Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/496780
seems to draw considerable energy from encounters with contemporary thinkers in other fields. "My ideas only come alive in dialogue with other people," says the architect. Five years ago, his breakthrough Seed Cathedral in Shanghai first brought him to international attention, and it signaled the direction of much of the work that's followed. Within the bristling 10-by-15 meter cube, hundreds of thousands of plant seeds testified to the biological diversity of England's "green and pleasant land," as the hymn has it. Apart from the symbolic charge of mixing nature and technology, the building seemed most remarkable for the formal insight behind it: As Heatherwick has observed, "if you magnified the texture of a building enough, the texture would actually become its form." A similar root-radical approach reappears in a new commission, announced early last year, for the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town: Faced with converting a former grain elevator on the city's waterfront, Heatherwick and his team have decided simply to embrace the giant concrete "tube-iness" of the existing structure, "cutting through to create a central space," as the architect puts it. Once again, a simple structural conceit promises to become a beguiling visual reality. "I've tried not to have an overarching aesthetic or singular style," says Heatherwick, and certainly the work bears that out. The theme of the Hammer show, if there is one, centers more on his basement-inventor personality, the gee-whiz sci-fi wonder of the 50 projects and 126 objects on display. Highlights include his 2010 reinvention of London's famed Routemaster double-decker buses and his proposed design for London's Garden Bridge, a surreal urban greenway straight out of Babylonian fantasy. Heatherwick himself still seems dazed by the experience of assembling all his diverse enterprises for the show. "We've had our heads down, just doing projects," he says. "It's funny now to show them to people. And to myself, in a way." He better get used to the exposure. If the proposed $170 million Pier55 plan—a network of floating lily pads on Manhattan's Hudson River supporting a mirage-like greenspace—proceeds as planned, it will be Heatherwick's most high-profile project to date. "It's a very exciting time in the area," says Heatherwick, who points to the nearby High Line Park as a model for his own—including the challenges that project faced. As always, Heatherwick will have to start from scratch. But that is what he does best. 156 CULTURED Heatherwick Studio's proposal for a pedestrian Garden Bridge aims to connect North and South London with green space.