The bridge design fulfills its primary role to allow people to cross the river while it further proposes to become a passive recreational resource, a place on the river where people can come to pause, sit, and to observe.

It also explores the inherent differences held between a bridge designed specifically for pedestrians and one designed primarily for vehicular traffic.

To this end, the main spans of the bridge are of lightweight structure, tense and alive under foot but sufficiently secure not to dissuade users. Respite is provided by a fragment of the bank broken free to form an island precinct reassuringly solid under foot.

As the access points on each bank are displaced laterally by some 30 metres, the opportunity is taken to break the joinery across the river into three distinct stages.

A further elaboration was to consciously vary the experience of walking from either end of the bridge, promoting and denying vistas, modifying the configuration and the facilities.

In doing this, the bridge consciously gives little acknowledgment to the urban character of the river bank developments with their formal promenades generating long, controlled vistas. Here the route is deliberately dislocated, the views are interrupted, framed or ignored.

At night three elements: the tree, the arch, and view denial wall are strongly illuminated, and the rest of the bridge kept in relative darkness. Here the intention is that the seemingly inadequate arch, the displaced tree and the sheer wall plane reflected in the dark waters of the river will give the bridge a somewhat surreal quality.