The power of Bridges: culture, community and the built environment
There’s just something about them.
I walked across the Albert Bridge recently, on a perfect Spring day, took the obligatory Instagram pics and immediately text Jamie (1/4 of Tangram) who shares my love of a good bridge.
Bridges of note
My relationship with bridges is I presume much like everyone else’s, they get you from one place to the next and unless particularly striking by design, I don’t give them much thought. At least until I started working with Tower Bridge a few years ago. I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time on and inside the bridge, with the brilliant team and got to know it pretty well. It’s a global icon, sure, but it’s also home to some incredible stories, of the people who built it, who work on it and those who visit from down the road or around the world. It’s much more than a crossing, it’s a meeting point, a viewing space to look down through the glass floors (each panel can hold the weight of an elephant) onto the life happening on the Thames.
Something that’s always stood out about Tower Bridge (operated by the City Bridge Foundation), is their £1 community ticket for people living in the surrounding boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Southwark and the City of London. When thinking about barriers, both physical and financial, engaging with those on your doorstep in this way is a model others could learn from.
Another good’un is the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, what a hot take. The only bridge in Florence to avoid destruction in WWII, with it’s whole street of shops suspended over a river, buzzing with life and history it’s a fascinating eco-system that has lived for centuries and shows no sign of stopping.
Another favourite of mine is the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, described by its creator Isambard Kingdom Brunel as ‘my first child, my darling’, and another one I luckily got to know when I worked at the National Lottery Heritage Fund who supported the creation of a new heritage and learning centre.
Why bridges matter to us
Bridges have the power to evoke strong emotions from people, remember the fated Garden Bridge ordeal? Even today, debate is ongoing about the future of sites like the Hammersmith Suspension Bridge that seems to be an unsurmountable challenge leading to its ongoing six-year closure. It’s importance for locals, and its heritage status, being two of the main talking points both support the feeling that bridges mean more to us than we may initially think.
When we were brainstorming a name for what is now Tangram, we did throw around ideas centred around the word Bridge, it felt right in some ways as we will often be the bridge between ideas and strategy, or people and their place.
That’s how we want to work - with culture, place, people and communities. Building strategies that deliver real, meaningful connections and being thoughtful about what exists and what’s possible. Sometimes helping create new landmarks. Other times, just making sure there’s somewhere solid to stand. Tangram is built on that idea of connection. Of bringing people and places together in ways that feel human, grounded, and full of possibility.
Bridges as cultural strategy models
Bridges may be feats of engineering, but their true power lies in what they represent: connection, care and continuity. They remind us that the built environment is not just a backdrop, it shapes how we move, gather, create and belong. In a time when culture is increasingly understood as a force for wellbeing, cohesion and economic renewal, bridges, both literal and metaphorical, offer a compelling model, inviting us to imagine what becomes possible when we prioritise connection over separation.