Cake Industries acted as main contractor, design collaborator and fabricator for the sculptural footbridge to access the island in Crystal Palace Park which contains grade 1 listed sculptures of dinosaurs – the world’s first edutainment. A crowdfunding campaign by the local charity Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs raised enough money for a new crossing. Cake Industries worked with Tonkin Liu and Arup to design a structure to the budget and install it on site.
Fabrication was carried out in the Cake Industries workshop. Starting with precise laser cut pieces a female mould was used to assemble the triangular spine beam. Laser cut combs are heated locally and bent by hand so that the shape of the deck is gradually revealed. The deck pieces are welded to the central beam, before a handrail and deck mesh was attached. The entire structure was galvanised in one dip to provide a protective and decorative coating.
The bridge sits on a central slewing ring bearing so it can be moved out of the way to prevent unauthorised access to the site. The structure was be installed in January 2021.
Further details about the design process can be found in this paper (Knight, Chambers, Tonkin; The Dinosaur Bridge – Innovation in Structural Form & Fabrication Using Model Making and Prototyping; https://cpdinosaurs.org/pdf/SEI_Nov21_DinosaurSwingBridge.pdf) published in Structural Engineering International, November 2021.
Client: Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
Architect: Tonkin Liu
Structural Engineering: Arup (detailed substructure design by Cake Engineering)
Main contractor and fabrication: Cake Industries
Photography: James Balston (https://www.jamesbalston.com)
Steel and cutting: M-Tec
Galvanising: Joseph Ash Chesterfield
Piling: Capital Piling
Lifting: City Lifting and Forest Industrial
