Design - Hugh Aldersey-Williams wonders at the skill of the London Eye architects

The question is obvious: what to do for an encore? The London Eye has become the popular focus of all that is good about Britain. Yet it is the creation of architectural unknowns. Who are they? And what magic are they not capable of? The short answer is that they are David Marks and Julia Barfield, and perhaps it is right that even they, especially they, do not seem to know what to do next.

Of course, it helps that the wheel is everything that the Dome is not. Both are circular marvels of structural engineering. But the differences are more instructive than the similarities. The Dome is didactic; the wheel is fun. The Dome is pretentious; the wheel is honest. Both literally and functionally, the wheel is transparent; the Dome is opaque. There was a moment during its construction, a year or so ago, when the Dome was a skein of wire tracery, beautiful and evanescent. But now it is the wheel, hoisted aloft from where it lay heavily across the Thames, that dissolves with impossible lightness against the sky.

The first break for the London Eye architects was winning a magazine competition for a bridge of the future. Their entry - to span the Grand Canyon - was a bold, asymmetric structure modelled on the vertebrae of a dinosaur. They came fourth in the more serious competition to design a stadium for Berlin's 2000 Olympics bid. Their fee for participating would have been insignificant to most competing firms, but it allowed the small Clapham practice to run for six lean months during the last recession. Their major built work is a watersports centre in Liverpool.

The wheel, too, began as an entry in an entirely hypothetical competition organised by the Architecture Foundation. The act of imagination in designing it is perhaps not so great as the vision required to translate such a dream into reality, which has been the pair's labour of love in the seven years since then.

As everybody now knows, it takes only half an hour to be convinced of the rightness of their vision. While London slogged and slouched and stole and swore, I rode high above the spot where William Blake wrote his poem to the city. The rotation is so smooth and silent that one never stops to think of the engineering wizardry that ensures that each bubble rotates in sync with the wheel in order to remain upright. The ascent is surprisingly rapid - very soon one is conscious of helicopters that seem to be flying at the same level - while the spell near the top is relatively extended, though still all too short.

Local views, so well known, suddenly become unfamiliar from this vantage point. There are unexpected marvels and horrors - Nelson's Column from above; the Post Office Tower (as we should still call it) glimpsed for once in its entirety on its impossibly slender stem; the Kafkaesque inner courtyards of County Hall. There is discussion as to the merits of introducing a commentary explaining the sights, doubtless with stirring backing music. This is not a good idea. Nor should the capsules be cluttered with panoramic keys or displays of superfluous data. Far better simply to allow people to look. There is pleasure enough in making one's own identifications and in eavesdropping on others as they locate an oft-visited park or, as I heard in my cabin, the hospital where their child was born. If the operators of the wheel are looking for something useful to do, they might, however, consider banning mobile phones.

Back on ground level, there is an endearing scattiness about the Marks Barfield team that is at odds with the rigour of their creation. Their PR is shambolic. When I meet them, they are stuffing complimentary tickets into envelopes for local community groups. I ask Julia Barfield what they want to do next, expecting to hear a list of ambitious projects already on the go. Instead, I hear self-analysis. They are acutely conscious of what happened to Richard Rogers who, despite beating scores of other architects to design the successful Pompidou Centre, had little work for years afterwards. In Rogers's case, potential clients may have assumed he was too busy or too grand for them. For Marks Barfield, there is the additional risk that people will assume that they only do wheels. "We want to try to avoid that. We do need more work," they assert. They have been on a management course for architects. "It was very useful. They suggested conventional business things such as benchmarking and getting feedback from clients and other consultants."

Yes, but what are they actually going to do next? "We just noted down some things the other day, actually," says Barfield, pulling out the very postcard on which these aphorisms are written. "We want to continue experimenting; we want to continually develop; then there's 'creation of architecture of joy and delight' - how do you define that? Keep pushing the boundaries; keep creating the unexpected. On the other hand, we're very keen to produce buildings that work. These are the kinds of themes we came up with. Also, there's the idea of the architecture as a kind of engine for promoting cities, for regeneration. Architecture has the power to do that; it has the power to inspire people. We have a sense that we can do anything." I am sure they can.

To book tickets for the British Airways London Eye, call 0870 5000 600

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