The designer who makes buildings

He makes pavilions from seeds, breathes life into buses, and won an award for his Olympic cauldron. Thomas Heatherwick’s quirky style points to a new kind of architecture

By Bryan Appleyard

Near King’s Cross station in London, beyond black iron gates and a grey cave lined with bicycles, steel doors swing open to reveal a palace of strange delights. What appear to be the severed heads of giant chess pieces lean on the floor, a huge length of aluminium reaches a torn end, random consumer products—an expensive handbag, a Tasmanian Devil toy—are displayed on shelves, there is some kind of monumental wooden throne, ranks of Dell computer screens and a wall full of pictures of yet more oddities. There’s also a giant model of a bridge.

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