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Thomas Heatherwick
Thomas Heatherwick is a British designer whose prolific and varied work over two decades is characterised by its ingenuity, inventiveness and originality. Defying the conventional classification of design disciplines, Thomas founded Heatherwick Studio in 1994 to bring the practices of design, architecture and urban planning together in a single workspace.
Thomas leads the design of all Heatherwick Studio projects, working in collaboration with a team of highly- skilled architects, designers, and makers. Thomas’ unusual approach applies artistic thinking to the needs of each project, resulting in some of the most acclaimed designs of our time. Following the Gold Award success of the UK Pavilion for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010,
Heatherwick Studio has gone on to win exciting design briefs including the Google campus in Silicon Valley, Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross and the overhaul of London Olympia.
The studio has recently completed the 420,000 sqm Bund Finance Centre in Shanghai, a collaboration with Foster + Partners, and Zeitz MOCAA (Museum of Contemporary Art Africa) in Cape Town, the first museum of its kind in South Africa. Thomas has been appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a Royal Academician and in 2004, became the youngest Royal Designer for Industry.
Practice Ideology
Heatherwick Studio is a team of over 200 problem solvers dedicated to making the physical world better for everyone. Based out of their combined workshop and design studio in Central London, they create buildings, spaces, master plans, objects, and infrastructure. Focusing on large-scale projects in cities all over the world, they prioritise those with the greatest public benefit. Working as practical inventors with no signature style, their motivation is to design soulful and interesting places that embrace and celebrate the complexities of the real world. The approach driving everything is to draw from human experience rather than any fixed design dogma.
The studio’s founder, Thomas Heatherwick, comes from a background immersed in materials and making. His curiosity and passion for problem-solving matured into the studio’s current design process, where every architect, designer, landscape architect, and maker is encouraged to challenge and contribute ideas. Positive and pragmatic, the studio’s team is composed of collaborators whose role is to listen, question, and then lead the conception and construction of special and unusual places. Ingenuity and inspiration are used to make projects that are affordable, buildable, and sustainable. To them, clients are vital; they come on the journey and challenge their thinking, searching together for opportunities that might traditionally be overlooked. They believe that their best future projects are the ones that will teach them the most.
