It all started in 1993 when Richard Rogers wrote an article saying “how are we going to celebrate the millennium”? That led to a competition for ideas organized by the Sunday Times and the Architecture Foundation.
David Marks (my late husband and co-founder of Marks Barfield) and I were two young architects who had just set up our practice. Another project had fallen through, so we had a bit of spare time. We entered the competition, and we agreed it shouldn’t be a landmark that people just look at, it should be a landmark that that is celebratory, that people can participate in.
