Jo Bloggs...
If you are think that all the artistic creations that come home from school with your children, all the clay piggy-banks, moody self-portraits and whacky surrealist explosions are going nowhere, then I urge you to cram yourself into the back-room at the Victoria and Albert Museum where the Thomas Heatherwick exhibition currently shows the direct route from
squeezing play dough through a plastic mould and enjoying the curly, mushy shapes that come out, to the multi award winning design firm whose
groundbreaking creations topped the stunning Olympic ceremony - particularly the
flame design. On show is the original model of the flame. It does look rather like it might have sat on
your teenager's desk as an ambitious, but zany school project; when revealed at the peak of the ceremony, more than anything that had preceded it, his realisation of the idea of the eternal torch carried by all the nations taking part, took
the breath away from a billion viewers around the world, as the individual petals of bronze rose
to form one roaring flower of light - symbolism not even lost on a pre-occupied sixth former, and
beautifully simple; moreover, it answered that nagging question - 'how could this Olympics ever
be individual, representative, and creative on a global stage after the 'star wars' scale of
Beijing?'
The notes and ideas that permeate Heatherwick's studio are a testament to the
purity of his ethic - all different disciplines within the studio are physically
and creatively on a level, so that a kind of democracy of innovation means that
the designs leave behind the usual strictures of any single discipline - the
rolling bridge they made for paddington basin is artistically pleasing as much
as it is a triumph of modern material, but also basic maths and engineering.
The
cafe at Littlehampton is amusing in design and commercial, but beyond original
in the way it's architecture fits the lines of the long beach. Everyone knows
who eats there that they are in Barney rubbles house for fish and chips, but
like the best creation you think this is so simple, I could have done it. But we
didn't, he did.
However, maybe our children will too, if we can facilitate passing on the baton, the one already
handed from Brunel through Turing and Jonathan Ive (the british designer of the iPhone) and onto Thomas Heatherwick - 'workshop UK,' a
small but
perfectly formed hotbed of originality.
Sent from my iPhone
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