There are, says Thomas Heatherwick, too many boring buildings in the world. There has been “a century-long global catastrophe” caused by “bland, vague and forgettable” architecture, a “global epidemic of inhuman buildings”, a style of flat glass grids which, whether in Bengaluru, Dallas, Buenos Aires, Canberra or Nairobi, is always the same. “Intense and dreadful changes,” he melodramatically declares, “have been creeping through our towns and cities for the last 100 years, bringing with them destruction, misery, alienation, sickness and violence.” Boring buildings, he says, citing the neuroscientist Colin Ellard, cause “autonomic arousal”, a rise in stress levels in response to perceived threat.
He thinks there should be more architecture like that of Antoni Gaudí, the Catalan maestro whose work Heatherwick discovered at the age of 18 in a book he bought for £6.99 at a student sale in Brighton. Gaudí’s Casa Milà, a nine-storey apartment block in Barcelona, is an “unashamed festival of curves” that “undulates amazingly in the light, dancing in space… almost as if the building itself is breathing”. It is a “generous” creation that, he says, gives “unquantifiable” joy to millions of passersby.
