The Habitable Bridge, Resurrected

Back in the mid- to late-1990s, Columbus, Ohio, faced a familiar urban problem. The city’s vibrant High Street was split by the trench of Interstate 670, separating the hip Short North area from the Convention Center and downtown. For years, American cities like Boston, Phoenix, Seattle, Washington D.C., and Dallas have been hiding urban highways beneath decks, caps or lids supporting parkland. But Columbus tried something new: it hired architect David Meleca to transform the drab overpass into what by all accounts was America’s first habitable bridge, modeled after Florence's Ponte Vecchio, which debuted in 2004. Despite the fact that eight lanes of traffic run below and around it, the new block of High Street, lined with shops and restaurants, has proved largely indistinguishable from those around it.

The habitable bridge, out of favor since the Renaissance, has been making a bit of a comeback. After the I-670 cap opened in Columbus, Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid designed this stunning habitable bridge in Zaragoza, Spain, completed in 2008 (pictured above). The following year, architect Steven Holl, whose designs often include sky-borne passages, completed an apartment complex in Beijing where a swimming pool, bookstore and cafe hang between buildings. Plans are underway for habitable bridges over highways in Washington, D.C., and New Haven, Connecticut, and architects and planners have proposed similar ideas in Montreal, Abu Dhabi, Amsterdam, Acapulco, and London.