Week 3: The Service of Imagination (progress)

To what extent does Heatherwick’s building have lasting value?

Thomas Heatherwick established a unique design practice with a spirit of experimentation and invention at its heart of every design project; having an idea of sensual, inquisitive and playful in terms of scale and context to provide efficiency and terminate the potential of crossed ideas. Therefore his designs appeared to be biomorphic in shape. Thomas Heatherwick’s design studio is committed in finding design solutions that push the boundaries of materials, creating new possibilities that provoke widespread disbelief; making the impossible; possible.  As to how he finds design solutions, he says the process is almost the opposite of having a ‘Eureka’ moment. It is more like solving a crime. The end product is always unexpected until the end though having the thought will be the beginning of the process of the design stage. He repeatedly analyse and interrogate in their quest for the single, original and compelling idea (stepping back and focus) that forms a strategic analysis;  narrowing it down to the essence of each project towards the final outcome. But, to what extent does Heatherwick’s building have lasting value?

Heatherwick wants both efficiency and ease of viewing position as part of his user’s experience. Therefore, he makes places that users would go and have a conversation, go for a walk with great pleasure and choose on a weekend to be at. Consequently, nature provides a key source of inspiration for Heatherwick’s designs; offering more floor spaces to benefit the entire city. The relationships between cities ad nature affects the development of agriculture and economic success and how this in turn affects social change.  Looking like a giant bubble itself, the Google HQ, or the valley mostly being bland; vibrant and connected community on the ground, an open network much like online Google-sphere and the internet, where public are accessible; creating a diversity neighbourhood rather than private hermetically-sealed mega circus tents in the garden of Eden.

In addition to the increase of building’s value, engine of innovation driving technological evolution and global economy set out the imaginative work environments to be as adaptable, flexible and intelligent. Creating space is not for 5 – 10 years but for a few decades. It will be a piece of environment users can work in multiple ways. For instance, using someone’s imagination and ideas over substance in architecture; refusing the ownership from the architect over the design and handing it to users who feel like hacking its spaces or designing spaces based on individuals. In that, the do-able and buildable spaces focus on shift and adjusting using lightweight blocks-like structures that can be moved around or adapt as its needs change. It allows flexibility over time as the needs of spaces within the office fluctuates often; causing the site to decent slowly. As flexible spaces are stimulating, the design, pieces or eco-working, giant pieces of furniture that can be connected in different ways; creating a structure looking of historic model of making streets; bringing the environment to protect those streets. The end product will be a series of buildings and outdoor areas sheltered beneath translucent domes.