I agree. When they rebuilt this bridge they used similar materials for the [burtalist style] walls that they used at the pedestrian mall on N. Washington Sq... I guess to match but those walls and the bridge walls were never great looking to me, and I remember being struck by the fact that you could not see the river passing over the bridge in a car. The city has put flower boxes along the railings which do help. I could see green walls for this bridge by planting Ivy and flowering vines that could grow on the textured cement. Rows of flag poles along the railings with large colorful oversized flags or banners framing the sight of the Capitol going down the avenue could be an inexpensive way to superficially improve to the look of the bridge. I am not downtown at night so maybe they already have, it would be nice it illuminate the stone buttresses that support the bridge which I believe may have been part of the former bridge's structure. That is the only part of the bridge that has any visual interest.
Yeah it would be cool to put an arch over the bridge (from north to south) that says "Lansing" on it, framed in such a way that when viewed from the center of Michigan Ave it will put the Capital in the center of the arch. As it is now, it's easy to forgot you're driving on a bridge entering the central business district.
Flint has the arches and they look nice, but really the whole bridge needs to be rebuilt if you ask me. Putting classy arches on this thing would be lipstick on a pig.
BTW, brutalism can be done well and very interesting. The problem for me is less with the style, itself, and just how blandly it was executed. Even the boring modernist Kalamazoo bridge has more character.
I agree Mich - when done right brutalism can be interesting. But unfortunately the vast majority of brutalist structures are cheap, ugly fortresses drained entirely of any spirit.
In Lansing's case, the bare cement element to the designs were very much economic over ascetic decisions. It was cheaper than brick, stone, wood or tile. It was "nice cement" with shinny stones embedded [like Spartan Studium today] just way too much of it. My building at 920 S. Washington has some successful "brutalist" elements like the breezeways that have the cement bricks with a rectangle opening design that is repeated on the balconies, so it can be done well. The downtown library is another example of a thoughtful application of brutalist technics. I think in many cases like the Boston City Hall, which I thought was so cool when it was built, brutalist buildings have not aged well and the Boston City Hall is now a very unpleasant crazy looking "for the sake of it" building. With that building like the Michigan Avenue bridge, it might be a good idea to just start over. The bridge should be a gateway to downtown and have some kind of river view.
Comments
And this bridge should really be the city's most architecturally stunning. Instead, it's one of the most non-descript:
BTW, brutalism can be done well and very interesting. The problem for me is less with the style, itself, and just how blandly it was executed. Even the boring modernist Kalamazoo bridge has more character.