With sprawling cities and urban environments becoming increasingly densely packed, it is becoming ever more important to push for more green spaces in our cities. Thomas Heatherwick’s London-based studio has been working towards this goal in some of the world’s largest cities with projects in London, Shanghai and New York.
Thomas Heatherwick’s approach to design is somewhat unusual. He dislikes the idea of areas of design being categorised into architecture, furniture or product design, for example, but prefers considering design as a whole, bigger picture that is one of identifying and solving problems. I think that this philosophy resonates in the studio’s projects based on improving urban environments as they incorporate infrastructure, architecture and landscaping to break up the somewhat monotonous cityscapes that we have today. For example, the Garden Bridge project in London, which is no longer running, sought to not only improve pedestrian access across the river but also to provide a tranquil horticultural experience reviving London’s history of parks, squares and community gardens. Another big aim of the project was to support the indigenous species of river edge plants that may otherwise be threatened or lost by other urban development.
As mentioned previously, work on the Garden Bridge project planned to span the Thames was unfortunately and controversially halted by the London mayor Shadiq Khan due to spiralling construction and maintenance costs that would be a risk to public money. I don’t want to focus too much on this financial controversy or point blame on the failure of the project but it seems like a great shame that the amazing structure will not be built as I had envisioned the huge improvement that it could have been to the London skyline. As a city that I’ve spent a lot of time in, I think that the structure would have been a wonderful space to experience the atmosphere of the city while adding a much needed splash of green into the area. The shape of the bridge would have been a breath of fresh air of contemporary design contrasting to the neighbouring Waterloo Bridge which now looks quite grey and drab. Saying this, I don’t think that the form of the design is so different as to alienate it from the rest of the landscape down the river.
A project by Heatherwick Studio of similar intention that is currently under construction is 1000 trees in Shanghai. The thing that caught my eye about this design is the fact that it not only brings nature into the city through the edition of ‘1000 trees’, but the mountainous form of the project also reflects nature more literally and breaks up the more traditional, blocky skyscrapers that we are all used to. As expected Heaterwick Studio approached this project geographically rather than architecturally.
The site of the build is in the city’s M50 art district and occupies 300,000 sqft of land and features 400 terraces. A feature of this design is to highlight the structural support columns which would normally be hidden as utilises these to display and cultivate at least 1000 trees giving the idea of a tree covered mountain range. I really like how this design incorporates existing historical buildings and improves the access to them while providing new services and infrastructure to improve the area in a number of ways.
I hope that these examples of work from Heatherwick Studio show how they are designing to improve the atmosphere in our cities for the future by incorporating green space and by using the land more innovatively to break up the concrete jungle that almost every major city is becoming.
Sources:
https://www.wallpaper.com/gallery/architecture/whats-next-for-thomas-heatherwick-studio
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