Heatherwick Studio is a team of 200 problem solvers dedicated to making the physical world around us better for everyone. Based out of our combined workshop and design studio in Central London, we create buildings, spaces, master-plans, objects and infrastructure. Focusing on large scale projects in cities all over the world, we prioritise those with the greatest positive social impact.
Working as practical inventors with no signature style, our motivation is to design soulful and interesting places which embrace and celebrate the complexities of the real world. The approach driving everything is to lead 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 are collaborators whose role is to listen, question, then lead the conception and construction of special and unusual places. Ingenuity and inspiration are used to make projects that are affordable and buildable. And our client is vital, who comes on the journey and challenges our thinking; together we look for the opportunities that might traditionally be overlooked. Our best future projects are the ones that will teach us the most.
Thomas Heatherwick’s book ‘Humanise’ is coming to Korea!
‘Humanise’ calls for a world full of more interesting, enduring, and soulful buildings and explains why we need to put human emotion back at the heart of design. By doing so, we can improve our health, restore our happiness, and help our planet.
Squid Game and Star Wars star Lee Jung-jae said: “I am honoured to introduce this book. It’s filled with a desire to serve the earth and humanity, and to infuse architecture with beauty and joy.”
The book is available to order below:
https://lnkd.in/eJ5bDx44
The Humanise movement is sweeping the globe! From the UK and the US, to China, and now... South Korea! 🇰🇷
With the Korean edition of the Humanise book hitting shelves, we're sparking a public conversation about the design of our cities in this new corner of the world 🌎
Looking to grab a copy of the Korean edition of the book?https://lnkd.in/eJ5bDx44
If you're ready to look up and see a world filled with joy, connection, and purpose - join our global campaign by signing up to our newsletter below and joining in the conversation via social media! 📲
https://lnkd.in/eqbB_36J
Ten years ago, Bombay Sapphire Distillery and Heatherwick Studio partnered to transform an old water-powered paper mill in the heart of Hampshire into a distillery at Laverstoke Mill.
The project involved the meticulous restoration of over forty derelict buildings, along with the addition of two cascading glasshouses - heated by the warm air generated during the distillation process - to display the botanicals used in crafting Bombay Sapphire gin. The River Test was also widened threefold, revitalising the area’s natural habitat and biodiversity.
Since opening, the distillery has welcomed 600,000 visitors, becoming a cornerstone of the gin brand’s heritage and the studio’s design legacy. To celebrate this 10-year milestone, Bombay Sapphire and Heatherwick have reunited to create a limited collection of bespoke bottles and pleated glassware inspired by the Mill. Each piece is individually hand-blown and crafted by skilled artisans in the UK.
Thomas Heatherwick, founder of Heatherwick studio, says: “Our team are always fascinated by craftsmanship, and the human response you have when you can feel that something has been made with love, care, and attention to detail. Glass blowing at its best has that unreal quality. That’s what I hope we manage with this latest collaboration.”
Find out more in this short film, and via the link below:
https://lnkd.in/e56y_kRF
Calling all architecture practices in England!
We all know that architecture as an industry feels closed off to many people, and that more diversity would create better places.
The barriers pop up early, not least at school where funding for arts education has been decimated in the last 12 years. English state schools have lost 15,000 teachers of creative subjects. And as a result, young people are often blocked from exploring their creativity in the first place.
This is why we've co-designed a programme with young people called ‘In the Making’. The idea is to help 10–14-year-olds recognise their own creativity and, in turn, see the different routes that can lead to a career in any creative industry. We have already run the programme with 230 young people, and 600 more will take part over the next three years. Watch the video, which brings these workshops to life.
If you work for one of the UK’s 6,000 private architecture practices, you could run this programme yourself. It’s open source, free to use and easy to adapt. Perfect when there's not a lot of time or money.
Every single resource you need to get started can be found via the link in our bio and downloaded in seconds. And if each studio in the country did just one workshop per term with a local school, it would bring creative education to 540,000 young people every year.
A lot of practices do some great work already. Just think what we can do as a sector.
So please get involved and let us know if you have any questions.
https://lnkd.in/eKhX58cp
Celebrating one year of Humanise ❤️
Listen to Thomas Heatherwick’s reflections on the one year milestone of the campaign, find out what’s next and what YOU can do too! ✨
#Humanise#Humaniseoneyear
A pragmatic, punchy, imaginative national programme - great work from Heatherwick studio.
How many times in adult, working life do we hear colleagues and partners say “I’m not creative”? But maybe they were “not bad at art/English at school”.
Helping young people to see themselves as creative could change our world - see blog by Matt Bell and link to a toolkit ready to use.
#InTheMaking
Strategic Communications Director, Heatherwick Studio. Board Member of Local Trust. Chair of Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair. Co-founder of the Young London Print Prize.
This week sees the public launch of In The Making. It's a national programme designed to help young people see themselves as creative.
Creative education has a huge impact on academic performance, school attendance, and mental health. And yet we've lost 15,000 teachers of creative subjects from English schools in the last 13 years.
The Government's talking about fixing the foundations. Well this is one of those foundations!
I've tried to explain why it matters and how we can all be part of the fight back in this blog. There's also a new film, a practice guide, and an evidence review on the Heatherwick website. Enjoy & share.
So many of the best things we do now began with a moment when we first thought... maybe I'm a bit creative.
https://lnkd.in/eFNr4yCU
"Now Heatherwick Studio is not yet designing placards, though they would be quite joyful and expressive! But it is helping out with some kind of fight back this week with the launch of 'In The Making', a major new creative education programme co-designed and branded with young people."
Read more below.
Can a serious piece of research be turned into a video game?
That was the question we asked ourselves in 2023 when exploring ways to make social impact studies as accessible as possible.
We have put the idea to the test with a new Fortnite game. It takes insights collected in a recent independent report into Little Island and brings them to life in a virtual version of the project.
The studio’s communications and immersive media teams worked with 3D visualisation platform SpaceForm Technologies to develop the game. In it, players parachute onto the island and explore in Open World mode, discovering facts about the park as they explore.
They can then enter through a portal into game mode, where they race against the clock to find as many hidden objects as possible, using the knowledge they have picked up to answer questions about Little Island to save time.
We tested the game with the public last month at Open House and are hoping to release it more widely soon. In the video above, our Head of Content and Engagement, Kim Megson, explains more.
We hope the game will be a playful and fun way to highlight the important topic of what we all need from our public spaces and parks.
__
You can read the full Little Island Social Impact Study on our website (https://ow.ly/yLZg50TJySo).
We asked AEA Consulting to measure whether we achieved our objectives to make a place that is welcoming to all, and that offers free access to culture and green space. As part of this process, they asked visitors, artists and staff about what they think about the park.
