What can a designer bring to the world of architecture?
For the past few years, an office development tucked away overlooking an old canal behind Paddington Station, in London, has been attracting clusters of people who come to see a footbridge. Made of steel and wood, and crossing the water in eight short sections, the bridge looks ordinary, but, when a boat needs to pass, it arcs up and back from one side like a scorpion’s tail, and folds itself into a neat octagon on the opposite bank.

The Rolling Bridge is the best-known project of the British designer Thomas Heatherwick. Recently, Heatherwick told me that he had started from the premise that most drawbridges look good only when they are extended across the water; when they’re open, he said, they’re “like a footballer with a broken leg.” He hatched the idea of a normal-looking bridge that would reveal its secret only when it began to open, and he figured out a hydraulic system that could be embedded in the railings, so that the bridge would have no visible cables or piers. The Rolling Bridge opens silently, and the whole process seems almost magical, as if the bridge were initiating the movement itself. So many people want to see the bridge in action that its operators now oblige every Friday at noon, whether or not any boats need to pass.
www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/skyline/2008/05/12/080512crsk_skyline_goldberger