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Speaker 1: Thomas Heatherwick is one of the best known names in

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Speaker 1: modern building design. His studio's work includes Vessel and Little

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Speaker 1: Island in New York, Coaldrop's Yard, and Google's new headquarters

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Speaker 1: in London. He even designed the cauldron for the Olympic

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Speaker 1: flame in the twenty twelve London Games. Now he's on

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Speaker 1: a mission to make our buildings less boring and more human.

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Speaker 1: He's written about it in a book called Humanize, and

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Speaker 1: he's been discussing his ideas and his latest projects with

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Speaker 1: me on Bloomberg Radio.

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Speaker 2: We talk about how nature is good, and there is

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Speaker 2: evidence showing that people take less time to heal in

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Speaker 2: spaces where they can look out at nature. And what

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Speaker 2: nature has is a necessary visual complexity. And we've had

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Speaker 2: buildings for the last eighty years which are flatter and

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Speaker 2: smoother and shinier and plainer and more serious than ever

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Speaker 2: in history. And what the science is starting to show

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Speaker 2: is that they aren't just maybe not nice. Some people

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Speaker 2: might call them ugly, but they actually your body starts

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Speaker 2: to go into stress when you don't have necessary visual complexity.

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Speaker 2: But I'm not calling to go back to the past

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Speaker 2: and copy old buildings. Even some of the new buildings.

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Speaker 2: They've really made an effort to put visual enrichment and

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Speaker 2: detail into them, which makes it interesting to walk around.

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Speaker 2: But it's not just a cosmetic thing. What we've discovered

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Speaker 2: is our humanness needs places to have that interestingness.

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Speaker 1: That's a difficult conversation though, when you're thinking about where

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Speaker 1: the money goes in a project. What value should we

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Speaker 1: be placing on design When it comes to a building

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Speaker 1: like that versus the cast.

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Speaker 2: Values the word that value really is the right word.

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Speaker 2: The problem we had was that that style that came

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Speaker 2: in that said flatter, smoother, shinier, more serious, plainer, was

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Speaker 2: fashionably good, was not good for us, but it was

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Speaker 2: also a bit cheaper. And so with the Humanized campaign,

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Speaker 2: we're really arguing that we need to make a step

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Speaker 2: change a bit like we've had in the world of architecture.

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Speaker 2: We talk about the green premium, which is that a

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Speaker 2: building you do need to pay a little bit more

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Speaker 2: for it to be highly environmentally good, performing well, but

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Speaker 2: unless people care about it. We've had this dirty secret

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Speaker 2: in construction, which is buildings get demolished, and so the

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Speaker 2: worst value is to build buildings that society doesn't care

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Speaker 2: about because they get demolished. So, for example, with commercial buildings,

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Speaker 2: the average age in the UK of a commercial building

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Speaker 2: is forty years So if I was a commercial building,

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Speaker 2: I would have been killed thirteen years ago. And the

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Speaker 2: carbon in construction is five times that of the whole

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Speaker 2: aviation industry. So they're bad environmentally, they're bad socially because

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Speaker 2: they don't bring us together. Yeah, and after COVID, when

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Speaker 2: the digital revolution is really kicked in, you can stay

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Speaker 2: at home, get a PhD, work by everything. Cities are

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Speaker 2: dangerous places when you don't have people in them, So

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Speaker 2: we need cities that bring us together and nurture that

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Speaker 2: togetherness and not being scared of each other.

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Speaker 1: And does that need to go into planning rules there is?

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Speaker 1: It's the question that we need to change the regulations

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Speaker 1: around buildings in the same way that we do around

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Speaker 1: sustainability to incorporate rules like that.

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Speaker 2: Planning's being quite basic and it's a very difficult thing

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Speaker 2: to get right. But in the book we talk about

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Speaker 2: the three distances you can experience buildings. If you imagine

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Speaker 2: being one hundred and fifty meters away from a building,

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Speaker 2: seeing it from a distance, how it fits in with

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Speaker 2: the city. You then look at the street distance, which

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Speaker 2: is when you're starting to be maybe only twenty or

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Speaker 2: thirty meters away. But the most impactful on the one

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Speaker 2: that we've found the least regulatory support for design teams

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Speaker 2: for society is doaor distance because actually your emotion isn't

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Speaker 2: at the top, it's at the bottom, because that's where

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Speaker 2: we all are, where us as pass us by, walk past,

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Speaker 2: and we spend too much time talking about insides of buildings.

