Heatherwick Studio

Heatherwick studios is an architectural company based in London. It was founded by Thomas Heatherwick, who wanted to explore the “soul” of buildings. The outcomes are breathtaking. New unseen shapes, where the real building looks like a computer animation. One of their most famous building was the Seed Cathedral, the UK Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010 (picture underneath).

It gave the visitor at the expo, a place with an overload of inputs, just space a silence. The pavilion itself was constructed by long glass “hair”, which contained at their end inside the building seeds from all over the world. The light from outsight was channeled through these glass fibers into the building, while during the night the inner light was illuminating the surrounding environment. It is a great example of how great design responses to the actual needs of the user and how attention is gained by contrast.