Archinect - News

Heatherwick Studio opens ceramics-rich Xi’an CCBD development in China

2024-12-18T16:08:00-05:00

Heatherwick Studio has updated the new Xi’an Centre Culture Business District upon its first public opening after sharing details of the project with Archinect last November.

The development occupies space between the ruins of the Temple of Heaven and the famed Shaanxi TV Tower. Central to its design is the artistic heritage of ceramics in the region. A nod to the historical presence of the Terracotta Army can be seen in the exterior tiled cladding on each of its buildings’ facades.

Photo credit: Qingyan Zhu

This confers an inviting tactile impression that will further lure its users. The studio’s founder, Thomas Heatherwick, says it also results in an "unexpected three-dimensional urban landscape" equalling 155,000 square meters (or more than 1.6 million square feet).

Photo credit: Qingyan Zhu

Within its pedestrian-centric "sensory experience" comprised of a retail podium, offices, a hotel, and apartments, activity converges around a central plaza with a 187-foot high vertical park ...

The Vessel reopens with improved safety barriers after three years

2024-10-21T16:55:00-04:00

CBS News is reporting on the re-opening of The Vessel at Hudson Yards after closing abruptly in January of 2021 in response to a rash of suicides.

The Vessel now includes expanded safety measures, with steel mesh barriers installed on four stairwells and adjoining platforms. These barriers are designed to prevent further tragedies while maintaining the structure’s iconic appearance and panoramic views. The first two levels will be fully accessible to visitors, while only sections with added barriers will be open on higher floors. The topmost floor will remain closed to the public, marking a significant shift in visitor access aimed at enhancing safety.

The Vessel was an instant architectural icon when the honeycombed structure opened in 2019 on the west side of Manhattan. But after a number of people died by suicide there, it was shut down for nearly 1,200 days until now. https://t.co/UgszqwYQOB pic.twitter.com/o60jOONtdr
— NBC New York (@NBCNewYork) October 21, 2024

Video source @...

Changi Terminal 5 design by KPF + Heatherwick sets date for 2025 groundbreaking

2024-10-09T19:04:00-04:00

KPF and Heatherwick Studio’s collaboration on the new Changi Airport Terminal 5 is set for take off in Singapore after officials there announced plans for to break ground on the $10 billion project in the first half of 2025. Once it is ready by the mid-2030s, the terminal will serve around 50 million passengers annually. This is Heatherwick Studio's third project in Singapore and follows the completion of KPF’s undulating design of the new Terminal A at Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi in February.

Heatherwick details reimagined Sunset Place retail center in Miami

2024-08-23T11:58:00-04:00

A hyperlocal strategy and refinement of the site’s relationship with the street-level and corresponding parts of Midtown will be the defining features of Heatherwick Studios’ planned Sunset Place retail regeneration project in Miami.

The plan was put forth in detail via a 5-minute Instagram video this week. Heatherwick says: “Our idea is to get rid of the sterile atmosphere of the previous shopping mall and bring back streets influenced by the scale and charm of Sunset Drive. The plan is to extend the existing grid into the site and create continuous routes and a village of smaller, intimate spaces, framed in an extraordinary way by the apartments above.”

His newest humanizing design joins other newly announced mixed-use and retail projects from Kengo Kuma and David Chipperfield. No construction timelines for the project have been made available at this time.

Heatherwick Studio proposes hourglass-shaped volumes for Seoul shopping center

2024-08-02T14:35:00-04:00

Another mixed-use retail project from Heatherwick Studio is coming to Seoul. The newly announced Hanwha Galleria project covers an existing metro subway station with a glass atrium and two landscaped plaza areas. Two asymmetrical glass volumes resembling hourglass forms and containing gardened areas conceal its program. According to the firm's project description, the structures come sheathed in a double-skinned facade that can be programmed for nighttime projections.

Neil Hubbard, partner and group leader at Heatherwick studio, described: "Traditionally, department stores are quite inward facing, they feel closed off to the surrounding streets. But here we have an important intersection in Apgujeong with two buildings, east and west, that felt like an opportunity to bring people together."

Local studio Haeahn Architecture will collaborate on its design.

