Quotes from Thomas Heatherwick

I've always been interested in projects that work at multiple levels.

The British government — any government — is potentially the worst [architectural] client in the world.

The world of contemporary art has, in a way, exponentially expanded in the last couple of decades, and almost every major city in Europe and Asia and North America has fallen over themselves to have their own contemporary art museum.

I'm not really interested in creating things to be seen inside a private gallery. I'm interested in creating things that are all around us, that engage us. I just find the things that I respond to are useful.

To make architecture with any real value is a massive challenge.

You can make people feel valued or cared for by design alone. It's not purely about money. It's about how we choose to value human experience.

I have a strong sense that every project is an invention, which is not a word I hear being used in architecture courses.

I am finally getting the chance to build large structures and break preconceptions that my designs are just sculptures for people to be in. But my work always comes down to the human scale.

I used to say I'm not a business. I'm not! But I've had to come round to it, to acknowledge that you had to be an organisation and had to have a business dimension in order to do your passion.

Everything that we start is something that we don't know what the outcome is going to be.

I studied at a time when buildings were sterile things, and their creators were hands-off people - super-intelligent people, but you felt they didn't love the stuff buildings are made from.