Hasta La Ideas

There were just a couple of hints that Thomas Heatherwick would be making major headlines with his presentation at Design Indaba last week, but it would prove to be the highlight of the conference. Nevertheless, the unassuming Londoner scarcely betrayed his nerves as he presented a handful of completed projects and works in progress in the lead-up to the reveal.

His work, for the uninitiated, sounds farfetched or fanciful, even Borgesian at times: A corridor-less, corner-less Learning Hub in Singapore. A flaming floriform sculpture that perfectly symbolizes “E pluribus unum” (made of copper no less), which might just be the coolest Olympic cauldron design ever. A fleet of two-story buildings on wheels, from which “you can’t get a better view of London”—a.k.a. the double-decker bus. The Seed Cathedral, which looks like a giant sea creature or koosh ball or a universe that’s exploding and imploding at the same time… for which Heatherwick revealed his original inspiration.

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