Lorn MacNeal: The Forth Bridges

SINCE first crossing the new road bridge over the Forth as a young boy, I have always had a deep fascination and admiration for it and its neighbour. To me, they represented the eighth wonder of the world, demonstrating in every sense the great strengths of our nation. I spent many hours making a cantilever bridge on my train set, and told my parents I would one day be a bridge engineer.

Whether I am crossing by car or train, or windsurfing below, I am overwhelmed by the scale of these structures. When friends from abroad come to Scotland I feel great pride showing them off.

In designing the rail bridge, Sir William Arrol incorporated major safety factors to assuage the fears of those who had lived through the Tay bridge disaster. I still have great difficulty in appreciating how the rail bridge was ever constructed, given the technological limits of the time - or even the road bridge, with its huge concrete foundations anchoring the thousands of miles of cables, all meticulously interwoven to suspend and support the great spans of roadway decking.

At Edinburgh University I studied civil engineering before switching to architecture. This helped my career in recognising the importance of structural design integrity in building projects. There is no reason why a well-detailed contemporary extension cannot complement a traditional listed building, much in the way the modern elegance of the road bridge sits so harmoniously alongside the traditional might of its stoic neighbour.