he man who dreamed up the whole idea of a water feature in the centre of Bradford will tomorrow see his vision realised – almost nine years on.

Celebrated architect Will Alsop will be at the official launch to judge what Bradford eventually made of his 2003 “masterplan” for the district, which advocated “flooding” the city centre and creating a park out of the middle of Bradford.

Alsop, who runs ALL Design, the practice he set up with Scott Lawrie last year to design “anything from a teaspoon to a city”, appeared in Bradford on a wave of publicity almost nine years ago to unveil his grand scheme which would see the so-called “Three-Fingered Hand” – a series of tentacles filled with regeneration wonder reaching out from the city centre – and, at its heart, in the re-christened “Bowl District”, a lake.

His plans drew lots of laughter and finger-pointing, but he was resolute in his ideas. Bradford didn’t need to look like every other city centre. It needed to be unique.

The usually black-clad architect has made a career of designing the unique – look at Cardiff Bay, or his proposed transformation of Barnsley to a “Tuscan hill village”, or his slab-like building balanced on a column in Toronto, or his redesigned Hamburg.

Alsop thinks big and then sits back to see what the planners do with his ideas. He initially wanted to surround City Hall with water; the eventual design is somewhat scaled down. Has he seen it yet?

“Not yet, though I’ll be there on Saturday. I did send a photographer up to take pictures from every possible angle so I could see what it was all about.”

And the verdict of the man who very rarely minces his words?

“I’m very proud of it,” he says. He laughs and adds: “I can’t think of any other city with a puddle in it!”

Then he enthusiastically waxes lyrical about the City Park: “I love the idea that this Pool, on calm days, reflects the grand architecture of City Hall. You get two City Halls... and all for the price of a puddle.”

The man who once told the T&A that “if things go on for too long, people get despondent” is not overly concerned that it has taken since 2003 for his lake – or puddle – to be created.

“The point is, they have done it. It’s a very important focus for the city, it can become a meeting place for the people. It has an inherent beauty, a sense of calm and peace.

“Bradford has some very high-quality architecture, and now the city can start to add to the Mirror Pool, to build up a unique city centre.”