United Kingdom
fibre optics data-transmission fibre into terrazzo,
then grinding off the ends, so ‘we could make pav-
ing that by day just looked like ordinary paving, but
by night had points of light in it’.^2
This ambitious concept soon ran into the realities
of budgetary constraints and had to be abandoned,
but the notion of an unusual material which unified
the space without entirely filling it remained. One
of the most costly aspects of the lava-flow idea
had been the curving shapes. Every piece of the
square would have needed to have been uniquely
cast. Straight edges were more economical and
this thought led to the idea of a carpet. In his experi-
ments with the terrazzo company, Heatherwick had
been trying to find an inexpensive way to bring col-
our into a paving material and had been investigat-
ing the idea of using broken glass. Though he does
not regard himself as an artist, perhaps there was
something of conceptual art here; the conception
that a material so hard, sharp and brittle as glass
could be turned into a suitable material to pave a
city clearly appealed to the designer.
The idea of a material which lit up at night also
proved too expensive. Heatherwick resisted the
suggestion that a small part of the square might
be treated in this way, but then found a solution
which satisfied him. By creating benches which
appeared to be strips cut from the carpet, he also
created voids which could be filled with coloured
neon tubes. Lights could be installed beneath the
bollards, shining up through the punctured fabric. In
this way it appeared that the whole carpet had been
laid over some bright molten material which shone
through gaps and fissures, rather as if the lava flow
was still there but smothered beneath a rug.
