South Bridge, Building, Architect, Project, Photos, Design, Development, Info
South Bridge, Edinburgh : Architecture Information + Images
The Bridges - Old Town, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
South Bridge Edinburgh
Location: perpendicular to Royal Mile, centre of Old Town
South Bridge was originally designed by Robert Adam but executed by Kay, it is slightly down-at-heel but look up and you can see a variety of neoclassical facades and gable ends that somehow manage to talk to each other.
Here's a quote by Robert Louis Stevenson: "Social inequality is nowhere more ostentatious than at Edinburgh...to look over the South Bridge and see the Cowgate below full of crying hawkers, is to view one rank of society from another in the twinkling of an eye".
Here's a quote by architect and tutor Ed Hollis: "South Bridge, (for it is he) is a viaduct of 19 arches, finished in 1788 to the design of an architect whose name, so far as we know, is disputed. So it’s a Georgian bridge with buildings running along the sides. Or it’s a Georgian building with a road running over the roof. Or it’s a wall of rooms you can live in. Or it’s a room of walls you can live in. It’s a work of art."
Here's a quote re South Bridge by David Black, Edinburgh historic expert: "a planned scheme first envisaged by Robert Adam, and relates to his Old College nearby. His design was not the one which was built - if it had been, we would have had an arcaded grand avenue on a par with the Rue de Rivoli in Paris - but the plainer version retained an Adamesque flavour, and pioneered the palace façade principle for buildings in mixed use which would become the leitmotiv of Edinburgh’s sophisticated urban neoclassicism".
Comments / photos for the South Bridge Edinburgh page welcome:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it