The Gordie Howe Is a Top Two Michigan Bridge

Detroit — The Gordie Howe Bridge officially opened for vehicle traffic last week, after months of delays and political haggling between the U.S. and Canada. Most discourse on the bridge has centered around its $5 billion cost, where the toll revenues go, and the nitty gritty of the ever shifting trade deal between the U.S. and Canada.

What the debate has missed, however, is the actual aesthetic power of the bridge. Crossing it for the first time, it struck me as an architectural masterpiece, perhaps second only to the Mackinac Bridge.

The Gordie Howe Bridge was designed by the German architect Erik Behrens, working for the international architectural firm AECOM. AECOM has produced several other notable designs this century, including One World Trade Center in New York City, and Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

Behrens described the design as “cinematic,” highlighting the painstaking architectural minimalism and dynamic surfaces of the bridge. All access doors and utilities have been minimized and hidden away, giving the towers the appearance of monolithic concrete forms.

The white cables give off a discernible moiré pattern at various distances, caused by their thinness and closeness together. The dynamic lighting of the bridge at night, the product of Canadian artist Douglas Coupland, contributes towards an overall sense of aethereal lightness.

From a distance, the bridge has a feeling almost lighter than air. The suspended surface hangs from seemingly delicate cables, buoyed only by the concrete pillars. The flat white paint and bare concrete is almost brutalist, but smooth and light. Rather than oppressive, it’s uplifting.

Crossing the bridge is a kinetic visual experience. The angles of the cables, slowly becoming more vertical as you approach each pillar, foments the illusion of traveling upwards, as if the bridge itself was taking you into the sky.

The white walls on either side of the bridge’s roadway block out most of the exterior view, leaving you with a feeling of traveling within a sort of tunnel to the clouds, formed visually by the white cables suspending the bridge.

The bridge’s design seems intent on minimizing the actual form of the bridge itself, leaving the structure only to the most bare natural materials, working instead to frame the texture of the sky, the reflection of light, to leave the traveler with a visual experience.

This aesthetic philosophy belongs more to contemporary art than public infrastructure. It’s more reminiscent of James Turrell’s skyspaces, or his magnum opus, Roden Crater, than anything we’ve seen from modern bridge design. It’s an artwork, more than just a bridge.

It’s also made to be experienced. Driving across it is when the design makes sense. Unexpectedly, I found myself amazed by the visual effect you feel driving through the interspersed white cables on a summer day. No one’s ever said that about the Ambassador Bridge.

Despite all the political controversy, in the end, we really should celebrate new infrastructure being built. Especially beautiful new infrastructure that actually feels like it belongs in this century, futuristic and bright and truly representative of our age’s best aesthetic sensibilities.

The irony, of course, is that the neighborhood around the bridge is still mostly a rotted out post-industrial wasteland. You don’t see that from the highway, but you sure do if you drive over to the river to get a better photo of the bridge.

One step at a time. Detroit has seen better days, but a new architectural wonder is a harbinger of things to come. A time when we can build new things that uplift our aesthetic experience of the world around us, while suiting functional purpose.

Building anything new these days is a better fate than getting lost in all the details.