Expo innovator still sprouting unique designs
Print Edition
DESIGNER Thomas Heatherwick decided to create a “seed cathedral” to showcase the work of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London and its Millennium Seed Bank for the UK Pavilion at the World Expo 2010 Shanghai.
So he constructed a wooden box 15 meters wide and 10 meters high. Some 60,000 acrylic rods protruded through the walls and roof, each with seeds encased in the perspex tip — some 250,000 seeds in total.
Visited by more than 8 million people over six months, it was awarded the Expo’s gold medal for Best Pavilion Design.
Dubbed “the Da Vinci of our times” by his mentor and design guru Terence Conran, Heatherwick is known his work at the 2012 London Olympics — whether a cauldron for the flame or a new design of London’s iconic double-decker bus.
Since establishing his studio in 1994, after studying at Manchester Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art in London, the Englishman has turned his hand to areas including engineering, product design, urban planning, architecture, photography and sculpture.
“My studio was set up originally to try — and it sounds simplistic — to make a difference in the world, however little, whatever it is,” Heatherwick tells Shanghai Daily in a downtown cafe, during a recent visit to the city for the Great Festival of Creativity.
The London-born polymath explains how he tried to achieve this through his passion for invention and design and gave his thoughts on China’s urban development.
Q: What phase do you think China is now at in terms of innovation and creating?
A: I’m not an expert on China, so this is very much an outsider’s view. But I think often positive things are motivated by a critical eye that sees things could be better. In the past 20 years, there has been a huge shift in financial conditions and in the confidence to build infrastructures.
Looking from the outside, I feel that the initial things created are largely versions of things from other places. Office buildings look like they could be office buildings anywhere in the world, and so do hotels and housing blocks.
I know that Chinese people are rightly proud of their incredible history and culture.
And the good thing about that pride is that they will look at the process happening now — look at the things being built that don’t have their own spirit and soul.
So in a way this will generate the impetus to do things that feel particular to China and build a new phase to Chinese culture. But it’s very hard. I mean, everywhere in the world has this problem but it’s quite clearly framed in China and maybe I can see it because I have fresh eyes coming here.
Q: What challenges you think Chinese architects are facing?
A: I think one of the challenges in China is that no one is doing anything small. Everything is enormous but human beings aren’t enormous. We are still the same size we were thousands of years ago.
A few hundred years ago, when people built buildings they were not as gigantic as now and so streets were more interesting because there were lots of different buildings. Now, there are many developments of buildings that are hundreds of meters long.
So designers are thinking too big. However good the design, it’s boring to work on that design for 400 meters — even if it’s amazing. Shenzhen (in Guangdong Province) proves that.
There are lots of interesting ideas for housing blocks but they are all too big. So the ideas need to be smaller.
I think one of the main challenges in China is how to have the small within the big.
Q: You seem to prefer public commissions. Is that where your passion lies?
A: My passion is public projects. I always try to work in areas that you don’t expect to be special, rather than an area everyone knows it’s going to be great. So we’re not doing artworks in art galleries or rich people’s houses because you know rich people’s private houses will be amazing. And art galleries are supposed to be incredible.
But in Britain certainly, public design turns to be pretty poor.
In prisons in the United Kingdom, for example, there is, in a sense, a huge urge to punish people, to hurt them more, and to teach them.
But the word “teach” isn’t there (in what happens). And actually that person probably coming out of prison three years later will be the one sitting next to me on the bus. And I would rather they are coming out a better person rather then more damaged.
But the British prison system is largely designed to damage them more. It’s interesting for me to design a prison as a learning institute.
Q: What are your current projects?
A: In New York we are going to build a new pier. It’s a park standing on the Hudson River in Manhattan. And there is an outdoor theater for 700 people.
In Singapore we’re building housing development. It’s a private development, but it’s in the center of the city so everyone can see it and be around it. It’s so disappointing when you travel to another part of the world and it looks similar to the place you came from. You want a place to be idiosyncratic.
Here in Shanghai we are working on two projects, which have major piece of public space. One is the Bund Financial Center, which has a new cultural center in the middle of it.
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