Humanize with designer Thomas Heatherwick | A Bit of Optimism

7 Nov 2023 · 1 min

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Thomas Heatherwick critiques contemporary 'fast' architecture, arguing that although society is richer and technology (satellites, phones, planes) has advanced, building practices have prioritized cheaper, short-lived construction—'fast architecture' thrown away after ~40 years—resulting in a loss of craft and ambition compared with the past.

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It's the first thing I hear, always is. Oh, but, Thomas, it was cheaper to build in the past. It wasn't. It was really expensive to build buildings in the past, but we thought it mattered. And it's. It's a bit like fast fashion. We discovered cheap. We invented that you could build even cheaper. We've got this fast architecture that we throw away after 40 years. Think of what a Victorian engineer would think if they arrived now. They would look up at the satellites and go, wow, what did you do? Amazing. They would look at the mobile phone technology and say, that's incredible. They'd see an airplane. They would see that and say, that's. That's so impressive. And then they would look at the buildings and just say, what happened? What? You know, what were you thinking? And we mustn't forget, society's richer than ever. Something weird happened and we're stuck. We're like stuck in a bunker.