It needs a big personality to answer a big question: why is so much new building so very bad; why are our cities so ugly? Thomas Heatherwick is that big personality. He is the Jamie Oliver of architecture and design: personable, blokeish, smart, tele-genic, extremely successful, nearly demented with ambition, and, one suspects, inclined to petulance if crossed. He is a visionary with several blind spots. To extend the Oliver comparison, there are times when Heatherwick serves up a delicious dish with his thumbs stuck in the bowl. His flair comes with flaws.
As a designer, his Boris Bus for London was charming, but functional problems led to its withdrawal from service. His ‘B of the Bang’ sculpture in Manchester has been dismantled. The ‘Rolling Bridge’ in Paddington is a fabulous conceit. But hang on a moment. Who wants a bridge that rolls? In Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, his vertiginous open-work ‘Vessel’, a honeycomb structure, has been closed indefinitely because too many people jumped off it and killed themselves.
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