Delhi delivers on art: The India Art Fair 2025 Parallel Programme and more
by Manu SharmaJan 30, 2025
•make your fridays matter with a well-read weekend
by Meghna MehtaPublished on : Feb 17, 2020
Thomas Heatherwick, the coveted and well-known British designer, turns 50 today (February 17, 2020). His prolific and varied work over the last two decades is characterised by ingenuity and originality. Heatherwick is known to have defied convention through 25 years of his architectural and design practice. Having founded the Heatherwick Studio in 1994, today, he is known for leading one of the most flourishing practices in the world.
Following the success of the UK Pavilion for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010, Heatherwick Studio went on to win exciting design briefs including the Learning Hub at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and the Google campuses in London and California in collaboration with BIG.
Celebrating an important milestone in Heatherwick’s life, STIR lists down 10 intriguing facts about his inspiring work and life.
1. Thomas Heatherwick grew up surrounded by design in its varied forms
His mother was a jeweller and his grandmother was a textile designer, who set up a textile studio for the Marks & Spencer stores. In his works he refers often to jewellery, explaining his attention to detail. The special light fixtures he was designing for the (now scrapped) Garden Bridge, he said, require him to think about ‘the same issues the jeweller deals with - how the materials work. We are reconciling human experiences and how things work. As a child, he attended various exhibitions and was involved in hands-on experiences with materials and crafts.
2. His mentor, Terence Conran, invited Heatherwick to build his first structure on the grounds of his own estate
Heatherwick met Conran at the Royal College of Art, London, who then became his first patron. Mesmerised by Heatherwick’s graduate thesis - an 18-foot-high gazebo consisting of 600 curved wooden slats put together to form two enormous curving surfaces - was too big to be built at the school, and hence, Conran opened the doors to his estate in Berkshire for Heatherwick to live there and build the project, treating him as a protégé.
3. The designer finds abstract briefs given to architecture students in schools frustrating
Heatherwick asserts that the focus on fantastical situations and hypothetical futures distracts from the real challenges that architects can currently address. He believes the real world is exciting in itself. In an interview with World Architecture News, Heatherwick has been quoted as saying, “Genius loci doesn't work by itself anymore to amplify difference,” referring to globalised procurements of places, which means places can be considered generic in many ways and local factors that influence a place are slowly taking a backseat.
4. He is a designer who does not drink coffee
Surprisingly, as opposed to coffee being every architect's most preferred drink, Heatherwick prefers tea and cake.
5. Heatherwick has been called the ‘Pied Piper of Architecture’, soon-to-be ‘21st-century version of Charles and Ray Eames’, ‘Poster Boy for Manhattan’s West Side Renaissance’ and the ‘Leonardo da Vinci of our times’
Paul Goldberg, a New York-based architecture critic, in his 2016 article for the Vanity Fair called Heatherwick the ‘Pied Piper of Architecture’ and on his way to becoming the ‘21st-century version of Charles and Ray Eames’, for his similarity to the designers impacting everything from furniture to film to exhibition design and becoming a household name synonymous with modern design. Conran was probably the first to recognise the talent that Heatherwick possessed and the waves he would create in architecture, by calling him the ‘Leonardo da Vinci of our times’ and wishing he would have had some of his genes. A recent Wall Street Journal article by Katherine Clarke addresses him as the ‘Poster Boy of Manhattan’s west side Renaissance’, where the British designer rejects the starchitect label reflecting on three of his New York City projects, including an under-construction condominium building – the Lantern project that sits on the High Line, close to his other favourably celebrated project – the Vessel.
6. Heatherwick’s dream project is to design prisons
He wishes to design a better environment for prisoners in order to create a place of learning rather than hurting people. Not wanting to bring in humanism in prisons alone, he wishes to design anything where people will be more hopeful such as housing in the UK, hospitals, and schools where he can make a difference.
7. The Garden Bridge and the Vessel have been centres of critical discussions and controversies
Innovation and out-of-the box thinking brings speculation. Two of Heatherwick Studio's projects have been widely discussed, more for their political context than the design itself. The Garden Bridge in London, designed to be a fully pedestrian and cyclist bridge, faced challenges as most of the cost was being borne by taxpayers, the budgets increased every few years and the eventual non-realisation of the project. The Vessel in New York as part of the Hudson Yards development project is being critiqued to hamper in the near future the character of the original meat district of New York that will be transformed with soaring skyscrapers.
8. The drawings and model of the Vessel were kept a secret - locked in a cabinet at the owner’s office for two years
The owner Stephen Ross claims the design ‘blew his mind’ and decided to build it even when the price escalated to twice the planned figures. Even before it was built, Ross believed that Heatherwick’s Vessel would become not only a symbol of Hudson Yards but of New York City itself. To make sure it was a well-kept secret for two years, Ross kept the model and all of Heatherwick’s drawings in a cabinet in company’s office to which he had the only key.
9. Heatherwick likes to call his team, the ‘problem solvers’ and has a full-fledged wood, metal shop and three-dimensional printers
Unlike most architecture and design offices, Heatherwick Studio is able to create prototypes for almost every design it produces. It is big enough to have contained a full-size mock-up of the rear section of the red London double-decker bus—the updated Routemaster.
10. Some of Heatherwick’s unknown projects - design of Christian Louboutin perfume bottles, the Longchamp tote bag, the Towers of Silence for the Parsi community in Mumbai and the Temple in Kagoshima
Heatherwick expanded his portfolio to product design, and the studio collaborated with Christian Louboutin to design a collection of bottles for his debut range of women fragrances in 2015 and designed a tote bag for Longchamp with a spiralling zipper. The Towers of Silence is an aviary designed for the Zoroastrians in Mumbai to carry out their burial practices to give the dead privacy as well as seclusion. The Buddhist temple in Kagoshima in Japan designed as a place of worship as well as a depository for cremated remains was inspired from the falls of silk fabric of Buddhist priests.
Excerpts derived from Heatherwick’s interviews, conversations and articles published on Vanity Fair, Designboom, Dezeen, Wallpaper, World Architecture News and Wall Street Journal.
by Anmol Ahuja Sep 05, 2025
The film by Francesca Molteni and Mattia Colombo chronicles the celebrated architect’s legacy and pioneership in green architecture through four global projects and exclusive interviews.
by Anushka Sharma Sep 04, 2025
Sameep Padora, Megha Ramaswamy and Kyle Bergman reflected on the tryst between the real and reel in a ~multilog(ue) framing human narratives and experiences in cities.
by Anushka Sharma Sep 02, 2025
From climate-responsive housing in Bangladesh to cultural infrastructure in Palestine, the 2025 award recipients celebrate architecture that honours heritage and inspires hope.
by Aarthi Mohan Sep 01, 2025
Built with local materials and geographic metaphors, the kindergarten in Cameroon provides a learning environment shaped by the climate, culture and community.
make your fridays matter
SUBSCRIBEEnter your details to sign in
Don’t have an account?
Sign upOr you can sign in with
a single account for all
STIR platforms
All your bookmarks will be available across all your devices.
Stay STIRred
Already have an account?
Sign inOr you can sign up with
Tap on things that interests you.
Select the Conversation Category you would like to watch
Please enter your details and click submit.
Enter the 6-digit code sent at
Verification link sent to check your inbox or spam folder to complete sign up process
by Meghna Mehta | Published on : Feb 17, 2020
What do you think?