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Speaker 2: A thousand times more people will walk past the outside

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Speaker 2: than ever go inside. So designing for buildings to be

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Speaker 2: givers rather than take us I mean selfishly, as a

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Speaker 2: designer of buildings, I want your great grandchildren to say

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Speaker 2: about one of the buildings I've done, No, don't knock

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Speaker 2: it down, Let's repair it, let's adjust it, instead of saying, meh,

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Speaker 2: knock it down, because the carbon in buildings is it's ridiculous.

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Speaker 1: And the projects that you've worked on, look for example,

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Speaker 1: the Google campus, the King's Cross, which people might be

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Speaker 1: very familiar with in London as well, there's a fantastic

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Speaker 1: roof garden going on to the top of that, which

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Speaker 1: is a really interesting design feature. But again that's when

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Speaker 1: you talk about perspective, that's not at the street level.

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Speaker 1: Whereas when you walk by street level from the images

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Speaker 1: that we've seen, does it look that different from what

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Speaker 1: else that you see in the area. How would you

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Speaker 1: contribute to resolving that issue.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm actually really pleased you've brought it up, because

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Speaker 2: you don't know what we're doing at the ground level.

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Speaker 2: It is an enormous building. It's three hundred and thirty

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Speaker 2: meters long. It's the same size as a cruise liner

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Speaker 2: coming into King's Cross, so as you will see and

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Speaker 2: what isn't apparent at the moment behind the hoardings, and

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Speaker 2: the amazing thing about the building is it's lifted up

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Speaker 2: two stories and so underneath we can build a village.

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Speaker 2: So that village will start to be being constructed this year,

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Speaker 2: and that will be a higgeldy pigglety collection of wooden

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Speaker 2: sub buildings of differing heights. They tip forward at different angles,

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Speaker 2: they're not in alignment, they're different colors, they have different

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Speaker 2: people and community organizations as part of them. So in

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Speaker 2: a sense we're going to be doing a radical chance

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Speaker 2: to reinvent High Street. But it to my point, we

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Speaker 2: judge buildings all the time by the top, just as

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Speaker 2: you have the ground is actually where your feeling is.

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Speaker 2: As you say, no one's in a helicopter looking down

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Speaker 2: on the amazing garden we put on the.

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Speaker 1: Top, and it's only they're lucky people who work there

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Speaker 1: that get to use this.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's wonderful. I mean, we're in an incredible

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Speaker 2: building at this moment. You're one of the privileged people

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Speaker 2: in London who will get to be in this building,

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Speaker 2: as will the people in our Google building. But your

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Speaker 2: real duty, I believe as a building designer you're to

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Speaker 2: some extent a public servant, and so what are you

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Speaker 2: making a building give? But I don't think this is

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Speaker 2: sort of just altruistic. It means that for a Google

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Speaker 2: an organization like that, what does your employee think as

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Speaker 2: they walk into that building, as they tell their grandmother

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Speaker 2: they work there, How do the social values of that

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Speaker 2: building manifest? And for a very long time, we've had

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Speaker 2: buildings that have been takers, not give us. You know

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Speaker 2: how many times if you walk down the street past

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Speaker 2: a big glass lobby, dead to the passer by, and

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Speaker 2: you can see the some luxury private world beyond, and

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Speaker 2: you can see the leather sofa and the Marble reception desk,

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Speaker 2: but it's got nothing for you. It's almost rubbing in

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Speaker 2: its exclusiveness. So the Google building in King's Cross will

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Speaker 2: be the opposite of that.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I want to ask you about your journey on

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Speaker 1: coming to these conclusions in this latest book as well,

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Speaker 1: because you know you've had these huge tranps. We've talked

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Speaker 1: about some of them already. One project which has attracted

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Speaker 1: criticism was Vassal in New York. It had to be

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Speaker 1: closed to the public since twenty twenty one over a

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Speaker 1: number of suicides that happened there. I wonder how you

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Speaker 1: feel about that project now and how you reflect on

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Speaker 1: what you learned from that process.

