For many objectophiles, as for many Heideggereans, bridges remain privileged structures. Whilst they are not dwelling places, nevertheless they exist in the domain of our dwelling and we have great admiration and affection for them as buildings: buildings that are determined by dwelling and retain dwelling as a goal. Which means the following:
"The bridge ... does not just connect banks that are already there. The banks emerge as banks only as the bridge crosses the stream. ... It brings stream and bank and land into each other's neighbourhood. The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream."
- Heidegger, 'Building Dwelling Thinking', Basic Writings, (Routledge, 1993), p. 354
More than this, the bridge allows the waters that flow beneath it to do so beneath the heavens and for the men who cross it to do so before the gods; whether we explicitly think of their presence and give thanks, or whether we care only about crossing from A-B. The bridge, as Heidegger writes, "gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals" [355].
It is this gathering of the fourfold that constitutes the thingness of the bridge and which stops it from simply being a human construction serving a purely mundane purpose. Now, obviously, most people continue to think of the bridge primarily as something with functional convenience; and, after that, perhaps as some kind of symbol. I know that and have to accept it. However, to those rare men and women who are attuned to objects as things (and who perhaps take them as their lovers), the bridge is never just a mere bridge and it is always more than just a symbol: it's a gathering - and it's also a location.
For just as the banks of the river do not exist prior to the bridge, neither does the location. As Heidegger notes:
"Before the bridge stands, there are of course many spots along the stream that can be occupied by something. One of them proves to be a locale, and does so because of the bridge. Thus the bridge does not first come to a locale to stand in it; rather, a locale comes into existence only by virtue of the bridge." [356]
Similarly, the bridge doesn't take up space; on the contrary, just as it determines locales, so too does it allow for spaces. Building is the creation and joining of spaces and just as love bridges the gap between objects, so do bridges love the space between things.
