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Photo Roy Rocklin/Getty Imagesf
Years later, it’s still hard to believe. A designer is commissioned to create a grand public building with a budget of $75 million as the centerpiece of a Manhattan real estate project. In his work, the cost rose to more than $150 million—more than the annual expenses of the Whitney Museum, more than the price of an F-35 fighter jet, and more than any artist could ever hope to command before. It is said that eventually, with some landscaping added, its price will climb further to $200 million.
The design was closely guarded until 2016. Then, the renderings were released. The grand reveal: The designer plans to build… a stair tower — 154 flights of stairs, to be exact, all arranged in a kind of inverted cone that, like shawarma on a spit, stretches to 16 stories (approximately 150 feet). Sky. In 2018, the designer gave a mild explanation: “What I love about stairs is that once you start using your body, it breaks up the underlying artistic nonsense because you can instantly tighten your legs,” he told New YorkerIan Parker.
Then, in early 2019, Thomas Heatherwick’s Blood vessel Open to the public, Hudson Yards is the crown jewel in a complex of towering corporate offices, luxury apartments, luxury shops and a luxury hotel developed by a luxury fitness chain. Its original copper-colored cladding gleams in the sunlight. It looks alien and a little dangerous, like a digital creation clicked and dragged from a computer screen into real life. It was hollow in its celebration of dizzying capital and personal ambition, and although it closed to visitors shortly afterwards, in May 2021, it must rank as one of the country’s iconic architectural projects – the Icon One of the sexual artworks. era.
Miraculously, this didn’t derail the 53-year-old Englishman’s career. Large-scale and eye-catching Heatherwick projects continue to emerge around the world. Boris Johnson compared him to Michelangelo. Diane von Furstenberg called him a “genius.” For engineer Tony Fadell, the “father of the iPod,” he is “a creative genius.” Billionaire Stephen Ross, the man behind Hudson Yards, is said to regard him as the “ultimate genius.”
Of course, it’s not a crime for artists and designers to be admired by the rich and powerful. it’s necessary. (Michelangelo certainly knew this.) But Heatherwick has become the go-to artist for the super-rich. Why?
One answer is Heatherwick can indeed create stunning spectacles – ones that become landmarks that patrons are proud to tout.Early successes were rolling bridge, designed for an office and retail development in London and installed in 2004. It’s not so much a bridge as it is a dynamic sculpture. It expanded majestically from an octagon into a now-defunct 36-foot-long footbridge over the Paddington Basin Canal. (Consisting of thousands of intricate moving parts, which stopped working in 2021 and may never be repaired.) A few years later, he became a A gleaming masterpiece of Op Art.His nearly 200-foot-tall starburst-like sculpture for Manchester, England Exploding B (2005), exuding a sense of excitement as an incredible vision becomes reality. Sadly, it was dismantled because some of its 180 spikes kept falling off. Not even the lobbying of another bombastic Antony Gormley could save it.
But these are essentially dazzling, one-note delights, perfect examples of Ed Ruscha’s old line about the reaction to bad art: “Wow! Huh? And good art ends in Opposites depict the same words. Heatherwick’s 2007 spun Chair, made of polished copper and stainless steel, may be the mascot of his approach: a smooth chair (imagine a spool of thread pinched in the middle) that the seated person can tilt at an angle and rotate in a complete circle. It’s fun to spin a few times.
Heatherwick rival (and 2022 California Google Tower collaborator) Bjarke Ingels told New Yorker: “The piece has a Harry Potter-esque Victorian weirdness to it. Almost a steampunk element.” He brings a gorgeous design that is intended to be an icon for a development, a neighborhood, a city . A case in point is that in 2017, he and Mayor Johnson planned to build a $260 million Garden Bridge (a tree-filled walkway) across the River Thames in London, but it was abandoned after absorbing $48 million in public funds. .
The Heatherwick phenomenon is not a story of gentrification. By the time he gets the call, the job is usually done. Long ago, West Chelsea’s white cube galleries and soaring rents on the High Line paved the way for Hudson Yards, while questionable rezoning has transformed Harlem, Central Park, and Hudson Yards. Nearly $6 billion in tax breaks, which also paved the way for Hudson Yards. A low employment area (never mind that only one of them is inhabited: the latter is the former train station). Instead, he was an exemplary architect at a time when cities were becoming unbearably expensive and the wealthiest people thought they shouldn’t pay taxes.
