Cities Deserve Better Than These Thomas Heatherwick Gimmicks

An alien arriving on Earth this month might be forgiven for assuming that Thomas Heatherwick is currently the world’s most beloved urban designer. The British designer/engineer just unveiled his mammoth climbing-frame-cum-corncob Vessel at New York’s Hudson Yards, while just a few minutes up the Hudson River, an offshore park Pier 55 (also known as Diller Island) is rising out of the tidal sludge on Heatherwick-designed concrete lily pads. In London, his Coal Drops Yard retail development, which features kissing buildings, opened last October in the formerly warehouse-filled hinterland behind Kings Cross Station. Further afield, Heatherwick Studios repurposed a grain silo as an art gallery in Cape Town in 2017 and is co-designing something that looks like a titanic xylophone in Shanghai.

This high-profile intercontinental spread has made Heatherwick all but ubiquitous. It has also earned him a heavy dose of suspicion mixed with contempt, both from critics and the public. His name is often used as something of a synonym for everything that’s wrong with contemporary urban design. The New York Times has dubbed him the “billionaire whisperer” for his dossier of flashy corporate projects; the Guardian called him a “Pied Piper” who has managed to beguile extra-wealthy patrons. Some of his projects have been dubbed “Truman Show Nightmares.” Even the generally, pro-development, pro-business conservative media has started coming for Heatherwick’s projects as bellwethers pointing to exactly where our cities are going awry. But why?