Thomas Heatherwick's Folding Footbridge

It's in Northwest London, a wonderful solution to the problem of a creating an elegant, retractable bridge in a tight space.

A bookofjoe Design Award 2004 Winner.

Pilar Viladas wrote about it in this past Sunday's New York Times magazine.

Here's the story.
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London Bridge Is Curling Up

It isn't every day that you see a steel bridge that lifts upward like a trained seal standing on its front flippers and curls itself into a ball - or, more precisely, an octahedron.

The almost-40-foot-long remote-controlled hydraulic bridge - which spans an offshoot of the Grand Union Canal - is one of three that were commissioned for Paddington Basin, a mixed-use development in Northwest London.

Popularly known as the Rolling Bridge, it was designed for foot traffic by Thomas Heatherwick, a 34-year-old Briton whose multidisciplinary design studio has ventured into the realms of sculpture and architecture.

''The job of a bridge is to get out of the way,'' Heatherwick explains, but he says that most drawbridges look ''broken'' when angled in the air.

''We were looking for something more transformative.''

And more theatrical.

Heatherwick deliberately made the bridge structure appear ordinary, so that when it lies flat you won't give it a second look - until, that is, it begins its graceful gymnastics.

''How it works is the extraordinary aspect of it,'' he says.

Heatherwick loves to confound expectations.

In 1997, he designed a window display for Harvey Nichols in London that kept going, right onto the sidewalk.

He is just a few weeks away from completing the tallest sculpture in England, outside a stadium in Manchester.

A bit taller than the Statue of Liberty minus its base, it has been compared to a giant porcupine, and because people will drive under it, Heatherwick sees it as a piece of urban infrastructure.

On a much smaller scale, his tote bag for Longchamp features a spiral zipper that allows the bag to expand.

This is thoroughly in keeping with Heatherwick's belief that ''it's not enough to make a nice shape - it has to challenge in some way.''