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Speaker 2: Vessel was a project commissioned to help create the atmosphere

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Speaker 2: and identity of a new district in New York that

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Speaker 2: hadn't existed before. It was a very very brave piece

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Speaker 2: of commissioning and an incredible investment in helping to wholeheartedly

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Speaker 2: make distinctiveness in a place. But it timed very unfortunately.

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Speaker 2: It timed its opening just before this terrible pandemic, something

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Speaker 2: that affected the mental health of millions of people all

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Speaker 2: over the world, and some of that mental health impact

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Speaker 2: was particularly felt amongst young people. That project was astonishingly

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Speaker 2: compelling in how it engaged people. It was a number

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Speaker 2: one backdrop on Grinder and in Tinder and all these things.

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Speaker 2: And the project was built above code. The barriers all

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Speaker 2: around it were built above the code that would have

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Speaker 2: been needed for any normal structure. But its compellingness had

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Speaker 2: a dark side, and so there were no accidents on it.

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Speaker 2: It was very sadly by a tiny handful of people

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Speaker 2: to this terrible awful thing. So this year is the

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Speaker 2: year that it's going to be refitted with a protect

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Speaker 2: protective barrier. But it was this sort of dark side

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Speaker 2: of its success, was this use that people had. I mean,

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Speaker 2: there are nearby there are levels that are just as

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Speaker 2: high as many bits of the vessel which have balustrades

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Speaker 2: that no one was choosing to jump from. So it

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Speaker 2: was a very sad and telling thing of our time.

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Speaker 2: It will be later this year that these the safety

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Speaker 2: measures are going to be implemented by the commissioners of

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Speaker 2: the project. So I'm pleased to be able to say

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Speaker 2: that it's had an enormous amount of development and reflection

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Speaker 2: to get it right. So at the moment there is

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Speaker 2: a sample section of it on the vessel and it

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Speaker 2: looks it looks really good, so it doesn't need to

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Speaker 2: be at the cost of the project. The whole point

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Speaker 2: of the project is it's public. My passion, all my

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Speaker 2: studios projects are public. And look at Little Island if

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Speaker 2: you get you know, just down from there, that opened

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Speaker 2: three years ago and is just packed with people and

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Speaker 2: loved and has these free performances on it and is

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Speaker 2: a main place for New Yorker's fitness and visitors, and

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Speaker 2: is all about the river and nature. So I think

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Speaker 2: we are hungry for public spaces that are wholehearted and

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Speaker 2: which sort of validate all of us. You know. The

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Speaker 2: thing that sort of inspires me really is that there

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Speaker 2: are seven point whatever billion people on the planet, and

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Speaker 2: every one of us thinks we're special. It's human nature.

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Speaker 2: And I think for too long we have not designed

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Speaker 2: the places the public life. You know how they say

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Speaker 2: you can't change what you can't measure. We haven't been

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Speaker 2: measuring the biggest experiences of buildings, who are on the

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Speaker 2: street outside, who will never come in. New buildings in

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Speaker 2: general are for very privileged people. You know, I design buildings,

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Speaker 2: and I know that I'm designing a new building is

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Speaker 2: an expensive thing to do. But at the same time

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Speaker 2: as you have your client, who's your customer, you have

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Speaker 2: another client and that's the public. And it's not to

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Speaker 2: talk down to the public. It's not to say to

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Speaker 2: yourself the public of ignorance, which I do think the

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Speaker 2: construction industry has done for many years too much. But

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Speaker 2: be inspired. How do we make places for us to

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Speaker 2: all come together? Because now the digital revolution has happened,

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Speaker 2: our cities are being rethought. The amazing opportunity is humanizing

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Speaker 2: our streets.

