Volkan Alkanoglu new project “Drift”

Portland, Oregon-based artist and designer Volkan Alkanoglu recently installed a new pedestrian bridge. The public artwork, entitled “Drift”, is located in the South Hills neighborhood of Fort Worth, Texas. Alkanoglu describes the bridge as an example of “plug-and-play” urban design.

The “Drift” pedestrian bridge spans almost 19 meters over a stream that divides a neighbourhood in Fort Worth with ranch houses from the post-war period into two halves. The project was commissioned by the city’s Public Art Program. It is a combination of art, design, architecture and infrastructure. On the one hand, it is a community-oriented and site-specific project that helps bridge a physical divide between two halves of a neighborhood. On the other hand, Alkanoglu wanted to test and demonstrate new building techniques with Drift.

It was important to Alkanoglu to use sustainable materials. The impact on the surrounding nature should be as low as possible. At the same time, the budget should not exceed 375,000 dollars (approx. 320,000 euros). The principle of “plug-and-play” urban construction can be seen in the bridge’s high degree of prefabrication. The bridge was pre-assembled as far as possible, then brought to its location and was ready for use within a few hours.

The shape of the self-supporting bridge resembles the curved hull of a boat, but when viewed from the side, the irregular bulges are reminiscent of a smoothly polished piece of driftwood. The reference to boat building is even clearer when viewed from above, where the organically shaped benches on either side of the railing are also visible. Drift is not only intended to be a passageway, but also a destination in itself and a place of contemplation and communication.

While the bridge was initially intended to be made entirely of plywood, the limited budget quickly forced the designer to rethink. In the end, the bridge was built with a steel frame borrowed from shipbuilding. This was then clad with CNC-cut wooden slats. Only the bridge foundations had to be erected on site before a mobile crane delivered the bridge. Once the bridge had been set down, the contractor built the road connections.

This “plug-and-play” reduced the nuisance to the neighborhood and the impact on nature in the stream to a minimum. For Volkan Alkanoglu, however, there is more to the concept: “Our cities urgently need to be modernized at all levels, and plug-and-play urbanism is an economically viable way to produce medium-sized infrastructure off-site and bring it into the urban context.”

Pedestrian bridges are not just crossings of obstacles. Quite often they are busy places and the destination itself. Find out more about the Esperance Bridge in King’s Cross.