Thomas Heatherwick Interview with Christopher Guy Harrison

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - April 28, 2015 - PRLog -- Before the award ceremony at the stunning Christopher Guy’s West Hollywood showroom, 8900 Beverly Blvd, at 6:30pm on Wednesday, April 29^th, CG brand creator Christopher Guy Harrison posed some questions to Heatherwick during a question and answer session. For a full transcript of the interview between Christopher Guy Harrison and Thomas Heatherwick, please visit:

http://www.brandamb.com/cg_interview21042015


Below is an excerpt from the Q and A Session:


Question 1

Christopher: Firstly, Thomas, I am delighted to honour you with our Christopher Guy Design Icon Award for 2015. Your work, creativity and vision around the globe has been staggering - and that is why we felt it was the much deserved for you to collect this award. How do you feel about being thought of as an Icon?

Thomas: My interest is making my projects be special and famous, not myself.

It is thrilling, if the work is being valued, really thrilling. I don’t do my projects for myself. I am doing them because my passion is public projects and so if they can mean something to some people then that makes it all worthwhile. So an award like this is thrilling, because it is so encouraging, not just to me but to all of my team.

Question 2

Christopher: Is there a piece of work which you are most proud of, and is there one which is on the horizon which you are excited about?

Thomas: Every single project is exciting.

We are working on Africa’s first ever museum of contemporary African imagination and African art and that feels very motivating because African artists have had to send their work to Europe, North America or Asia to be exhibited in places where the work won’t be damaged. Everything we are working on has something that drives us.

Question 3

Christopher:  What is your mindset or outlook when you set out to work on an architectural design?

Thomas:  I feel the starting point is always to step right back and think about what matters, do a lot of research and try to have as few preconceptions as possible that you are starting from.

Each project has a team which goes through rounds of reviews together and then analysis. I feel rather than a sense of conjuring something up out of thin air, more than that we are searching and narrowing down, and eliminating from enquires, until you refine it down. And then, through testing and evaluation, you come down to what you believe to be the solution. And that takes the pressure off this notion of inspiration, that is so over spoken about, as if it is a magical elixir.

Question 4

Christopher: Your early patron British designer Terence Conran described you as the “Leonardo da Vinci of our times”. The last decade has been astonishing for the Thomas Heatherwick Studio. What do you envisage for the next decade?

Thomas: Building projects, parts of cities, major buildings - they take many, many years to actually happen. The studio has been going for 21 years, but I actually feel that we have only got going. We have just finished our first university building. In the last few years we have just concluded our first actual bigger projects.

I have made mistakes, I have done things where I have done that healthy thing of going ‘Oh gosh we learned a lesson there.’ It is having both the confidence and experience that comes from having tried and done certain things over a period of time and being much better placed to take forward certain ideas to the next level.

Question 5

Christopher: As a Brit, I have been fascinated to read about your current project in the UK - the London Garden Bridge. It is creating a huge buzz across the design world and making headlines around the globe. Can you talk about the thought process and vision of that project?

Thomas:  It seemed an exciting idea to me when I heard of it 14 years ago. London has turned its back on the river, because it used to be the back door to London and it used to smell, and we put a dual carriage way at the Victoria Embankment on the edge of it.

So my job was really to say how can I make the hero of a green bridge that must be a garden, and a bridge secondary to that. The job of the bridge is to hold up that garden and get out of the way, and not have columns and cables lurking behind trees. So the project is two planters, and at their widest they are as wide as Waterloo Bridge and we are following the engineering so it isn’t just straight. Where we can take that load of a thousand cubic meters of soil is where these two columns are, so the bridge gets slightly wider there and then it is about making lots of places.

Question 6

Christopher:  In your mind who are the icons in your life, who have inspired you to get to this place in your career?

Thomas:  There are so many influencers that you cannot help but admire and wish you had one nano fraction of their drive and abilities.

Some inspirations are people like Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Joseph Paxton. Paxton especially, to build the Crystal Palace in nine months; it was the first modern building and on such a scale. Still on any building project I have been involved with you still stop and think: "Nine months from beginning to end." That was so unprecedented and is still now.

The people I admire most are people who not only have ideas, but use ingenuity to make project happen as well.

Question 7

Christopher: It has been an enormous pleasure talking about our perspectives on business and design. Thomas,  I would like to finish by asking a big question. If you could create your dream project what would it be, where and what?

Thomas:  There are so many projects. But for example the end of my grandmother’s life was spent in a nursing home, and it was shocking how poor the quality of the environment of the nursing homes in Britain were.

It is a design project - there are so many nursing homes in Britain and they are the most awful design. And that goes through everything from the spaces to the furniture and fittings. In care hospitals, you cannot get close to a loved one without bumping your knees on metal and getting a bruise.

Old people don’t actually just want to be with old people, they love to be with younger people. Why aren’t things designed to facilitate that subtle social interaction of actually breathing life into someone despite their aging.

Christopher:  Thank you so much for your time and answers. I am looking forward to you joining us on April 29.

For further press information and request for media credentials - please contact Ms. Birgit Müller, Christopher Guy Brand Ambassador, + (323) 332-9520 (tel:%2B%20%28323%29%20332-9520), or email: birgit@brandamb.com

Please register for media credentials no later than Tuesday, April 28^th as space will be limited.