COME TOGETHER

ACCLAIMED DESIGNER THOMAS HEATHERWICK CREATES JOYFUL STRUCTURES THAT STIMULATE AND ENGAGE PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD

- WORDS MARK C. O'FLAHERTY

When is an architect not an architect? Thomas Heatherwick has designed Azabudai Hills in Tokyo, the Bund Finance Centre in Shanghai, the Google offices in King's Cross in London, and Little Island in New York's Hudson River Park, and is now reconfiguring London's BT Tower - an iconic 1960s landmark - into a luxury hotel. His studio is also working with architecture firm SPPARC on the £1.3 billion regeneration of Olympia, transforming the west London district into a destination brimming with restaurants, hotels, offices, live music venues and a theatre - while also restoring the 140-year-old exhibition venue for which the area is best known.

The 55-year-old designer is behind some of the most talked-about buildings of the past 20 years, but significantly and legally isn't an architect himself. He does, however, have a lot to say about them. In his 2023 book, Humanise: A Maker's Guide to Building Our World, Heatherwick explains why he thinks the past 100 years of city planning have been tainted by the role of the qualified architect, working as gatekeepers with their legally protected title, “seeing themselves as artists”, fixated with “the craze of modernism” and ultimately responsible for “boring” buildings.

Heatherwick wasn't given a smooth ride when he published Humanise, but even slavish devotees of Le Corbusier (“the king of boring”) had to admit he was on to something. We all find joy in visual complexity and there are too many dull buildings around. Their impact has been a downer, the polar opposite of Stendhal syndrome (an emotional response to beauty). So what's going on and what's the solution?