Latest news with #Humanise
South China Morning Post
24-03-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Designer Thomas Heatherwick seeks to humanise architecture: he built the British Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and says Hong Kong's boring buildings are ‘saved by nature'
Thomas Heatherwick wants to banish boredom from the built environment. 'We're living through a quiet, global catastrophe of boring buildings that make us sick, stressed and depressed, while simultaneously destroying our planet,' reads the homepage of the English designer's Humanise campaign, launched in October 2023. His book, Humanise: A Maker's Guide to Building Our World, was published the same month. The 18-story-high Xi'an Tree is the heart of Xi'an's new Centre Culture Business District, designed by Thomas Heatherwick. Photo: Handout In Hong Kong last December for Business of Design Week (BODW), Heatherwick delivered the keynote 'Humanising Cities: A Thousand-Year Vision'. He also held a book signing supported by Hong Kong designer Kai-yin Lo, who describes herself as 'an admirer and friend' of the founder of London-based Heatherwick Studio. Advertisement On the sidelines at BODW, Style put it to Heatherwick that humanising cities is a noble goal, but how does it stand up to the commercial considerations omnipresent in our world? When it comes to 'the commercial side and the public-quality side', Heatherwick says: 'I refuse to see them as in opposition because I think that it can only make business sense to make places that are loved by people.' Thomas Heatherwick's team designed paving stones resembling 'fans that welcome you into doorways' to create a bigger and softer textural pattern for the Xi'an CCBD. Photo: Handout As he made these remarks, China-based developer CR Land and Heatherwick Studio were on the verge of launching the Xi'an Centre Culture Business District (CCBD), which opened in December 2024 in the northwestern Chinese city. The studio's designers were inspired by Xi'an's famous Terracotta Army to use Chinese ceramic tiles as cladding across the project's major structures. Textured and patterned, the tiles' unique glaze has a 'hand-finished fascination' when viewed close up, adds Heatherwick. And while paving 'tends to be very gridded', he says, for the Xi'an CCBD, his team drew inspiration from the organic form of ginkgo leaves to produce paving stones resembling 'fans that welcome you into doorways', but also, 'create a bigger textural pattern that's softer'. Little Island in New York, designed by Thomas Heatherwick. Photo: Handout The 'heart of the development', he says, is the Xi'an Tree – an 18-storey vertical park. To create the park's multiple gardens, Heatherwick Studio selected seven types of plant from the seven regions of the world connected by the Maritime Silk Route. The concept ties into Xi'an too: as the capital of the Chinese Empire for more than 1,000 years, it was an important stop on the Silk Route, a major overland link between China and Europe for centuries. 'On that route are seven different biomes with different types of plants – so we made seven different types of garden,' Heatherwick explains.
South China Morning Post
01-03-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
When will Hong Kong stop building skyscraping boxes with bay windows?
Undersecretary for Development David Lam Chi-man recently called for a fresh 'facilitator' mindset to streamline the project vetting and approval process, while the Buildings, Fire Services, Highways and Water Supplies Departments all committed to cutting excessive red tape. Such initiatives are a small step in saving resources and time, and a giant leap in inspiring new development interests. Advertisement The message shines a welcome light, showing that even bureaucracy can change and adapt to the current market conditions. To reinvent ourselves, we should not stop at streamlining the process, but should also question the quality of our built environments. In his architectural manifesto Humanise, British designer Thomas Heatherwick condemns modernism as spearheaded by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier and popularised in the 20th century. He argues that as modernism took over the world, built environments were stripped of beauty, interesting elements and emotional connections with people. His words remind me of Hong Kong buildings, and I don't mean particular starchitects' masterpieces, skyscrapers or cultural facilities. I mean the everyday architecture where most people live and work. Surprisingly, Heatherwick gives a shout-out to Hong Kong as a positive example of visual interest. 'A lot of buildings in Hong Kong have visual complexity, as a direct result of a government initiative from a number of years ago that encouraged bay windows,' he writes. 'The towers that got built as a result were no longer flat and smooth but much more three-dimensional – and therefore more interesting for everyone passing by.' Residential buildings in Hong Kong's Tseung Kwan O district, seen in November 2023. Photo: Sun Yeung
