23 Facts About Thomas Heatherwick

Thomas Heatherwick's mother designed jewellery; his father was a musician, ran a charity and later worked for Heatherwick's design firm.

Thomas Heatherwick studied three-dimensional design at Manchester Polytechnic and furniture design at the Royal College of Art.

Thomas Heatherwick founded Thomas Heatherwick Studio in 1994 after his graduation from the RCA.

Conran asked Thomas Heatherwick to make an interior display for the Conran Shop, which led to his first public commission after Mary Portas saw it and commissioned Thomas Heatherwick to make a window display for the 1997 London Fashion Week at the Harvey Nichols department store.

Thomas Heatherwick has served on numerous judging and advisory panels and has given talks at institutions including the RIBA, Bartlett School of Architecture, the South Africa Design Indaba conference, the Royal Academy and TED2011.

In 2002, as part of a redevelopment of Paddington Basin, Thomas Heatherwick Studio designed The Rolling Bridge, a canal bridge that opens by curling into a circle rather than rising in one or more rigid sections.

In 2007 Thomas Heatherwick Studio completed the East Beach Cafe at Littlehampton, West Sussex.

In 2009, Thomas Heatherwick was appointed to redesign the church interior at Worth Abbey.

Thomas Heatherwick Studio designed the UK's pavilion, dubbed "Seed Cathedral", for Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

Thomas Heatherwick Studio was asked by Danny Boyle, the artistic director of the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, to design the Olympic cauldron to be used for the Summer Olympics and Paralympics.

Thomas Heatherwick's design departed from the tradition of a raised bowl by instead consisting of an 8.5m-high "dandelion" of 204 copper "petals" hand-made by skilled car body workers, which were brought into the Olympic Stadium by children representing each team as part of the Parade of Nations, then mounted on blackened steel gas pipes which were lit by seven torchbearers and then rose in concentric circles from the centre outward.

In 2013, with the support of actress Joanna Lumley, Thomas Heatherwick proposed the Garden Bridge, a pedestrian bridge across the Thames in central London that would be planted as a woodland park.

In 2017, it was found that Thomas Heatherwick was the sole founding member of the Garden Bridge Trust and had attended eight trustee meetings, leading to accusations of conflict of interest; he had repeatedly denied being part of the trust.

Thomas Heatherwick had attended a secret fundraising meeting in California with Apple with then-Mayor Boris Johnson in 2013, before the design contract had been officially awarded.

In 2021, Thomas Heatherwick unveiled the design and concept for a pollution-eating car, Airo, at the Shanghai Motor Show.

Thomas Heatherwick Studio combines a wide range of design disciplines, including architecture, engineering, transport and urban planning to furniture, sculpture and product design.

Thomas Heatherwick has emphasised his dislike since his student days of "sliced-up ghettos of thought" which separate metalwork, product design, furniture design, embroidery, fashion, sculpture, and architecture into distinct departments, preferring to see all three-dimensional design as a single discipline.

The first US exhibition Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Thomas Heatherwick Studio travelled to three venues in North America in 2014 and 2015: Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York City.

Thomas Heatherwick was made an Honorary Fellow of RIBA in 2007 and of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2016.

Thomas Heatherwick has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the Royal College of Art, University of Dundee, University of Brighton, Sheffield Hallam University, University of the Arts London, and Manchester Metropolitan University.

Thomas Heatherwick was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to the design industry.

In 2015, Thomas Heatherwick was named one of GQ's 50 best dressed British men.

In 2019, Thomas Heatherwick received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Julie Taymor during the International Achievement Summit in New York City.