Image: Devisual, courtesy Heatherwick Studio

The project’s announcement follows Thomas Heatherwick being named as General Director...

Thomas Heatherwick to direct 2025 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism

2024-06-03T19:10:00-04:00

South Korea's Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism just announced that Thomas Heatherwick will be the General Director of its fifth iteration next year.

Billed as Asia's biggest architecture biennial, the 2025 program seeks to explore "how to make buildings and cities radically more joyful and engaging," a mantra Heatherwick has been championing with his Humanise campaign.

"We are honored and thrilled by this appointment to curate our first Biennale," Heatherwick responded. "There are over 300 biennales taking place around the world today. But the original ambition to use them as vehicles for debate and engagement with the public, too easily gets lost in professional echo-chambers, which most ordinary people don’t engage with."

"We plan to turn the concept of a biennale inside out and create a big, full-throttle conversation with Seoulites. We want to get to the heart of what matter...

Heatherwick's 'Humanise' campaign inspires 'joyful' architecture degree at UK university

2024-05-15T18:01:00-04:00

The UK’s Loughborough University has accepted Thomas Heatherwick's challenge to ‘humanize’ and create ‘joyful’ architecture with a new academic offering: A master's degree aiming to give students the opportunity to take part in a burgeoning movement created to solve a global “urban crisis” over the next decade. The 115-year-old university will become the first to affiliate itself with the Humanise campaign academically with new supplementary course content exclusive to its new Master of Architecture & Design program.

Courses will leverage research into architecture, neuroscience, and human psychology in accord with Heatherwick’s philosophy of design, which was recently the subject of a new treatise of the same title. The program's official launch is slated for the fall of 2025 and includes a series of lectures and workshops exploring the idea of emotion as a function of design, an announcement from the university read Tuesday.

Dr Robert Schmidt III of the School of Architecture, Bui...

Heatherwick Studio tops out UK pharma hub with curving timber structure

2024-04-25T11:56:00-04:00

Heatherwick Studio has offered a construction update on its design for the UCB Windlesham Surrey Science Research Hub in the United Kingdom. When completed, the building will serve as a hub for the Belgian biopharmaceutical company UCB.

In new photos released by the firm, the project's cross-laminated timber structure can be seen following its recent topping out. The CLT structure, described by Heatherwick Studio as “possibly one of the most complicated CLT structures in Europe,” took two years of design and eight months of construction to deliver. The novelty of the structure comes from its curved form, which serves not only as the main structure but the feature finish for the building.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Heatherwick Studio (@officialheatherwickstudio)

Designed in collaboration with executive architect Veretec, the three-story timber extension will be partially submerged into the site’s existing campus, connecting various wings of UCB’s R...

The Vessel to reopen with improved safety measures

2024-04-15T11:44:00-04:00

The Vessel has announced it will again be open to visitors in New York City later this year after upgraded anti-suicide safety measures are installed in response to a spate of tragedies that have befallen its existence since being inaugurated in March of 2019. The attraction has been closed since 2021 and will reopen with its uppermost level kept inaccessible to the public.

The New York Times reported a representative from Related Companies, which manages the Thomas Heatherwick-designed property, as saying a “floor-to-ceiling steel mesh” barrier would be installed. It will replace existing barriers that were only waste-high and not "cut-proof," as the new fencing is understood to be made.

"While we think it took Related four lives too many to make these physical adjustments, these are the changes we requested, which will allow for prioritizing the safety of everyone who visits the Vessel," Manhattan Communit...

Is the architectural design causing serious Wi-Fi issues at Google's new Bay View headquarters?

2024-03-26T17:28:00-04:00

Google has not publicly disclosed the reasons for the Wi-Fi problems, but workers say the 600,000-square-foot building’s swooping, wave-like rooftop swallows broadband like the Bermuda Triangle. [...] But, a Google spokeswoman acknowledged, "we’ve had Wi-Fi connectivity issues in Bay View." She said Google "made several improvements to address the issue," and the company hoped to have a fix in coming weeks.

The roof of the BIG and Heatherwick Studio-designed Bay View headquarters, which opened in 2022, is a key component of the building’s circular design strategy and features 90,000 "dragonscale" solar panels. Some believe they could be causing the interference.

