Bay Bridge Recordation
San Francisco, California

murakami/Nelson served as the lead consultant on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge HAER (Historic American Engineering Record) documentation project. The project was initiated by the California Department of Transportation and the National Park Service prior to the planned seismic strengthening of the bridge, which is now underway. The documentation effort began in 1997 to capture the bridge before irrevocable changes occurred to its appearance.

The HAER document, which has been submitted to the Library of Congress, has three components: a narrative, photographs, and original 2D and 3D HAER drawings. The philosophy behind the documentation was to break up the depiction of the Bay Bridge into logical elements: the process by which it came to exist, the technical challenges that were overcome in building it, and the impact it had on the Bay Area and Northern California transportation system. Completed in 1936, the Bay Bridge was the longest and most costly bridge in the world and still has the record for the deepest underwater foundations and largest diameter traffic tunnel. The HAER documentation was a team effort that captured the Bay Bridge at a moment in time and put its importance to the San Francisco Bay Area into focus.

Photographs by Frank Deras Photography