Perched over a ravine in the mountains of Los Angeles is an innovative new pedestrian bridge designed by architecture students and built with the help of new robotic technology. The bridge is an example of how the construction of bridges and buildings can be rapidly accelerated and pushed to new limits of design.

Originally the subject of a design studio at the University of Southern California School of Architecture seven years ago, the project evolved from a speculative exercise into an actual piece of urban infrastructure. Construction on the project was completed just before the pandemic, and images are now being released publicly for the first time.

The Arroyo Bridge looks like a bird’s nest assemblage of rust-colored steel tubes; it reaches 80 feet across an oak-lined canyon. Designed by students with 3D software, fabricated out of hundreds of steel parts by an advanced five-axis robotic arm, and then assembled into large pieces that were welded together on-site, the bridge is a prototype for a new method of fabricating architecture that reduces waste and streamlines construction.

“This is the future. It gives more creative freedom to designers to work directly with fabricators,” says R. Scott Mitchell, an associate professor at the USC School of Architecture who led the studio that designed the project, in partnership with the 3D design and engineering software company Autodesk.

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