Thomas Heatherwick: Humanist, Inventor, Designer of Dreamscapes
Design and strategic thinking: that’s what Thomas Heatherwick has down to a science.
He’s known for being the brain behind big-picture urban planning projects and some of the most talked about structures that people use every day, including the New Routemaster design for London’s classic double decker bus (TFL’s first facelift in over 50 years). He’s behind the Olympic Cauldron and the UK pavilion at Expo 2010; the Garden Bridge, a pedestrian walkway across the River Thames; and numerous projects in Asia, including the Pacific Place renovation in Hong Kong, and the much-discussed Learning Hub in Singapore. Heatherwick has recently received the go-ahead from the British Council for his proposal to convert a Victorian Coal Yard in the rapidly-developing King’s Cross area to a destination canal-side shopping plaza.
Part of the reason why Heatherwick has been so creative and successful in his career is that he uses rational inquiry in a team environment and aims for timeless design rather than work that reflects a particular trend at any moment. This makes for landmarks that last. He’s known for being a leader and design boss that listens to his team and undertakes risky projects “in a spirit of curiosity and experimentation.”
With a team of 180 architects, designers, engineers and makers of all kinds, he has these creatives help on new projects and proposals from his studio-workshop fusion space in King’s Cross. Heatherwick creates projects that are modern and useful at the same time, that both answer age-old predicaments and provoke new questions to be asked. His studio has “a profound commitment to finding innovative design solutions, with a dedication to artistic thinking and the latent potential of materials and craftsmanship.”
On Being An Inventor
“I’m wary of the word ‘inventing’,” says the British designer Thomas Heatherwick, “because in the British psyche the word ‘inventor’ is immediately linked with ‘mad’. For me, inventing is problem-solving.”
On Garden Bridge:
“Boris Johnson is not really sure what [the Garden bridge] is for, but he does call it ‘a wonderful environment for a crafty cigarette or a romantic assignation.’”
“When I heard of the garden bridge idea, it seemed so clear and powerful, the notion of using nature to scale down an enormous piece of potentially wind-swept exposed link. That’s what struck me – not treating the bridge just as a link, but as a place. I’ve always been interested in projects that work at multiple levels.”
On Car Parks
“It’s is a weird place but I find it exciting because its infrastructure is taken so seriously … it needs multistory car parks. But what world-class example of a well designed car park can you think of? There’s not much competition and they’re a very cheap building typology so you could build the best car park in the world for a fraction of the cost of the fanciest new art gallery… I’d like to work on the world’s best car park.”
On the humanism of good design:
“It should be about every aspect of your life, from visiting the launderette to visiting the nursing home where I’ve been seeing my grandmother in her last days. You can make people feel valued or cared for by design alone. It’s not purely about money. It’s about how we choose to value human experience.”
