Chris Wilkinson Architects won the closed competition for the design of Hulme Bridge, a gateway to the city of Manchester. The bridge is of simple structural form but is two-directional; its single 25m high steel box section arch crosses from the northwest corner of the cutting.

The arch is wide and shallow at the crown and deeper and narrower at the spingings. A 50m long composite bridge deck, carrying the two-lane Stretford Road, is suspended from the arch by ranked spiral steel cables which radiate from each side of the arch, on alternative sides. The rigid deck absorbs all the torsional forces generated by a bridge design which exudes power not by real mass but by the virtual mass of suspension cables which appear to travellers to e interlocking and overlapping.

The steel decking was assembled in the central reservation of Princess Road, that the bridge spans, and was craned into position in three 17m x 17m sections during a weekend possession. The bridge arch was prefabricated in six sections for transportation to site and site welding to form ‘halves’. It was installed into its final position by a tandem lift during an additional possession of Princess Road