However, Heatherwick Position yourself as a people’s man. In his nearly 500-page manifesto, he continues his attack on the design of the last century. “Some architects see themselves as artists,” he writes in the book Humanizing: A Maker’s Guide to Urban Design. “The problem is, the rest of us are forced to accept this ‘art.’” He railed against buildings that were “boring”—too flat, plain, straight, shiny, drab, nameless, serious. About 50 pages are a diatribe against the “god of boredom” Le Corbusier, whose theory “allowed the order of repetition to completely overwhelm complexity,” something Heatherwick admired.
“Modernist architects think boring buildings are beautiful,” Heatherwick complained. Their minimal, theory-laden work provides cover for the cheap, knock-off stuff that exists alongside it. Targeting these elites and their “emotional austerity” whose buildings “make us feel stressed, sick, lonely and scared”, he adopts the language of populist politicians. “I have a promise to make to you,” he wrote in a slightly condescending letter to “passersby.” Humanize. “I will dedicate the rest of my life to this war. But I need you… to join us. Our goals are modest: we just want buildings that aren’t boring!” If boredom sounds hard to measure, don’t worry: Heatherwick Studio created a “boredom meter” to determine how interesting a structure’s shape and texture are on a scale of 1 to 10.
The obvious irony is that many of Heatherwick’s buildings read like desperate, failed attempts to stave off boredom through some virtuosity. They illustrate Sianne Ngai’s theory of the gimmick – a device induced by late capitalism that fails by having too little effect and trying too hard. Spherical, grenade-shaped windows monotonously line the upper floors of his 2021 Lantern House apartment in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, while his new Thousand Trees mall in Shanghai features, yes, 1,000 trees, each The trees are situated on mushroom-shaped pillars high in the sky surrounding the stepped building. It suggests a video game environment, as do the renderings of his over-the-top proposal for an island in Seoul’s Han River.
While Heatherwick claims to speak for ordinary people, he is careful not to do anything that might actually offend the super-rich.in a revealing passage Humanize”, he praised Antoni Gaudí’s curvaceous La Pedrera in Barcelona as “intending to fill us with awe and make us smile.” “Even though this building was built to provide high-end apartments for wealthy people, I believe it yes A gift. ” We should be grateful.
Heatherwick’s arguments sound just right for the ears of politicians who, in a time of government austerity, are reluctant to pursue projects that might actually benefit the public (forget the emotional strain).Self-proclaimed technocrat Michael Bloomberg is vague Humanizehailing it as “a powerful prescription for architecture that puts the public first.”
“Our most vulnerable live in the most boring buildings,” Heatherwick wrote on a page that oddly featured an illustration of the burned-out Grenfell Tower, where 74 people died in 2017 Lost lives there. “Why is the absence of boredom a luxury?” It should be noted that, to my knowledge, Heatherwick has not yet undertaken any large-scale or affordable housing schemes.
Making buildings and cities more livable, livable and generous is a noble pursuit, but the designer of the cold and majestic nine-figure staircase didn’t feel like the right person for the job – not least because he and his developer – the patron refused to install security features after a series of suicides there. (After the fourth, they finally shut it down; reportedly testing the network.) Standing under it, I didn’t feel like I was receiving a gift.
But it’s easy Heatherwick shares a common enemy: boring buildings with little regard for the people who use them. We all spend time in places that lack imagination and even less care. We deserve more. As he wrote, “We are richer than at any time in history.” Heatherwick pitched to developers with deep pockets and often failed to deliver satisfactory buildings, but his talent should inspire everyone, be it Commissioning architects, apartment tenants or voters, demand more.
Regardless, some of the ideas Heatherwick presents in his book about building better buildings are sensible mainstream ideas that practitioners and campaigners do promote, such as reducing regulations and simplifying the planning process. (Of course, such a move could also help wealthy developers.) But my favorite Heatherwick prescription is a quirky one, and the absolute pinnacle of Heatherwick’s work: “Mark the building.” ” He said that the creators of buildings should not “remain in the shadows” but should “proudly name their projects at eye level on the outside.”
“Why would anyone involved in the building process object to this?” he asked. “Why aren’t you proud? Why don’t you want to sign your canvas?”
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