Heatherwick Studio at the V&A

As part of our cultural detours yesterday, we stopped by the recently opened Heatherwick Studio retrospective at the V&A Museum. Designed, presumably, to provide a sense of the working studio environment, it was full to the brim of models, details, prototypes, videos of everything from Doha desert hotel complexes to Christmas cards. A little too much on display, to be honest (something we heard from several other visitors) but once you get lost in the detail, it was fascinating to see the enormous range of projects the studio undertakes.

Image via It's Nice That

Image via It's Nice That

From early projects like Plank, and B of the Bang to more recent (and noticeably larger scale) projects like the multi-faceted skyscraper hotel in China and the celebrated Seed Cathedral, the show is arranged thematically - materiality, technology, collaboration etc.

The new bus for London, an homage to the 1950's Routemaster, and rolls of upholstery fabric designed by Heatherwick for the project sits alongside crumpled steel sheets used in the construction of the Aberystwyth Artist Studios project. 

Autumn Intrusion for Harvey Nichols, 1997

Smaller items such as the Spun chair and the Extrusions bench (which we mentioned way back here) sit on plinths in the centre of the room, along with an enormous chandelier for the Wellcome Trust. The Wellcome commission came after construction of the building on the Euston Road was complete, so the challenge was to design something that would fit through a standard door. Heatherwick went one further, creating a 30 metre high chandelier that could fit through a letter box. 142,000 glass spheres were threaded onto 27,000 steel cables by 3 teams, working 24 hours a day for 4 months. The result is Bleigiessen and can be viewed at the Wellcome trust on the last Friday of every month at 2pm.

Here's a handy hint - the studio have vowed that every Friday at 2pm, someone from the studio will be on hand to demonstrate the working models, including the 7 metre retractable bridge. It's well worth timing your visit to include that.

For added value, spend some time in the V&A central reception area watching kids, young and old, playing with the Spun chairs. You'll never tire of watching their expressions change from trepidation to pure glee.