Tanderrum Bridge

📷 Kristoffer Paulsen

Tanderrum Bridge

The Tanderrum Bridge is a civic instrument, revealing the city’s history, orienting to civic markers, stitching together errant landscapes and connecting public space.

It has several roles – as a gateway to the city to pass under, as an integral part of the Birrarung Marr landscape, and as one of the civic experiences of Melbourne that leads to the Australian Open at Melbourne Park.

The alignment of the bridge acknowledges the already established trajectories within Birrarung Marr that demand a straight axis along a sight line to St Paul’s Cathedral. However, the bridge introduces a specific deviation to note and pay homage to the historic Speakers’ Corner. In so doing, it follows the slope of an existing landscape berm before springing back toward Batman Avenue as it nears the peak. This creates a dress circle to the park, a new and unexpected vantage point.

Traditional Custodians Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people
Collaborators Wardle, NADAAA and Oculus
Client Major Projects Victoria
Location Melbourne, Victoria
Procurement International Design Competition
Project Duration 2014 – 2016
Floor Levels 2
Footprint 5,950m2
Selected Awards
Melbourne Prize, AIA Victorian Chapter 2017
Honor Award for Urban Design, American Institute of Architects New York 2019

Through its form and place-making, Tanderrum Bridge synthesizes disparate spaces by integration, connectivity and amalgamation. It is a project that is place and site specific.

Premier's Design Awards

A belvedere noses into the branching elm trees of Speakers’ Corner to provide a moment’s pause and a pulpit that could equally be for a spectator or a speaker depending upon the circumstances.

The filigree of fine steel tubing that wraps the bridge’s edges and underside is reminiscent of steel trussed railway structures and the bare black branches of the park’s elm trees in winter – industrial and colonial landscapes. The fine steel circular sections create a voluminous belly below the bridge deck and draw a veil partially over its structure. Visually, the bridge solidifies when viewed obliquely as the tubing overlaps, and becomes more diaphanous when viewed frontally. This shift makes the bridge distinct from and merging with its landscape.