I personally think that next to Tower Bridge, this is the best looking bridge in London. My favorite on-screen moment that this bridge has had, is in the opening scene of 2009's Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, when Lord Voldemort's Death Eaters destroy it. I am not saying that it was a good thing that it was destroyed but, it was kind of spectacular to see all of the bearings and structures of it to be put to the test. If that makes sense to you. In the late 1990s, an architectural competition was organized by the Southwark Council and RIBA Competitions, to look for designs of a pedestrian crossing over the River Thames in between St. Paul's Cathedral and what is now the Tate Modern. Over 200 designs were submitted, but only one was finally chosen. The winning entry was an innovative "blade of light" effort from Arup, Foster and Partners and Sir Anthony Caro. Due to height restrictions, and to improve the view, the bridge's suspension design had the supporting cables below the deck level, giving a very shallow profile. The bridge has two river piers and is made of three main sections of 81 meters (266 ft), 144 meters (472 ft) and 108 meters (354 ft) (North to South) with a total structure length of 325 meters (1,066 ft); the aluminium deck is 4 meters (13 ft) wide. The eight suspension cables are tensioned to pull with a force of 2,000 tons against the piers set into each bank — enough to support a working load of 5,000 people on the bridge at one time. On regular circumstances it is necessary to receive an Act of Parliament before a bridge can be built across the River Thames, but this time it was approved by the City of London and the Royal Borough of Southwark. The project was funded by the Millennium Commission and the London Bridge Trust. The bridge was completed at a cost of £18.2M (£2.2M over budget). Construction began in late 1998 and the main works of the bridge started on April 29, 1999. The bridge officially opened on June 10, 2000. Londoners nicknamed the bridge the "Wobbly Bridge" after participants in a charity walk on behalf of Save the Children to open the bridge felt an unexpected and, for some, uncomfortable swaying motion on the first two days after the bridge opened. The bridge was closed later that day, and after two days of limited access the bridge was closed for almost two years while modifications were made to eliminate the wobble entirely. After extensive analysis by the engineers,the problem was fixed by the retrofitting of 37 fluid-viscous dampers (energy dissipating) to control horizontal movement and 52 tuned mass dampers (inertial) to control vertical movement. This took from May 2001 to January 2002 and cost £5M. After a period of testing, the bridge was successfully re-opened on 22 February 2002. The bridge has not been subject to significant vibration since. In spite of the successful fix of the problem, the affectionate "wobbly bridge" epithet remains in common usage among Londoners. The bridge to this day, remains along with Big Ben, and Tower Bridge as one of London's Icons with its alignment with St. Paul's Cathedral. I shall include this as one of the attractions I visit in London and hopefully I won't run into any Death Eaters on the walk across! Cheers!
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