London’s BT Tower is to be ‘repurposed’ – let’s just hope no one messes with its 60s perfection
Rowan Moore
The futuristic landmark is to become a hotel: fine. In charge of the project? A designer who likes to put his mark on things
October 2023
Thomas Heatherwick gets Le Corbusier all wrong
Letters: Readers respond to an interview with the designer Thomas Heatherwick, who denounced the architect Le Corbusier as ‘the god of boring’
‘Dangerously misguided’: the glaring problem with Thomas Heatherwick’s architectural dreamworld
The designer’s new book Humanise spearheads a campaign excoriating decades of bad building. Has he forgotten his own expensive disasters? Our critic hasn’t
Thomas Heatherwick’s war on boring buildings: ‘I’ve never gone against the whole industry before’
Humanise: A Maker’s Guide to Building Our World review – Thomas Heatherwick’s simplistic critique of modern architecture
‘Demand interestingness’: Thomas Heatherwick rails against boring buildings
July 2023
Leading actors and artists back Labour’s push for more creativity in schools
Exclusive: Grayson Perry and Olivia Colman lead group of creative figures supporting Keir Starmer’s plan to improve “human” skills
May 2022
Is Thomas Heatherwick’s Tree of Trees the new Marble Arch Mound?
Oliver Wainwright
Amid accusations of greenwashing, the designer’s steel-tree gift to the Queen appears to be a dangerously inept heir to London’s other recent urban misfire
April 2022
Notebook
The Tree of Trees jubilee sculpture is yet another mound of ill-judged public art
Rowan Moore
Thomas Heatherwick has been compared to Michelangelo, but this cartoon version of nature is no David
December 2021
Observer Design
Grassroots rebels: meet the ‘biophilics’ who are busy greening our cities
‘Biophilic’ urban designers are bringing nature directly into our lives, improving the environment and our mental and physical health
September 2021
Tulip, Summit, Mound: can urban properties really be ‘experiences’?
India Block
Developers are harming cities like London and New York by asking the public to visit and help monetise their monstrosities
July 2021
New York sculpture Vessel faces calls for closure after fourth jump death
Boy, 14, died after jumping from 150ft midtown structure, the fourth death in less than two years
April 2021
Thomas Heatherwick: ‘The city will be a new kind of space’
Thomas Heatherwick is the urban designer behind some of the world’s most pioneering landmarks. He talks about ‘soulfulness’ in cities, ‘heart-centred’ offices – and seducing people into being together again
August 2020
Maggie's Centre, St James's hospital, Leeds review – a safe place for flamboyance
Thomas Heatherwick has risen to an important challenge with this latest in a series of bespoke, calming environments for people with cancer
April 2019
Horror on the Hudson: New York's $25bn architectural fiasco
It is a billionaires’ playground where haircuts cost $800 and high-rise duplexes go for $32m. So why does the towering colossus of Hudson Yards feel so cheap?
Observer Design
Why does great architecture have to be fun?
Rowan Moore
A shopping mall with kissing roofs and a power plant with a ski slope on top. Whatever happened to grown-up architecture?
The $500m Shed: inside New York's quilted handbag on wheels
This puffed-up cultural citadel was meant to be an endlessly evolving, telescopic arts complex. But the glistening billionaires’ playground rising up beside it had other plans
March 2019
'We never thought it would happen': Thomas Heatherwick's $200m gamble
The British designer has landed in New York with the Vessel, an extravagant 150ft-tall structure, the most talked about element of Hudson Yards
February 2019
An absurd vanity project for our age – Boris Johnson’s garden bridge
Rowan Moore
This scandalously mismanaged ‘gift to the people of London’ will cost the taxpayer £43m. For nothing
November 2018
Thomas Heatherwick’s Coal Drops Yard – shopping in the Instagram age
Thomas Heatherwick’s ‘kissing’ roofs top a new high-end shopping mall in the old coal sheds. But why does the whole King’s Cross scheme feel unreal?
