Heatherwick Studio’s First Solo Exhibition Opens at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London

UK Pavilion Seed Cathedral, Shanghai Expo, China, 2010. © Iwan Baan

As part of this summer’s design season Victoria & Albert Museum presents the first solo exhibition of the work of British design firm Heatherwick Studios. The firm is best known for their “Seed Cathedral” at the 2010 Shanghai Expo. The exhibit showcases works that span Heatherwick Studios’ founder Thomas Heatherwick’s twenty year career in design during which he has received the Prince Philip Designers Prize and the London Design Medal. Works on display include international commissions that have won prestigious awards such as the RIBA International Award and the Shanghai World Expo Gold Award. Heatherwick Studio’s emphasis on material experimentation can be seen in its extensive collection of photographs, prototypes, and material fragments. The firm believes the creative process is a cross disciplinary mechanism that feeds from a broad range of fields such as engineering, sculpture, architecture, and product design. To reflect this design vision, the exhibition is arranged in a series of thematic clusters supplemented by video footage of Heatherwick explaining the story behind each theme. On display until September 30, the exhibition includes models of large scale architectural projects, preparatory drawings of the currently unbuilt Teesside biomass-fueled power station, complete pieces of smaller projects, and an original fiberoptic seeded rod from the pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo.
For more information regarding the exhibition and the Victoria & Albert Museum, visit http://www.vam.ac.uk/.