Look what the Bay Line's spawned. The condos on the Bay Bridge, a concept developed by Oakland architect and Berkeley professor Ron Rael, were inspiration for a studio at Berkeley recently. Headed by professors Marc L'Italien and visiting professor Fred Schwartz (of World Trade Center runner-up fame), the studio churned out a few more pie-in-the-sky ideas for the the Bay Bridge's eastern span, which is planned for the big junkyard in the sky anyway. Those ideas include an extension of the Bay Trail ("A Park Above the Bay"), a space for farming, and a big hotel embedded in the bridge's structure. It's unlikely any of this would ever happen now, but L'Italien thinks if we could do it all over again, things might have been different: "I really believe that if a choice was being made today, we'd be looking at the alternative of salvaging the bridge a lot more than in the '90s."
· Design fantasies for obsolete Bay Bridge span [SFGate]
· Seriouser and Seriouser: The Bay Line, Condos on the Bay Bridge [Curbed SF]
· That Old Bay Bridge Span? Slap On a Park and Some Condos [Curbed SF]
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