Abridged

Location Strait Of Gibraltar  Date 2011  Program Bridge  Status Concept

The Heracles Project: A Link Between Africa and Europe for Domus Magazine

Could a bridge that denies the physical link between two continents actually bring them closer together? If the construction of a bridge connecting Africa to Europe is thought of as politically unfeasible, economically unattainable or simply deemed a utopian impossibility, let us consider an alternative.  Spanning across the straight, a floating bridge extends into the sea. As the structure reaches its midway point, it briefly dips down into the water for 50 meters before resurfacing to resume its path onto the other shore.  Leaving behind a narrow waterway gap that is now reduced to the human scale, a distance easily crossed by a short swim from either side, the bridge pulls Europe and Africa closer, yet it preserves their physical disconnect.  Embodied in this gap, the symbolic divide between the two continents is charged and intensified.

Would Europe and Africa then inexorably gravitate to each other like two magnets brought too close to one another, unable to escape each others pull? Perhaps by reducing the herculean divide between two cultures to the human scale, a distance easily crossed by a short swim from either side, we could then make what now appears fantastical seem as something merely possible.