Additionally, it’s a way for people to start new volunteer projects or even jobs with flexible work schedules and working careers.” The earlier one can withdraw, the more travel time one has before health issues start to limit activity. “Anxiety can influence people’s physical and mental health, saddling their enthusiasm and resulting in conditions like severe depression. “Eliminating the requirements and tension of professional life can improve one’s health and wellbeing,” says Elena Jones, a personal finance expert and founder at Finance Jar. I also enjoy writing for a living and the structure my current employed life provides.īut even people who provide financial advice for retirement also note the mental benefits of slowing down or quitting the 9-to-5 earlier than the average retirement age of 62 (for women) and 64 (for men). I don’t have the resources, as my partner notes (and I live with her). A combination of the pandemic, the current political landscape and the mental health bump that I received once I started working from home has caused me to rethink my timetable for getting out of the daily grind. In keeping with the design of the latter post-war plywood invention in which all functions are housed in a single form, the Drift Bridge also incorporates the roadway, seating, and railings as one structure, so to speak.I turn 50 in September and I’m ready to retire. Another source of inspiration was the surrounding ranch-style homes as well as Eamesian leg braces. Incidentally, the name of the small wood-steel hybrid bridge comes from its design concept, which in turn is based on the driftwood that accumulates in the bed of West Creek depending on seasonal water levels. Volkan Alkanoglu calls the interplay of prefabrication and rapid installation “plug-and-play urbanism” and an economical method for erecting medium-sized infrastructure structures – assuming accurate digital planning.

Installation on site took just a few hours thanks to prefabrication. The 19-meter pedestrian bridge borrows from shipbuilding with a steel-reinforced substructure clad in CNC-cut and turn-milled wood planks.

The fact that this has now changed may also have something to do with the way it was designed and built by architect Volkan Alkanoglu. At the point it now spans, there was traditionally no overpass and thus no way across the not-so-narrow creek for a length of seven apartment blocks. Since 2021, the shapely Drift Bridge in Fort Worth, Texas, has graced – and run across – West Creek. The Drift Bridge in Fort Worth is not only extraordinarily beautiful, but also a successful example of economic plug-and-play urbanism.

Allplan bridge 2021