Building Bridges and Other Megastructures

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2018

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

In a space of less than a mile, seven bridges link Newcastle with Gateshead including the distinctive shape of the Tyne Bridge. But what kind of human endeavour goes into imagining and realising such man-made wonders? Newcastle University’s Sean Wilkinson, Erica Wagner author of Chief Engineer, and architect Simon Roberts look at the bond between the visionaries and the grafters with Rana Mitter and an audience at Sage Gateshead.

Erica Wagner is the author of Chief Engineer: The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge, a biography of civil engineer Washington Roebling. Erica is former literary editor of The Times, the author of several books and is a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Goldsmith’s University of London.

Sean Wilkinson is a Reader in Structural Engineering at Newcastle University whose research includes work on resilient communities, the design of high rise buildings and earthquakes.

Architect Simon Roberts works for Wilkinson Eyre who designed the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and has worked solely on bridge projects for the past decade

Producer: Debbie Kilbride

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:32.0	Hello, I'm Ron Amitter.
0:33.7	Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas Discussion Program, which brings together leading artists,
0:38.9	writers and thinkers in conversation and debate. If you enjoy what you hear, do subscribe.
0:44.4	Search for the Arts and Ideas podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there,
0:48.9	please rate and review us. It'll help other people find us. This is the BBC.
0:55.7	Should I take them to the bridge?
0:58.0	The words, of course, of the late funk legend James Brown,
1:01.1	who is the moving spirit behind everything we do here at the Free Thinking Festival.
1:05.4	And we're doing exactly that today, not just taking you to the bridge,
1:09.2	but also to the dam, the power station, and quite
1:12.4	possibly the earthquake-resistant tower block. Bridges, though, cross every cityscape around the
1:19.2	world, not least the time, a few hundred metres from where we're sitting right now at Sage
1:23.7	Gateshead. Yet we don't really, I think, spend enough time thinking just what miracles
1:28.7	of engineering, architecture and art they really are. But we're going to fix that today. We're
1:35.3	getting into the nuts and bolts of bridges and other megastructures across the globe. I won't
1:41.5	leave you in suspension. See what I did there, any more about our guests.
1:46.0	We have with us Erica Wagner, author of Chief Engineer, the man who built the Brooklyn Bridge,
1:50.8	Simon Roberts, an architect who's worked solely on bridges for the past decade,
1:55.1	and Sean Wilkinson, a structural engineer based at Newcastle University.
	...

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