Related on Archinect: Google's BIG + Heatherwick-designed Bay View HQ campus opens. Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy of Google

The other culprit would be the building’s internal layout and configuration and the density of routers within it (H/t various Reddiors). Google would not publically address the source of the connectivity issues.

Operations at the company's other new headquarters inside the St. John’s Terminal in Manhattan, which opened in February, however, appear to be running a bit more smoothly.

Heatherwick Studio previews first South American project in Bogotá, Colombia

2024-03-21T16:45:00-04:00

Heatherwick Studio has made public details of a new project in Bogotá, Colombia, for a client in the higher education industry. The studio’s first South American design will be realized as a seven-story academic building and makerspace with a uniquely colorful facade composed of setbacks, free columns, planting, and small circular outdoor terraces.

The client is Bogotá’s Universidad Ean Design School, a 56-year-old private institution founded to provide "comprehensive training of people and stimulate their entrepreneurial aptitude so that its action contributes to the economic and social development of people."

Image: Heatherwick Studio/NOD

Traditional Werregue basket-making practices serve as the inspirations for the design, tipping off Heatherwick’s war on blandness and desire to elevate craft into a primary role in his building practice.

This homage to Colombia's Wounaan Indigenous community will serve as the new centerpiece of the campus, complementing the architecture of the su...

Rowan Moore declares an aversion to Heatherwick’s London BT Tower hospitality makeover

2024-02-27T20:05:00-05:00

Its sale, for £275m, by BT to a hotel group, if it gives the tower a secure future, is welcome. I’m more troubled by the reports that the designer Thomas Heatherwick is to “repurpose” the building. His past work shows that he’s not one to leave well alone, but rather festoon structures with over-sized flower-pots and look-at-me swirling shapes. One can only hope that he discovers some restraint. The BT Tower is already an icon. It’s perfect. Let it be.

Readers will remember the critic's jabs at Heatherwick last fall after the publication of his new treatise on architecture and mental health, wherein Moore declared “an outbreak of shallow wannabe Gaudís” will follow in tow should the call-to-action be adopted.

That provocation isn't the first or even second time Moore has harshed the Vessel designer's creative schemes for the capital. In its defense, Heatherwick Studio has yet to detail any of the architectural extravagances Moore is lamenting after the project's February 22nd announcement.

Previously on Archinect: London’s BT Tower to be converted into a hotel by Heatherwick following MCR purchase

The conservation group C20 Society has offered its support for the £275 million project. If history is any guide, MCR's previous re-use of the TWA Hotel at JFK should steer the project away from any gauche gesturing and towards the Swinging London era anachronisms Moore champions nostalgically as "hopeful futurism."

...

London’s BT Tower to be converted into a hotel by Heatherwick following MCR purchase

2024-02-22T11:39:00-05:00

London’s iconic BT Tower is to be purchased by U.S. hotel owner-operator MCR. Partnering with Heatherwick Studio, the company is to explore the tower’s adaptive reuse as a hotel.

Standing at 620 feet in height, the BT Tower is one of London’s tallest buildings. Opened in 1965, the tower is covered by a Grade II historical importance listing, though such a listing does not prohibit a change of use within the building.

MCR has noted that the tower will not undergo any immediate changes, with current owners BT Group expected to take several years to vacate the premises due to the complexity involved in moving technical equipment. The design process is also expected to include time for community engagement in advance of the proposal’s reveal.

Related on Archinect:The TWA Hotel at JFK is officially open. Photo courtesy of TWA Hotel/David Mitchell

MCR was previously known for its overhaul of the Eero Saarinen-designed TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport which has since become the TWA Hotel. T...

Heatherwick's Azabudai Hills mixed-use development opens in Tokyo

2023-11-29T14:25:00-05:00

Heatherwick Studio has released a new batch of project images along with an announcement of the long-awaited completion of their Azabudai Hills mixed-use district in Tokyo.

The multi-billion dollar project for Mori Building Co. Ltd. culminates a 30-year regeneration process in the heart of the city’s Minato ward with a new 20-acre design that features two temples, office and retail components, residential buildings, a school, and 5.9 acres of open green space for public use.

