A view from the bridge
Today's Guardian questions the wisdom of Thomas Heatherwick's garden bridge project, which has now been submitted for planning permission. Though anyone who stands in the way of a project that has Joanna Lumley's support has to think carefully, not least because you may have the gurkhas to contend with, I share the view that the undoubtedly multi-talented Heatherwick is overreaching this time. The proposed location - South Bank to Temple - is not a bad one (the 1944 Abercrombie plan suggested a bridge here). But does a new bridge need a new design? The Millennium Bridge opposite Tate Modern does the job well, now that the wobbling has been sorted out, and is as elegant a structure as any that emerged from the boom years of lottery projects - its deck structure is almost unbelievably slender from some angles. The design approach evokes, more evidently than some other Foster projects of recent decades, the pre-peerage Norman Foster's interests in economy of means, and ...