Right, the Seed Cathedral – Heatherwick Studio’s design for the UK Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010. Far right, top, the Pavilion’s striking, spiky exterior. Far right, below, a scale drawing of the plans

76 Voyager THOMAS HEATHERWICK STYLE Images: Thomas Heatherwick Studio, portrait: Elena Heatherwick Elena portrait: Studio, Heatherwick Thomas Images:

London’s own da vinci His redesign of London’s beloved Routemaster bus has endeared product designer Thomas Heatherwick and his studio to The capital. this month he faces a global audience when the Olympic flame reaches the cauldron he has designed for it. Is he apprehensive?

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‘I worry. Lots of creative people I’ve known have got to a certain point and then seemed to stop. Stopped innovating and got stuck repeating themselves.’ These words are somewhat unexpected coming from Thomas Heatherwick, a product designer so prolific that in less than two decades he has developed more than 150 projects, has been described by Sir as ‘a Leonardo da Vinci of our times’, is currently the focus of a V&A exhibition and the subject of a new 600-page monograph, and this month faces a global audience via his design for the Olympic flame cauldron. He’s unfazed by the prospect – after all, his UK Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010, the Seed Cathedral, was visited by more than eight million people – but, it turns out, he does worry. Sitting at a Last Supper-like wooden table in his studio, looking like a mischievous Jesus Christ, he quickly goes on to explain why this is a good thing. ‘I use worry. I believe in worry. I believe it’s important to worry because it’s an energy that holds things together,’ he says. Looking around the King’s Cross studio looks and acts like a spinning top but still The hydraulic thomas he has spent 18 years developing, it’s easy to works as a seat; the Belsay Sitooterie bristles pumps that power Heatherwick’s Heatherwick’s see what he means. It’s a bright, open space, hairily but is a peaceful garden gazebo; Rolling Bridge, London where every surface is covered with objects and the ‘’ bus for London above, are Basin that could cause a sense of chaos but appear combines the much-loved features of located in the basement of an Rolling Bridge, 2004 to have been carefully organised – which, as the original, such as the open platform, adjacent building, With this project for a new any worrier knows, is the best way to ensure and innovative twists like two staircases. so when it operates pedestrian bridge in west London, that everything goes to plan. Large-scale urban planning and the bridge is Heatherwick Studio began to eerily silent think of a bridge ‘getting out of A strategy of planning and methodical architectural projects, such as the Teeside the way’ rather than ‘opening’, process has seen Heatherwick create a body Power Station, the Buddhist temple in and arrived at a design that rolls of projects and work that is impressive in its Kagoshima, Japan, the Pacific Place shopping up into a circular sculpture. Where to see it The bridge is on breadth and scale, and has critics reaching the canal behind Paddington for superlatives. They also tend to use words station and is opened every like ‘magical’, ‘playful’ and ‘beguiling’ when ‘it’s important Friday at midday. describing his work, and the people he is New Bus for London, 2010 likened to are more often inventors – slightly to worry; it’s an Heatherwick Studio took a big batty fictional ones like Caractacus Potts or risk in redesigning the iconic 50s Routemaster bus, the last Nick Park’s Wallace, or real-life eccentrics like energy that holds bus to be specifically designed W Heath Robinson – than designers. Yet that’s things together’ for London. But they came up what the 42-year-old Londoner started out as, trumps, winning universal acclaim first as a child absorbed in dismantling old objects to create something new, next as an mall in and A Thousand Trees inquisitive young lover of workmanship and centre in Shanghai, are similarly expressive crafts, and then as a student of 3D design at and inventive. All benefit from the deeply Manchester Polytechnic and furniture design original thinking that informs Heatherwick’s at London’s . approach and project development. Since those early days of product design, ‘First, it’s about trying to figure out the Heatherwick and his growing studio have issue within a problem, and that raises all diversified into urban planning, architecture sorts of questions,’ he says. ‘Defining the core and sculpture, all united by a unique blend issue leads you forward – much in the way a of invention and design. His Spun chair thorough police investigation will lead you

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for the new three-door version of the open-platform bus, despite having to comply with a huge range of legislative requirements. Where to see it The new bus currently operates on the number 38 route; see page 11.

Bleigiessen at the Wellcome Trust, 2005 Inspired by the space – a 30 metre-high shaft – and the to the answer.’ He makes it sound simple – custom of ‘sky burial’ in towers – that all point Top, the striking expertise of his mother, who as, indeed, are the core ideas behind many to a growing interest in urban environments steel exterior was a jeweller, Heatherwick and of the seafront the studio used glass bead-like of his projects. That’s perhaps because and the way we live – and die – in them. East Beach Café spheres to create a sculpture another thing that interests him is minimalism, Which leads us to discuss something he’d in Littlehampton. based on the properties and which he interprets as ‘finding the essence really like to design: a hospital. ‘Some of the Built in 2007, movement of falling water. It it won the studio of a project and using it as a focus’. worst environments in Britain are health occupies the eight-storey atrium a prestigious RIBA of this charitable organisation The UK Pavilion at the Shanghai World environments, from the inability to sit with a National Award and exhibition space. Expo, designed to promote ’ loved one comfortably to windows so high up Where to see it The Wellcome Millennium Seedbank, is, he says, a good people can’t see anything but sky when they’re Trust is at 215 Euston Road, near Euston Square tube station; example. ‘In a way it was the most minimalist lying down… I’m sure that with the same wellcome.ac.uk. pavilion at the Expo, because it just had budgets so much more could be achieved.’ 60,000 different types of seeds. Nothing else.’ You can’t help feeling that if any studio Heatherwick’s solution was to encase the could do it, it would be Heatherwick’s, seeds in 60,000 transparent acrylic rods. not least because the studio itself is such The structure won the Expo’s Gold Medal for a passion. ‘In a way, the biggest creative Best Pavilion Design and the prestigious RIBA project over the years has been creating Lubetkin Prize, despite being created with the studio, and every spare moment around a budget that was half that of all the other projects is filled with ensuring that this is Western nations. Or perhaps because of it. something to be treated as a precious, ‘My job is to transform whatever the evolving, never-stopping project,’ he says. Paperhouse, 2003-2009 limitations are into positives. So with the Heatherwick’s enthusiasm for each With this little newspaper kiosk, UK Pavilion, we decided to take the football project is infectious, and shows little sign of the studio set itself the challenge of a kiosk that could be set up pitch-sized site and only use one sixth of it, so waning. ‘It’s like long-distance running or a in 10 minutes rather than the that it would stand out in the cacophony and steeplechase; you just go over hurdle after hour it took to set up traditional visual bombardment of all the other pavilions hurdle until you reach the end point, which ones. The shape of the kiosk comes from the steeped tiers trying to say everything there was to say for us is when the thing is built. Until then, of the shelving inside that about their countries. We thought in that you do everything that you can humanly holds the magazines. situation, the thing to do was not to try to do to make it the best it can possibly be. Where to see it The first two kiosks have been installed outside say everything, but just to say one thing.’ That’s how I see my role. To make something Sloane Square and Earls Court Since then, Heatherwick has undertaken a the best it can possibly be.’ tube stations. series of projects – among them the Capitol Thomas Heatherwick: Making by Olympic Flame Theatre city centre redevelopment project Thomas Heatherwick is published by Cauldron, 2012 in Singapore, a park in Abu Dhabi and even Thames & Hudson, £38. Heatherwick This design will be revealed a Parsi funerary site in Mumbai, where the Studio: Designing the Extraordinary is at the opening ceremony on 27th of this month. deceased are disposed according to the at the V&A until 30 Sept; vam.ac.uk

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