Image: Raquel Diniz

In a press announcement, Neil Hubbard, partner and Group Leader at Heatherwick Studio, said: “Over the last 10 years, we have tried to get under the skin of what makes something distinctively Tokyo, whilst at the same time, adding something new that’s fresh and soft to its modern built environment. We wanted to create vistas full of variety and intrigue and spaces to explore. It’s a confluence of different families of design all brought together in one place. I can’t wait to watch people explo...

Heatherwick Studio's new Xi'an shopping district features ceramic paneling as 'sensory experience'

2023-11-20T12:16:00-05:00

Heatherwick Studio has announced their design for a new shopping center in Xi’an, China, they say will evoke the heritage of ceramics and other artistic creations endemic to the area with a completion date set for 2024.

Offering users a “sensory experience to challenge the emotional and aesthetic deprivation of online shopping,” the plan for the 1.23 million-square-foot district calls for a network of social spaces and interlocking program of mixed-scale buildings scattered throughout.

Image: MIR, courtesy of Heatherwick Studio

The design is broken down into three scales, appearing first as a green space with tapering rooflines inspired by surrounding local temples when viewed from a distance. At the street level, it will utilize a series of interlinked terraces and other landscaped spaces to offer enhanced pedestrianism and vistas of the city.

Image: Devisual, courtesy of Heatherwick Studio

The promised “sensory experience” is enacted most at the final human scale, and buildings are...

Thomas Heatherwick wants architects to improve mental health through 'interestingness'

2023-10-23T19:02:00-04:00

Boring, soulless buildings are making people stressed and lonely, according to Thomas Heatherwick [...] Calling for “a national conversation” about halting the spread of depressing architecture, he said: “We need to fearlessly demand interestingness. We need to rebel against the blandification of our streets, towns and cities, and make buildings that nourish our senses. Human beings deserve human places.”

The Lantern House and Vessel designer has been making the media rounds lately to promote his new treatise Humanize, which offers a call-to-arms of sorts for architects and planners both looking to combat the proven detriments bad architecture has on mental health. Heatherwick says his prognosis has been informed by multiple years of domestic research, including a new study he commissioned from the New Economics Foundation, and that offenders could be broken down by seven criteria: (too) flat, straight, plain, shiny, monotonous, anonymous, and serious.

Responding to this, the Observer critic Rowan Moore writes Heatherwick “does not have much to say about the value of simplicity” and that his argument is too reductivist and could result in “an outbreak of shallow wannabe Gaudís” should architects adapt his principles en masse. His position that Heathwick was too ignorant of the market forces behind modern architecture, however, seems to misunderstand the point of making such an appea...

Sou Fujimoto designs Pace Gallery Tokyo expansion inside Heatherwick's Azabudai Hills development

2023-09-05T16:57:00-04:00

The new home of the Pace Gallery in Tokyo will feature interior spaces designed by Sou Fujimoto inside a three-story portion of Heatherwick Studio’s exciting new Azabudai Hills development, according to plans revealed today by the gallery.

The total 5,500-square-foot design includes some 3,000 square feet of exhibition spaces split between the first and second floors of the gallery. A third floor will also include a private terrace and sculptural garden connected to the landscape component of the 20-acre site, which sits prominently at the nexus of several other cultural destinations in the city’s busy Toranomon commercial district.

Rendering © DBOX for Mori Building Co., Ltd

The designer of the 2013 Serpentine Pavilion and Musashino Art University Museum and Library will deliver a space that is evocative of his personal explorations and approach to architecture.

Rendering © DBOX for Mori Building Co., Ltd

Pace says it has been interested in a Japanese expansion since at least the la...

Heatherwick Studio unveils Shanghai exhibition hall with facade of ‘interwoven ribbons’

2023-06-08T12:05:00-04:00

Heatherwick Studio has revealed the design of a new public exhibition hall in Shanghai. Named the ‘Orbit’ and located along the city’s West Bund waterfront, the scheme has been designed to be “seemingly accessible from 360 degrees.”

