[Mayor Sadiq Khan] has already begun scrutinising Boris Johnson’s decisions relating to the controversial project, to which £60m of public money has been allocated in circumstances previously criticised by parliamentary spending officials as unorthodox. [...]
The proposed bridge has secured vast sums of public money despite being initially promoted as entirely private-funded. It has recently been bedevilled by accusations that its designer was selected before the actual tender process began.
— theguardian.com
The Guardian also points out that former London Mayor Boris Johnson met with Thomas Heatherwick five times, and is quoted as being "keen" on Heatherwick's design, before the selection process for the bridge's designer even began. Also somewhat worrisome was one of Johnson's last acts before leaving office: lowering the fundraising minimum for the bridge, allegedly to make sure that the project continued.
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5 Comments
Why are all of Heatherwick's urban design / architecture projects so problematic (greeny-gimmick-gadget-garbage) is it a coincidence or is he just not a good fit for cities?
Because he dosent know shit about landscape design. These generalist designers like heatherwick try to squeeze everything into their style.
"he just not a good fit for cities"
What a sweeping statement. What justifies this?
Who cares about Heatherwick in all this? There are two big factors in play.
1- The bridge block views.
2- The bridge is starting to use public funds, despite the original claims that this would not happen.
Based on these two issue, I'm not sure any of the alternatives would a have been deemed acceptable.
Well it is a Heatherwick issue since he's popping up everywhere with these gadget green add on parks like the Pier 55 island that's privately funded until it's not. The designs are stupid. I can defend a Calatrava station because it fulfills a need beautifully but many of these HW projects are just rich / beaurocrat vanity projects.
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