Possible the most innovative designer/architect alive today, Thomas Heatherwick is also one of the most humble individuals I've ever seen, especially on TV.

His designs are incredibly quackly, outrageous and yet magnificient. Check these out:

Rolling Bridge

"B of the Bang", Manchester

And how about this for the design of a Buddhist temple?

And this is what Heatherwick did after observing the patterns and shapes that metallic liquid hardens into when poured into a vortex of water. The point was that liquid designs itself and one needn't have to 'refine' or 'modify' anything.

So Heatherwick took the finger-sized pieces and used one of those as a model for the (below) 30-meter intervention of natural shape - made of a few hundred thousand crystal balls and wires - into the rectangleness of modern urban building.

The place was too "square", so Heatherwick decided to make a very UN-square statement smack in the middle. Awesome.

Bleigiessen

For more, check out Mark McGuinness' post on Heatherwick.