The time it was rumoured to be at work on Google’s new headquarters in California.
“I can confirm Heatherwick Studio and BIG are working on a joint design project for Google in Mountain View, California. We can’t give any further comment at this point,” Heatherwick Studio’s Tom Coupe told Dezeen.
And the time it was set to repeat the trick in London.
Heatherwick Studios declined to comment when contacted by City A.M.
The time in 2008 when people started worrying about the spiky sculpture it wanted to send to Shanghai, sparking panic about safety and possibly also Anglo-Sino relations.
Consultants on the Shanghai project are understood to be worried following the design problems that surrounded Heatherwick’s B of the Bang sculpture, according to Building magazine. A week before the 184ft steel work – commissioned to mark the Commonwealth Games – was unveiled in 2005, the tip of one of its many giant spikes fell off.
Lai Pak Hung, managing director at Davis Langdon & Seah, which is working on the Shanghai scheme, reportedly said: “We can’t say we don’t have any worries. Given it’s the Expo, it’s not just about safety – it’s political. It could affect the UK’s relationship with the Chinese government.”
Heatherwick’s studio declined to comment yesterday.
The time when Thomas Heatherwick offended four other architecture practices by publicly slating their plans for the redevelopment of the Royal Mail Mount Pleasant sorting office.
Heatherwick declined to comment.
The time when opponents of the Garden Bridge launched their “folly for London” competition, to highlight their contention that it was a total waste of public money.
The competition budget is £60 million – the amount of public money earmarked for the bridge by by TfL and the Treasury.
The satirical competition has been designed to poke fun at the real Garden Bridge and was timed to co-incide with a fundraising event for the Garden Bridge at Harrods.
Heatherwick Studios declined to comment.
The time it looked like then London mayor Boris Johnson may have broken public procurement rules, by taking Heatherwick to meetings with sponsors before inviting any other practice to apply for the job.
LBC’s Political Editor Theo Usherwood reports: “When you want to fix your roof, you don’t just ring up one builder and say how much. You ring up three or four builders to get a quote, compare the prices and make sure you get the best value for money.
“Boris Johnson should be doing the same at City Hall with the Garden Bridge – which is relying on millions of pounds of tax-payers’ money.
Heatherwick Studios told LBC they do not comment on private business meetings.
The time it emerged that Heatherwick met Boris or one of his deputies at least five times before the formal launch of the competitive procurement process for the Garden Bridge.
TfL has also been contacted for comment. Heatherwick Studio declined to comment.
(Heatherwick won the bid, by the way.)
The time the London Assembly said that all this was a bit rum, really.
A committee of elected London Assembly members criticised the mayor over the tender process for the 60,000-pound design contract for the new bridge, a pedestrian river crossing which would create a new green space in the middle of the city.
The committee said Johnson met five times with the winning designer before the procurement process began. One meeting was during a taxpayer-funded trip to San Francisco to seek funding for the 175-million pound project.
“The mayor’s actions undermined the integrity of the process in terms of the contact he had. No other bidders had that contact with him,” Len Duvall, chair of the committee that produced the report, told Reuters.
The contract was won by Thomas Heatherwick, who previously designed an “Olympic Cauldron” for the London 2012 games and a new model of double-decker bus for the capital. A spokeswoman for Heatherwick’s studio declined to comment.
The time it looked suspiciously like Boris Johnson had wanted Heatherwick to win all along.
From the Architects’ Journal:
Transport for London was instructed that its chairman, mayor Boris Johnson, wanted the organisation to support Thomas Heatherwick’s Garden Bridge proposal eight weeks before it held the bridge design contest the designer went on to win, it has emerged.
A December 2012 TfL briefing note released following a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made by the AJ makes clear the mayor’s support for their scheme in its opening paragraph. This and accompanying material released under the FOI response has sparked renewed calls for the National Audit Office to investigate.
Thomas Heatherwick declined to comment.
The time Boris’ successor as mayor threw a spanner in the works.
The AJ again:
London’s new mayor has effectively suspended work on the Garden Bridge because of concerns that an enabling project at Temple Tube station will lead to more public money being spent on the £175 million project.
Heatherwick Studio declined to comment.
This time.
At time of writing, Heatherwick Studio has yet to respond to a request for comment.
Jonn Elledge is the editor of CityMetric. He is on Twitter, far too much, as @jonnelledge.
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