This year UK’s oldest and most prestigious design awards, Philips Designer Prize was won by its youngest contender - Thomas Heatherwick. This prize considers the designers entire career not just one project.
In his work one can see an amalgamation of many streams of study including structural engineering, sculpture, art and architecture.
Starting out as a one-man project, Heatherwick Studio now has a staff of 35.
Through his 12 year career Heatherwick has completed about 200 projects many of which are design wonders.
For example we can take his Rolling Bridge, a foot walk was required on a canal at Paddington, London so he came up with a 8 meter long timber-lined steel bridge which curls up into an octagon to allow boats to pass.
Another time he is commissioned to convert a pub to a restaurant, and the end product is Konstam a restaurant which was aired on the ten program series “The Urban Chef” on BBC2.
His other landmark projects include B of the Bang (shown in pic) at Manchester, England and Blue Carpet square at Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
One of the small-scale projects undertaken by Heatherwick is making a bag out of a zipper. This Zip Bag is fundamentally a small leather pouch with a zip around it. When unzipped it opens out to a larger sized bag. This was developed in partnership with Longchamps and is widely acclaimed.
There are also many other less talked about projects, which are very interesting like The Sitooterie, Vents, Terazzo Seats at a Sculpture Park and Bleigeissen.
One of his projects to look out for is a Glass Bridge soon to be installed at London’s Kings Cross. This is a path breaking bridge made completely of glass.
ref: fxmagazine and heatherwick.com
source: telegraph
