Olympic cauldron designs were 'copied' The design studio's pitch was a structure of petals on tall stems which would travel from all of the participating countries to then be assembled into a flower-like canopy. Their structure was designed to collect rainwater and generate power from solar cells rather than burning a constant supply of natural gas like Mr Heatherwick's design, but the two are aesthetically similar. Both structures used the narrative sequence of the 205 nations coming together, with the metal parts being returned to the competing countries after the Olympics. Atopia is only now free to make its claims since a restrictive confidentially agreement was lifted in January. The 2007 restrictive non-disclosure agreement prevented all companies from promoting any work related to the Olympics but was lifted after campaigning and a government payment of £2m to the British Olympic Association. Locog's former design principle Kevin Owens said strands of Atopia's work may have become part of the eventual product purely by staying in the minds of committee members. Mr Heatherwick denied the claims and said: "The ludicrous accusation that LOCOG briefed us to work with, develop or implement a pre-existing idea and that we acted in accordance with this briefing is completely and entirely untrue. Before this week, I - and the entire team I was working with - knew absolutely nothing about this proposal, or the ideas it is claimed it contained. Danny and I evolved the idea for the cauldron over many months, in iterative rounds of discussions and I am appalled at the suggestion that either of us would let ourselves be influenced by any previous work. We were most definitely not steered by LOCOG towards this or any other idea. Any suggestion to the contrary is an affront to our creative integrity. Danny Boyle added: "As Artistic Director of the London 2012 Olympic Ceremony, I asked Thomas Heatherwick to take on the design of the Olympic Cauldron because of the integrity and originality of his ideas. I also absolutely and categorically reject any suggestion, whatever its motive, that Thomas or I were influenced by anything other than our obligation to create a ceremonial work of art that celebrated British originality, creativity and engineering. This is total nonsense and must not be allowed to spoil our appreciation of Thomas's magnificent work. London 2012's former Head of Ceremonies said: "Neither these nor any other images or presentations played any part in the briefing I gave to Danny Boyle and Thomas Heatherwick at the beginning of the process to create the Olympic and Paralympic Cauldron. The design for the cauldron came about solely from the creative conversations between Danny, Thomas and myself.