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Speaker 1: Is the UK a good place to be carrying out

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Speaker 1: big design projects at the moment? Is there sufficient ambition

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Speaker 1: do you think from government, from policymakers, from businesses in

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Speaker 1: this country do they want ambitious to.

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Speaker 2: I feel, in a way very lucky to have the

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Speaker 2: perspective from different sides of the planet and looking back

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Speaker 2: at the UK. We've had a chance recently to complete

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Speaker 2: a new district in Tokyo, and in China we're doing

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Speaker 2: a couple of new big districts. But you know, I

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Speaker 2: was all ready to sort of think Britain, no nothing.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's like we're finished. When I say we finished,

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Speaker 2: I mean there's no space to do ambition, but actually

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Speaker 2: there is everywhere. And on Friday I was on site

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Speaker 2: at the Olympia Exhibition Halls, the last major exhibition halls

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Speaker 2: in London that we are reworking, and so we've been

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Speaker 2: working on that project now for five years. The construction

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Speaker 2: is all happening and it's our clients. U developments have

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Speaker 2: been really ambitious and I think that cities compete with

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Speaker 2: each other and raise the game. One thing that the

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Speaker 2: UK has been famous for historically is creativity and the

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Speaker 2: confidence to be eccentric, idiosyncratic, make a decision that others

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Speaker 2: wouldn't do, and that humor that's here in Britain as well.

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Speaker 2: And I think that we have times where we maybe

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Speaker 2: hold back, but I think we could be in a

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Speaker 2: time where British forms of creativity, you know, across the

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Speaker 2: whole of the UK can really manifest. Because we don't

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Speaker 2: have to build more office buildings, we do need thousands

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Speaker 2: of more homes and so homes really is our challenge

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Speaker 2: at the moment. How much can we reappropriate the office

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Speaker 2: buildings that aren't needed, and how can we make not

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Speaker 2: the same mistakes that were made after the Second World

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Speaker 2: War the sixties, we built some absolutely terrible places and

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Speaker 2: no one can deny that. And we're about I hope

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Speaker 2: to build a lot of housing and it doesn't need

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Speaker 2: to be crazy shapes, It doesn't need to sort of

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Speaker 2: be ironic and doing silly things. But we do need

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Speaker 2: to find a language which we struggle with in the

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Speaker 2: design world and in architecture at the moment, of how

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Speaker 2: to do small things, affordable ways to bring detail and

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Speaker 2: richness and humanness and love into details. It doesn't need

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Speaker 2: to cost much more, really doesn't. It's just about the care.

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Speaker 1: Because it's such a big political issue as well, and

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Speaker 1: we are in an election here here in the UK,

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Speaker 1: and both Labor and the Conservatives seem to agree that

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Speaker 1: the UK needs to build more housing in a traditional style,

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Speaker 1: be that sort of a Neo Georgian pound bree or

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Speaker 1: something similar. Is that a good solution for housing? What

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Speaker 1: would your sort of advice be Trying to address the

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Speaker 1: housing crisis.

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Speaker 2: Every new government says they're going to build thousands and

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Speaker 2: thousands of housing units and then don't. So if we

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Speaker 2: have a new government coming in, they are going to

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Speaker 2: need to really find a way through all those barriers

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Speaker 2: about land ownership and planning to really make it happen.

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Speaker 2: And there are examples like Poundbury which were driven by

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Speaker 2: a criticism of the sixties housing and the sixties buildings

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Speaker 2: that got built, some of which which were amazing, but

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Speaker 2: a very large proportion of which were insensitive to how

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Speaker 2: humans are, how we live, and how we behave. And

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Speaker 2: Poundbury really was the King's initiative to find some of

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Speaker 2: the human codes really that existed from history and show

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Speaker 2: that they could work in today's day and age. Now,

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Speaker 2: I think that there are some amazing, very true lessons

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Speaker 2: to be learned there, But personally I don't believe you

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Speaker 2: have to copy old fashioned buildings. But I think the

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Speaker 2: values of the engagingness and diversity and interestingness can exist

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Speaker 2: in new buildings. And we've just lost our touch, We've

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Speaker 2: lost how to do it. There's a mindset in the

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Speaker 2: construction industry that clean lines are always good, and that

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Speaker 2: subtlety is good, and that less is more and form

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Speaker 2: follows function and ornament is a crime. And we've learned

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Speaker 2: this is not true. It's not true. People love dirty lines,

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Speaker 2: and we like places full of fascination and buildings need

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Speaker 2: to tell stories.

