The University of Bristol posed the question “How do you bridge the gap?” to inspire entries to the Clifton Crossing Competition (CC06), supporting the rerun of the original 1831 Clifton crossing competition. It was run as one of the many events celebrating the 200th birthday of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.



Lead image for the competition: Avon Gorge with and without the Clifton Suspension bridge.


The overall aim of the competition was to connect present day professional engineers, architects and designers, the general public, and especially young people, to each other and to Brunel through producing their own designs to rival Brunel’s iconic Clifton Suspension Bridge. The intention was to show how today’s exciting design challenges, and the associated creative processes, are essentially the same as they were for Brunel – the only significant differences being in the design and construction technologies that are available today. The focus on such a well-known icon provided an engaging context for young people to think about how ‘common place’ engineering artefacts are actually created and how that process is intellectually challenging, fun and rewarding. The overall goal was to raise public awareness and appreciation of the social importance of engineering in general and civil engineering in particular. An £85k grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is enabling the University of Bristol and At-Bristol to develop lasting schools educational resources based on the competition entries and outcomes.

The Clifton Crossing Competition was an outstanding public awareness success. Although originally conceived as an event local to Bristol and the West Country, thanks to the strong support of New Civil Engineer magazine the competition drew interest and entries from around the world. There were 123 entries from professional design teams and individuals, 26 student team entries, 10 entries from the general public, and 840 entries from school pupils aged 3 to 18 from 50 schools in the UK, Canada and Uruguay! The oldest entrant was an 80-year old retired engineer. The designs ranged form very advanced structural concepts using the latest materials and architectural thinking (e.g. a bridge containing shops and living accommodation) through to pure fantasy, such as a powered airship transporter. It is clear that all the entrants had a lot of fun in preparing their designs.

The adult winner Youssef Ghali, an architect from Eqypt, received a prize of £5000.



A team of students from Nottingham University won the £1000 student competition, they were Ben Hopkins, Tom White, Rachael Lee, Eric Cheung.


These prizes were sponsored by the Environment Agency and the Institution of Structural Engineers Educational Trust. There were so many fantastic schools entries that it was impossible to chose a single winner. Instead, thanks to the sponsorship of GVMulitmedia, the organisers were able to award a digital camera and certificate to every participating school.

The adult short listed entries were on public display at the At-Bristol Science Learning Centre, where visitors were able to register their views and preferences electronically. The public vote swayed the judges’ final decision. Between 16 June and 1 November 2006 75,066 people visited At-Bristol and would have seen the display. In addition, thanks to the sponsorship of Atkins, a selection of the schools entries was displayed at the major Civils 2006 construction industry exhibition in Olympia in November 2006. This display is being reworked for showing at Science Learning Centres across the UK from summer 2007.

Thanks to Brunel 200, the competition captured the imagination of professionals, the general public and young people. It gathered its own momentum and featured on local, national, and international media. In doing so, it promulgated the celebrations of Brunel’s achievements to a very wide audience and hopefully inspired many young people to seek to emulate him.

CC06 received positive comments and feedback from teachers and students alike, but for Professor Colin Taylor, perhaps the most rewarding feedback was witnessing a young, very articulate and enthusiastic entrant, aged 5 years and 11 months (!), being interviewed about his fantastically imaginative design by BBC Points West TV – for Taylor, “this epitomised the connections between young people and Brunel that we had hoped the competition would enable”.

Being part of the wider Brunel 200 celebrations gave the project a much wider impact, as Professor Taylor explained:

“Being badged as part of the Brunel 200 project was essential. This gave CC06 international credibility and certainly was a vital part of its success.”


Links

Professor Taylor said, “Creativity is not planned – it emerges from complex interactions of people and organisations. In my experience, Brunel 200 was an exemplar of how to enable such interactions”.

Click on the link below to see the winning entries and for more information on the competition.

www.research.cen.bris.ac.uk/cc06