New Pedestrian Bridge

Paddington Development Corporation has just unveiled, or rather unrolled, a startling new pedestrian bridge which crosses an inlet from the Basin in front of the new Marks and Spencer headquarters.

PICTURE 1

This group of young people going for lunch could not have suspected how the bridge would look in a few minutes time.

PICTURE 2

Paddington Basin staff pressed a few buttons and it started to bend and rise in what the designer Thomas Heatherwick describes as a 'sensuous manner'. Ooh, eee.

PICTURE 3

It gradually reared up like a prehistoric animal.

PICTURE 4

And then was eventually rolled into a cuddly ball.

PICTURE 5

It's all done by a fiendishly clever system of hydraulic rams inside the handrail. So, it can be rolled up when M&S want to bring a hospitality boat into the inlet.

The Rolling Bridge has encountered no snags unlike another high-tech artistic construction, the bouncing Hungerford Bridge on the Thames, and it seems able to take most loads with ease.