Max Stafford's Kennel

From a distance, Middlesbrough’s most famous bridge looks somehow unfinished. That’s not to say it’s not attractive though; it’s a beautiful-looking thing. Resplendent in blue paintwork, it resembles two enormous cranes meeting across the River Tees, a filigree web of mathematically ordered steel beams. At each end, sets of steel ropes anchor the bridge to the ground. This is some serious engineering, something to marvel at, and then be overawed by, the closer you get and the bigger it looms overhead. However, its unusual design makes it look like it is only the centre section of what might otherwise have been a much longer bridge. It’s as though the ramps connecting a lofty bridge deck to the ground have gone missing, or never been built in the first place.

Tees Transporter Bridge at night. Photo by Rich [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0] via this flickr page

But its distinctive appearance is in fact the…