Image credit: Heatherwick Studio

Outside, the center’s facade was designed to resemble a series of interwoven ribbons forming an undulating set of publicly accessible staircases, bridges, and terraces. The circulation elements allow visitors to navigate to the building’s rooftop garden, which contains multiple viewing platforms.

Image credit: Devisual

The ‘ribbon’ staircases also seek to echo the form of traditional Chinese moon bridges, translated to a contemporary form that makes the building “appear as if it is in constant motion.” Visitors ascending the structure can peer through glazed openings in the facade to glimpse the inner exhibition hall, while on the rooftop terrace, the ribbons unravel into an open-air canopy.

Image credit: Devisual

Inside, th...

Heatherwick Studio details progress on Toranomon-Azabudai district in Tokyo

2023-05-15T12:20:00-04:00

Heatherwick Studio has shared new photos of their nearly complete Toranomon-Azabudai mixed-use district in the heart of Tokyo.

The 20-acre plan includes a new school, temple, shopping center, and a 64,583-square-foot central garden with room for 1,400 residences, 150 retailers, and capacity for over 20,000 office workers.

The studio devised a pergola-like facade system in order to give the construction a distinctive visual character while adding a “vibrant piece of urban topography” to the city’s patchwork commercial Minato Ward area.

Previously on Archinect: Heatherwick Studio begins construction in the Toranomon-Azabudai district in Tokyo

Heatherwick says they are taking a “human-centred approach by integrating nature into the public spaces.”

Once in operation, the district is expected to attract some 30 million visitors annually. The project broke ground in August of 2019. Tokyo’s Mori Building Company is the client. Construction is expected to be finished by the end of this year...

Heatherwick Studio unveils first public library design in Howard County, Maryland

2023-03-31T17:07:00-04:00

Heatherwick Studio has released details of their first commissioned public library project in the town of Columbia, Maryland.

Featuring a climbable façade, the five-story library opens to the city’s main promenade with a double-height atrium and a series of transversing exterior terraces lined with native plant species while providing sweeping views of nearby Lake Kittamaqundi.

The studio says its design is meant to “reflect the changed role of the library and serve a community with a rich heritage of fostering diversity and promoting wellbeing.”

Image: Devisual for Heatherwick Studio

Columbia was first developed as a planned community under the progressive vision of founder James Rouse, a prominent local developer known for espousing his conception of “cities as gardens for the growing of people.” Their contribution, therefore, looks to honor this legacy and will serve as a font for educational programs and other activities in line with Rouse’s philosophy.

Image: Devisual for Heat...

Heatherwick Studio’s first ever school features cascading terraces in Tokyo

2023-02-28T11:25:00-05:00

Heatherwick Studio has revealed the design for the first school project in the practice’s history. Situated in Tokyo, The British School seeks to be the largest international school in the city when it opens in August 2023.

The 16,000-square-foot scheme is spread across eight levels and features several landscaped outdoor learning and recreational spaces including on upper floors. The design team imagine the cascading outdoor spaces as social areas where teachers can work with the school’s 800 pupils, with planted balconies to be cared for by students.

Image credit: Heatherwick Studio

“Most inner-city schools don’t have enough playground space and the site was quite restricted,” explained Heatherwick Studio partner Neil Hubbard in a statement. “So we wedged playgrounds between each of the classrooms, creating outdoor learning spaces where pupils can explore and interact with each other and their teachers much more freely than in traditional school environments.”

“[The project’s] bric...

Heatherwick collaborates with Harley-Davidson for design of Milwaukee community park

2023-01-11T13:48:00-05:00

Heatherwick Studio and Harley-Davidson have unveiled details of their plan to transform part of the motorcycle manufacturer’s headquarters in Milwaukee into a public park. According to the design team, the largely concrete site will be converted into a “civic and soulful green gathering space that can be used by everyone, including employees and the local community.”

Image credit: Heatherwick Studio

The scheme will be anchored by a 272-foot-wide sunken events space named ‘The Hub.’ Formed of tiered seating and landscaped with trees and plants, the circular multi-use space will be constructed of ten types of locally sourced brick, weathered steel, and timber.

