I went to a talk at the Thomas Heatherwick studio, hidden behind a Travelodge just south of King’s Cross. I missed the introduction by Thomas himself, but arrived in time for a presentation of the full range of their recent projects, including the seed bank for the World Trade Fair in Shanghai (‘The Seed Cathedral’), based on the Sitooterie Thomas designed for Belsay in Northumberland, the building they have recently done for Bombay Sapphire at Laverstoke in Hampshire, the new Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in South Africa, a garden projecting into the Hudson River by the new Whitney in New York and, most recently, a new spatially organic building for Nanyang Technology University in Singapore. And the great cauldron for the opening of the Olympic Games. And the Garden Bridge. I liked the sense of controlled anarchy in the studio, of making as well as design, not a procedure of strict problem-solving as was described, but more of left field project disruption:-