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Speaker 1: Again, do you want to be part of that. Would

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Speaker 1: you like to be part of that?

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Speaker 2: I to, I'd love to. I've worked on housing, but

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Speaker 2: not on social housing, and I would absolutely love to,

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Speaker 2: and I'd throw myself into it. And I believe that

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Speaker 2: we need to bring together a coalition of many creative

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Speaker 2: industries to collaborate together. It isn't just a case of

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Speaker 2: one profession can lead it and nail it. You know,

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Speaker 2: buildings used to be collaboration before of crass people, artists,

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Speaker 2: designers all working together. And I think that we could

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Speaker 2: bring in stories back into buildings, but it needn't cost

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Speaker 2: much because it needs it's only really at the street

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Speaker 2: door distance that you can really feel when something has

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Speaker 2: got care and attention and love.

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Speaker 1: So what would a Thomas Hathwick's social hasing project look like.

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Speaker 2: It would be probably quite simple blocks, but with fascination

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Speaker 2: built in to the doors, the windows, the paving, the landscape.

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Speaker 2: I think we could quite cost effectively build that in

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Speaker 2: at without making expensive shapes.

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Speaker 1: Like social housing in Vienna.

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Speaker 2: Friederich hundudz of US's houses are not trying to be

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Speaker 2: clean lines. In fact, he wrote a manifesto called the

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Speaker 2: Mold Manifesto, which was really about the ability to have

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Speaker 2: many people's creativity instead of just one. And so if

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Speaker 2: I had the chance to work on a large social

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Speaker 2: housing project, I would want to work with the local people,

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Speaker 2: bring their creativity and have the creativity of children involved too.

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Speaker 2: We've had a sort of desert of sterile buildings, and

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Speaker 2: I don't believe one profession needs to have the sole monopoly,

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Speaker 2: but that it can be a collaboration. So my dream

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Speaker 2: would be for me to be executive architect and work

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Speaker 2: with some local people to help make their ideas come

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Speaker 2: forward and help amplify local distinctiveness. You know, it's such

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Speaker 2: a shame when everywhere looks the same as everywhere else.

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Speaker 2: And the danger in building lots of housing all in

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Speaker 2: one go is that we'll do a version of the

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Speaker 2: problem we had back in the sixties where it felt

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Speaker 2: mass produced. We need to mass produce, but there are

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Speaker 2: ways to build at scale still having systems of idiosyncrasy.

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Speaker 2: And the headplanner from Singapore, who we've got to know

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Speaker 2: and who we've been doing some work with. One thing

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Speaker 2: she said that was so powerful is she said new

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Speaker 2: buildings don't tell stories anymore. So this is not about

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Speaker 2: whether things look old fashioned or curvy or square. It's

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Speaker 2: just we need buildings to have the culture of our

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Speaker 2: humanness in them. What we've learned is you strip buildings

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Speaker 2: of that culture, you are stripping them of their humanity,

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Speaker 2: and it's no wonder they then don't work. And it's

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Speaker 2: not enough to put a sculpture in front. I think

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Speaker 2: they say the turd in the plaza. You know, we

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Speaker 2: don't need the odd random sculpture in the street. That's great,

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Speaker 2: that can happen as well, But what we actually really

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Speaker 2: need is some personality and the confidence to put some

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Speaker 2: quirks and humanness into the fabric of the buildings themselves.

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Speaker 2: Then they are givers and not just take us. It's

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Speaker 2: not just about who's inside. They are the backdrop to

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Speaker 2: our lives that are essential for bringing society together, and

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Speaker 2: we need that more than ever.