He describes the Biennale as “a major, publicly funded, 60-day, city-wide conversation about how to make a city exactly the same size as London radically more human.” He adds: “It would be amazing to see London match that kind of leadership and get behind the London Festival of Architecture in the same way.”.
The man behind London icons ranging from the 2012 Olympic torch to the new Routemaster bus, to the Coal Drops Yard complex, also at Kings Cross, fears London had taken a wrong course that risks putting the capital dangerously behind the new rising conurbations of Asia.
He is in the final throws of his reimagined Olympia, a showcase for global entertainment, emerging talent, and cutting-edge ideas, including event spaces, retail, residential, hotels and restaurants that is going to become one of the most important new districts in London when it opens at the end of the year.
Honouring the Chinese city’s legacy of craftmanship and ceramics, the Xi’an Centre Culture Business District is located south of the city’s historic centre between the ruins of the Temple of Heaven and the prominent Shaanxi TV tower.
As Heatherwick says himself, “Instead of simply making different buildings, and paving and planting the spaces between them, there was the opportunity to craft an unexpected three-dimensional urban landscape on many levels, where citizens of the city can promenade and meet each other.”.