In one direction, The Hub will provide views of the original brick Harley-Davidson manufacturing buildings, while in the other, the space will provide views of a park filled with 120 native plant species and a planned market street, contemplative garden, and nature playground.

Image credit: Heatherwick Studio

“Our goal is to turn ...

A first look inside Heatherwick Studio’s new Shanghai office

2022-12-16T11:22:00-05:00

Heatherwick Studio has offered a first look inside their new Shanghai studio, the first overseas office to be opened by the London design firm. The office is located within 1000 Trees, a building designed by Heatherwick which opened in 2021.

Image credit: Qingyan Zhu for Heatherwick Studio

Located on the fourth floor of the 1000 Trees’ shopping center, among retail and hospitality units, the new studio is described as “a public space where passers-by will be able to engage with the studio’s designs.” The studio will also offer guided tours to visitors wishing to learn more about the firm’s work.

Image credit: Qingyan Zhu for Heatherwick Studio

The front of the workspace features multiple stacked cubes serving as display boxes for a collection of models from the studio’s Asian projects, including the Bund Finance Center, the Nanyang Learning Hub in Singapore, and the 1000 Trees development itself. Alongside its public function, the studio will accommodate a team of ten architects leadi...

New photos show progress on Heatherwick's Toranomon-Azabudai district in Tokyo

2022-12-08T14:57:00-05:00

Heatherwick Studio has shared construction photos of its soon-to-complete Toranomon-Azabudai redevelopment project underway in Tokyo.

The firm’s first Japanese project is set to bring a new school, temple, shopping areas, and a 64,583-square-foot central garden to a previously underutilized district in the heart of the capital city’s Minato Ward for developers Mori Building Company.

"It’s been very exciting working on the Toranomon-Azabudai project and much of our effort has been focused on designing the public spaces that everyone will experience when they spend time in this new area," Heatherwick said at the project’s initial announcement.

Previously on Archinect: Heatherwick Studio begins construction in the Toranomon-Azabudai district in Tokyo. Rendering by DBOX for Mori Building Co.

"For the design, we have taken a human-centred approach by integrating nature into the public spaces. A pergola-like façade system has been devised and scaled up to unify the project and to allow p...

KPF and Heatherwick reveal design for Changi Airport Terminal 5 in Singapore

2022-09-06T11:51:00-04:00

KPF and Heatherwick Studio have offered an update on the design of Changi Airport’s Terminal 5 in Singapore. Described by the designers as a “bold re-imagination of the airport paradigm,” the new terminal will increase the airport’s capacity by 50 million annual passengers.

KPF and Heatherwick were awarded the bid to design the terminal back in 2018, part of a larger project to deliver 100 additional aircraft stands, a three-runway system, and new cargo complexes. The airport was also the focus of international attention in 2019 with the unveiling of Moshe Safdie’s “Jewel Changi” addition, featuring the world’s largest indoor waterfall.

The design of Terminal 5 adopts an “airport as a city” concept, where each component is seen as an opportunity to create a neighborhood with its own character. The team also bills the terminal as an “engaging new district” of benefit to travelers and locals, echoing Safdie’s move to combine natural and built elements within the airport.

Aerial credi...

Heatherwick Studio's new kinetic Glasshouse opens its petals to the English countryside

2022-06-28T12:14:00-04:00

Heatherwick Studio has unveiled a new small greenhouse project for the National Trust’s historic Woolbeding Gardens estate in West Sussex, England.

Taking the form of a sheltering flower bud, the structure comprises ten steel ‘sepals’ operated by a hydraulic mechanism that takes about four minutes to open. Its 141-square-meter (1,517-square-foot) interior contains a variety of subtropical Chinese flora and is surrounded by a new Silk Route Garden, which invites visitors on a 12-step journey through each of the trade corridor’s different geographic regions.

The studio says it was inspired by Victorian-era terrariums, and the structure took a total of six years to develop. The project was commissioned by the estate’s longtime owner, Stewart Grimshaw, who, along with his partner, Sainsbury’s heir Simon Sainsbury, had previously inaugurated sculptural interventions by William Pye and Philip Jebb into their sprawling 1,100-acre gardens, which former British Prime Mini...

