An alien arriving on Earth this month might be forgiven for assuming that Thomas Heatherwick is currently the world’s most beloved urban designer. The British designer/engineer just unveiled his mammoth climbing-frame-cum-corncob Vessel at New York’s Hudson Yards, while just a few minutes up the Hudson River, an offshore park Pier 55 (also known as Diller Island) is rising out of the tidal sludge on Heatherwick-designed concrete lily pads. In London, his Coal Drops Yard retail development, which features kissing buildings, opened last October in the formerly warehouse-filled hinterland behind Kings Cross Station. Further afield, Heatherwick Studios repurposed a grain silo as an art gallery in Cape Town in 2017 and is co-designing something that looks like a titanic xylophone in Shanghai.
This high-profile intercontinental spread has made Heatherwick all but ubiquitous. It has also earned him a heavy dose of suspicion mixed with contempt, both from critics and the public. His name is often used as something of a synonym for everything that’s wrong with contemporary urban design. The New York Times has dubbed him the “billionaire whisperer” for his dossier of flashy corporate projects; the Guardian called him a “Pied Piper” who has managed to beguile extra-wealthy patrons. Some of his projects have been dubbed “Truman Show Nightmares.” Even the generally, pro-development, pro-business conservative media has started coming for Heatherwick’s projects as bellwethers pointing to exactly where our cities are going awry. But why?
