In Lost Hills, California—a farming community in the Central Valley—an intensely green bridge with a twisted form that recalls the spiraling tail of a lizard extends across California Highway 46. 

Wonder Bridge is a pedestrian crossing over the Paso Robles highway designed by SPF:architects. Stewart and Lynda Resnick—the family behind The Wonderful Company, the world’s biggest producers of pistachios and almonds—funded the project. Prior to the bridge’s construction, California Highway 46 bisected the town of Lost Hills and prevented a safe crossing for pedestrians. The Resnicks own extensive amounts of agricultural land in Central California, making them among the largest water users in the nation. The family has a history funding community-oriented projects in Lost Hills, including a soccer field and park. 

SPF:architect’s Zoltan Pali, the project lead, described Wonder Bridge as the Resnicks’ “gift to the city,” an acknowledgment of their substantial presence in the region. The bridge references The Wonderful Company, in two ways. Its bright green railings nod to the company’s corporate color, while a cross-section of the bridge would replicate the company’s logo in a “tongue-and-cheek” fashion. 

SPF:architects also designed two other California bridges, the Rainbow Bridge in Long Beach and the Taylor Yard Bridge in Los Angeles. Though this past experience made the firm an easy choice for the project, Wonder Bridge is distinct. As Pali said in an interview with AN, “SPF’s work tends to be fairly individual to the project.” Other Wonder Bridge collaborators included AHBE / MIG as landscape architects, DSC and Dokken Engineering as structural engineers, and Swanson Engineering as civil engineers.

Conscious of the Resnicks’ budget, SPF:architects used relatively simple technology for the bridge, that included a cladding system. Pali described the project to AN as “typical from a structural standpoint.” He added that the geometry of the bridge was what was “unique and interesting about the project.” The twisting exterior of the bridge, culminating in a ramp on each side, fulfilled both aesthetic and practical concerns: the design references a lizard’s tail and the manner in which water “swirls around in a circular space.” The bridge’s design allows rainwater to spiral down into an area where it can be contained and reutilized for irrigation. 

The consideration of irrigation was likely no coincidence, as the Resnicks’ crops require an estimated 150 billion gallons of water a year—for reference, San Francisco uses about 70 billion gallons annually. It is perhaps this complicated legacy which fueled Stewart and Lynda Resnicks’ philanthropy. Fittingly, Pali characterized Wonder Bridge as the Resnicks’ move to “give back to the community.