The Parklands of Floyds Fork – Leaping Bridges
WHAT
Architecture
WHERE
Louisville, KY
WHEN
2012
The Parkway road and the Louisville Loop Trail provide connectivity and accessibility from one end of The Parklands to the other. Bridges on these routes over Floyds Fork Creek and its tributaries are designed to reinforce that connectivity. They exhibit familiar visual characteristics which set them apart from other bridges outside the park.
They celebrate the crossing of the waterways and make it an event. They emulate the thrust and grace of a leaping deer. Every aspect of the auto bridges reinforce that movement; from the arcing shape of the weathering steel and concrete superstructure, to the railing pickets, to the heavy haunch on the leaping side, to the more diminutive sculpted concrete on the landing side. The narrower pedestrian bridges reflect that same movement in their arcing steel truss design.