already operate overseas, make use of the connections. Over the next 12 months we will continue to develop and expand our existing relationships in Europe and south east Asia, principally through the projects we are currently working on. Moreover we plan to improve our exposure to the north American market through meetings with fellow bridge designers on the east coast combined, we hope, with a lecture or two.  

As the number of projects we are involved in overseas has increased I have found myself returning to those suspension bridges over the Dee. Bridge design is even more portable now than it was for Harpers of Aberdeen.