"The tone in architecture is that the public is ignorant" says Thomas Heatherwick

Architects should see themselves as providing a public service even when working on luxury apartment blocks, British designer Thomas Heatherwick tells Dezeen in this interview.

"What I've learned in the last 30 years of running my studio is that ultimately we are in public service, and we are public servants, even when you're building high-end housing," Heatherwick said.

"If it is part of the walls of public life, you are in public service."

"We're neither being scientific nor artistic enough"

In keeping with his Humanise campaign, he called for building design to be based on measuring cerebral responses to buildings, rather than focusing on architectural theory.

"We talk about how the world of architecture is science and art, and actually, I believe we're neither being scientific enough nor artistic enough," he said.

"And I think there are people who are very scared about measuring how our brains respond, and I think that's wrong."

Architects, Heatherwick claimed, often consider the public "ignorant", which results in them overlooking emotional and intellectual responses from the people who actually have to live with the buildings in the city.

"The tone in the world of architecture is that the public is ignorant," Heatherwick said. "And I really don't like that. We are incredibly ignorant if we think the public is ignorant."

Heatherwick was reflecting on more than two decades of designing in New York City during a conversation at the SoHo store of French luxury brand Longchamp, as it reopened following a redesign by his studio.

For him, vibrant storefronts and public places are essential for keeping cities alive, when so much commerce and attention is focused on the digital world.

Heatherwick said that when he first came to New York in the early 2000s the city seemed "stuck" – but that it gained confidence as the administration of former mayor Michael Bloomberg went on.

However, he added, then and today it is not the city government driving architecture, but developers.

"Cities don't make places anymore"

"It's an interesting time – cities don't make places anymore," said Heatherwick, arguing that people lost confidence in the state to fund and design public space during the 1960s and 70s.

"Many cities lost all their architecture teams, and it seemed simpler to let the world of developers create the places, and so we architects shifted to working with developers."

In the last 20 years, Heatherwick has designed multiple high-profile projects in the city, including the artificial Little Island park, suspended above the Hudson River by mushroom-like concrete pillars.

He also created the Vessel public artwork in the Hudson Yards development, initiated under mayor Bloomberg for developers Related Companies and Oxford Properties.

The project has garnered controversy because of a string of suicides from the walkable structure. It has since been covered in nets after closing on and off for years.

"This phenomenal city had the confidence to keep the reinvention process going," said Heatherwick.

"I never dreamed we'd have the chance to do the kind of projects that we've had, which have such a public dimension."

"One thing led to another, but in an organic way that was unexpected."

"Enlightened" developers

According to Heatherwick, both Vessel and Little Island went beyond the initial briefs to make the developer-driven projects as beneficial as possible for the public.

They were built during a period that Heatherwick said was characterised by several place-making urban projects that engaged the public, such as the High Line elevated linear park, and that "enlightened" developers were instrumental in it.

For example, the brief for Little Island was originally to make a theatre on a preexisting pier, and Vessel was meant to be a sculpture.

"Many of our public projects that I'm most proud of were done working with property developers who have a long-term vision and are enlightened in the sense that they want to make something that's engaging to society more broadly," said Heatherwick.

For Heatherwick, these semi-public, high-profile projects represent a departure from architecture during his early career, when well-known architects vied for commissions from creative institutions.

"It felt that architecture was only art galleries and opera houses, and that somehow working with the development world was dirty and impure," he said.

"I am resistant to the idea that the word 'culture' means art. To me, culture is our lives, and our lives are where you go to see the doctor, where you buy the food that you eat, and where you walk the dog or take the children to a playground."

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