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Follow on Google News | Thomas Heatherwick Interview with Christopher Guy HarrisonInternationally-renowned luxury furnishings creator Christopher Guy Harrison will present the 2015 BritWeek Design Icon Award to innovative British designer Thomas Heatherwick on April 29, 2015.
By: Christopher Guy Americas http://www.brandamb.com/ Below is an excerpt from the Q and A Session: Question 1 Christopher: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Thomas: There are so many projects. But for example the end of my grandmother’ 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: 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% Please register for media credentials no later than Tuesday, April 28th as space will be limited. End
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