Oliver Wainwright has seen this movie before with Heatherwick’s Tree of Trees installation

2022-06-01T17:40:00-04:00

Heatherwick himself has become the puckish poster boy for the current bout of arboreal mania. He has even incorporated his trademark plant-pots-on-sticks into a range of office furniture. If in doubt, the studio mantra seems to go – just smother the design with a garnish of greenery.

The Guardian critic echoed colleague Rowan Moore's derisive critique of Heatherwick’s continued “abuse of metaphors” published in late April and added his own criticism that the 350-tree structure, just like the MVRDV-designed Marble Arch Mound, offers “yet another example of the recent fetish among certain architects and designers for conjuring a cartoonish version of nature, suspending shrubbery and balancing trees in ways that make the plants look decidedly unhappy to be there.”

Previously on Archinect: An 'abuse of metaphors': Rowan Moore on Thomas Heatherwick’s tree-inspired jubilee design (and other UK public monument debates)

Google's BIG + Heatherwick-designed Bay View HQ campus opens

2022-05-17T18:55:00-04:00

Google has announced the opening of its new Bay View campus in Mountain View, California, with the neighboring Charleston East project in its final phase of construction. Together, they form the latest additions to Google's headquarters.

Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy of Google

The web giant celebrates the first time it led the concept and construction of one of its own major campuses, boasting an extensive list of human-centered, sustainable features.

According to Google's project announcement, Bay View is an all-electric, net-water-positive facility with the largest geothermal installation in North America. Both projects report being the largest buildings in the world to pursue LEED-NC v4 Platinum and the largest to pursue elements of the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) Living Building Challenge (LBC) Petal Certification.

Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy of Google

Designed in collaboration with Bjarke Ingels Group and Heatherwick Studio, the campus officially broke ground in 2...

An 'abuse of metaphors': Rowan Moore on Thomas Heatherwick’s tree-inspired jubilee design (and other UK public monument debates)

2022-05-02T16:03:00-04:00

I’ll pass by the abuse of metaphors (do milestones have hearts?) but not of trees, this being another case of certain designers’ mania for picking them up, moving them around and putting them where they don’t want to be. Those words from the studio also take liberties with the idea of art. They call the Tree of Trees a “sculpture”. Boris Johnson may once have compared Heatherwick to Michelangelo, but David it is not.

The Observer critic joined a plethora of online commentators that picked apart Heatherwick Studio’s “Tree Of Trees” Earth Day announcement by comparing it to last year’s fiasco surrounding the MVRDV-designed Marble Arch Mound, which he described as a “cartoon version of nature is placed in a London ceremonial space by people who don’t seem to have thought much about what it is that makes trees lovely.”

Moore has been critical of Heatherwick’s design inspiration in the past, referring to The Vessel designer as a “pied piper [of the] very rich” in a 2017 missive and famously citing his work as an example of the migration away from “grown-up architecture” in a 2019 piece, in which he derided cloying gimmicks that offer “at most two-liners.”

Moore also touched on the controversial (and recently-rejected) UK Holocaust Memorial proposal, laying its failure on the decision to include a learning center and stating that the government should now “take the opportunity of its verdict to apply...

Heatherwick Studio designs floating parkland pier for Seoul

2022-01-27T15:26:00-05:00

Heatherwick Studio has unveiled their proposal for a public waterfront development in Seoul, South Korea. The proposal forms part of a wider sports and cultural district close to the site of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.

Named The Leaf, the Heatherwick scheme consists of a multi-level pier sitting on the Han River. The pier features a walkable roofscape with undulating surfaces, consisting of winding trails, water gardens, play areas, observation points, and an event/auditorium space. The roofscape folds upwards at the edges to create lower-level waterside spaces as well as a marina for water taxis and leisure craft.

Image via Heatherwick Studio

“At the heart of our project is the idea of playful togetherness,” said Heatherwick Partner and Project Lead, Stuart Wood. “We want this to be a refreshing and dynamic new civic space for the city of Seoul where people come to laugh, explore, and connect. Somewhere joyful and restorative for everyone.”

Heatherwick is one of a number of arch...