A visit to Thomas Heatherwick’s London studio is like stepping into a Renaissance cabinet of curiosities—one of those idiosyncratic efforts to capture the wondrous variety of the natural and man-made worlds. Strange objects crowd the shelves and floor, indeterminate forms that might be product prototypes, scale models, or sculpture, hinting at the fertile imagination of a designer who transcends any narrow job description.
Heatherwick set up his studio in 1994 fresh out of college, and he employs 80 designers and architects to make furniture, vehicles, artworks, and, increasingly, buildings. His projects have no consistent style, but are usually characterized by a big idea that subverts the way we think about function or materials. A purse formed entirely from a single spiraling zipper unfastens to double its volume; a footbridge rolls up like a graceful caterpillar to let boats pass.
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