HEATHERWICK EXHIBITION

As you have probally already seen, last week we had a studio outing to The Heatherwick exhibition, which is currently on at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Here's my quick round up of the exhibition, wrote for my blog.

The exhibition shows a collection of Heatherwick's work, from student thoughts and ideas right through to the Olympic torch, revealed just over a week ago.

I was really impressed with the body of work this man and his studio has created, and found the exhibition hugely inspiring. Anyone in or around London should check it out!

Here's a few of my highlights:


B of the Bang - A Sculpture commissioned to mark the 2002 Commonwealth Games, it was one of the tallest structures in the City of Manchester and was the tallest sculpture in the UK until the completion of Aspire in 2008.  The sculpture takes its inspirtation from British sprinter Linford Christie, in which he said that he started his races not merely at the "bang" of the starting pistol, but at "the B of the Bang". The sculpture looks almost as if its floating, as one of the spikes holds the whole structure up.




The Olympic Flame - You will of had to of been living on Mars to not catch a glimpse of this in the last week. But I thought it was a great idea - symbolising the coming together of the 204 nations to take part in the games. A brilliant sentiment, and my favourite olympic torch ever.



Spun - These chair are created by the traditional process of metal spinning, which is used to make circular metal objects, such as timpani drums and gas cylinders. Heatherwick wanted to investigate if it was possible to make a chair with the technique, and the 'spun chair' was born. They were positioned outside the exhibition and are great fun, as you sit back you slowly rotate.



The New London Bus - A beautiful and perfect solution was created to solve the many problems that previous London buses have had. The bus has two staircases and disabled access. The curves make it appear smaller than it actually is and the curved windows give more visibility to the driver and passengers.
The seating upholstery is also quite interesting - designed to emanate the weight contours made when you sit in the seat.



The Rolling Bridge - There were a few very impressive bridges in the exhibition. This one is my favourite. The studio was commissioned to design a pedestrian bridge to span an inlet of the Grand Union Canal at Paddington Basin, London, and provide an access route for workers and residents. Crucially, the bridge needed to open to allow access for the boat moored in the inlet.
The aim was to make the movement the extraordinary aspect of the bridge. A common approach to designing opening bridges is to have a single rigid element that fractures and lifts out of the way. Rolling Bridge opens by slowly and smoothly curling until it transforms from a conventional, straight bridge, into a circular sculpture which sits on the bank of the canal. COOL!



UK Pavilion, Shaghai Expo - After winning a competition to design this, Heatherwick studio's brief was to ensure the UK's pavilion must be one of the expo’s “top five” most popular attractions at the 2010 Shaghai expo. This was a tall order when you consider what other countries do.
As many people only ever see the outside of the pavilion, on TV and at the event, Heatherwick realised that the outside of the pavilion needed to tell you what was going on inside. The way to achieve this was to make the building be a manifestation of its content. Avoiding outdated stereotypes, they decided to represent the inventiveness and creativity to be found in contemporary British life. Taking cues from the Expo theme, which was the future of cities (“better city, better life”), they explored the relationships between cities and nature and the significance of plants to human health, economic success and social change.
The outcome: The Seed Cathedral is a box, 15 metres high and 10 metres tall. From every surface protrude silvery hairs, consisting of 60,000 identical rods of clear acrylic, 7.5 metres long, which extend through the walls of the box and lift it into the air. Inside the pavilion, the geometry of the rods forms a space described by a curvaceous undulating surface. There are 250,000 seeds cast into the glassy tips of all the hairs. By day, the pavilion’s interior is lit by the sunlight that comes in along the length of each rod and lights up the seed ends. You can track the daily movement of the sun and pick out the shadows of passing clouds and birds and, when you move around, the light moves with you, glowing most strongly from the hairs that point directly towards you. By night, light sources inside each rod illuminate not only the seed ends inside the structure, but the tips of the hairs outside it, covering the pavilion in tiny points of light that dance and tingle in the breeze.


Distillery - This cool design is for the gin-maker Bombay Sapphire and is the company’s first production facility, which will also be open for members of the public to visit and will become the home of the brand. This visitors centre is inspired by the authentic distillation process, which follows a method devised in 1761. The design is inspired by the use of the 10 botanicals in this process, and points towards Britain’s heritage of botanical glasshouse structures.

There are loads more interesting sculptures, bridges, products, furniture and architecture to see. If you can't get to the exhibition you can see more of Heatherwick Studio's work here. If you can, the exhibtion is open until 30th September, and costs £6/£7 to get in.
OR.....
You can buy his book - Heatherwick Making

JS