Architect who created the London Eye

Born: December 15, 1952;

Died: October 6, 2017

DAVID Marks, who has died aged 64, was a visionary architect who, with his wife and business partner Julia Barfield, created what would become the most visited tourist attraction in the UK: the London Eye.

However, there was a time when it looked like it might never happen. Marks and Barfield originally suggested the idea in response to a competition launched in 1993 by the Architectural Foundation and the Sunday Times. The aim was to come up with an inspirational architectural idea to mark the millennium.

The idea which Marks and Barfield came up with was a giant ferris wheel right in the centre of London. The concept, said Marks, was to provide London with what many cities around the world had but London lacked: a publicly accessible vantage point to see the city as a whole, and from a fresh perspective.

"We wanted to create something accessible to everyone," said Marks. "The idea of the wheel allowed us to create an effortless way to get a lot of people up very, very high.” The couple also thought the project would be good publicity for their fledgling practice.

In the end, there was no official winner of the competition, but the idea stuck in Marks's mind and he was determined to make it happen anyway. The couple re-mortgaged their house and established a company to create and promote the wheel, but they were originally met with considerable scepticism and opposition.

Gradually though, the project started to gather momentum. British Airways became a sponsor and Marks found a site on the South Bank opposite the Houses of Parliament. They also raised the £85million it would cost, with most of the money coming from BA and Tussauds.

Six and a half years later, the huge engineering and construction project began with segments of the wheel being floated down the river. The wheel was then lifted into place, although when it ran into some problems, Richard Branson, owner of BA's rival Virgin, floated a balloon over the construction site with a sign on it that which said “British Airways can’t get it up”.

Marks saw the funny side but he knew what he was doing was remarkable: indeed, the London Eye project was the first time an object of its size had ever been lifted from the vertical to horizontal. "And we were doing it in the middle of London, right in the centre of the city," he said.

Immediately, the Eye was a hit and it has since gone on to become a much beloved tourist institution. It attracts three million visitors a year and has so far seen some 60 million paying customers take the trip. The day after it opened, on December 31, 1999, Marks and Barfield were awarded MBEs in the new year's honours list.

For Marks, the success of the project was a vindication of his stubbornness six years earlier, but, like much of his work, he also saw it as having a social and progressive element. Marks and Barfield ensured that one per cent of the income from the Eye would always go to the local community and earlier in their life, the couple helped developed squatter settlements when they were travelling in Peru.

Born in Sweden, David Marks had studied at the Architectural Association in London, which is where he met Barfield; they married in 1981. They launched their own practice eight years later but the recession of the early 1990s had a serious impact on their work. For a while, they were doing tiny projects to keep going - then along came the millennium competition.

Marks remained proud of the Eye, although he had a falling out with British Airways after they sold their stake in 2005, and the couple yearned to do something similar. Eventually, they developed i360, a viewing tower in Brighton which replicates the London Eye experience except that visitors go straight up in one pod rather than round and round in several. The vision in Marks's mind was to create a vertical pier.

Opening in August 2016, Marks believed the tower could be as good for Brighton as the Eye was for London. “It is a regeneration project, it will create jobs, it will bring more people to the city, it will encourage them to stay longer, it will fill their day more, it will encourage them to visit other attractions," he said. "The reason we are doing it is because we want it to be doing those things for Brighton."

Marks and Barfield lived in a house in Stockwell in south London in which they had originally been squatting when they were young. They saved the building from demolition and restored it as their permanent home.

Marks, who died of cancer, is survived by his wife and three children.