The amazing design of Thomas Heatherwick

Born in London, Thomas Heatherwick trained as a designer at Manchester Metropolitan University and at the Royal College of Art, London.
His buildings, furniture and installations are spectaular in form and design. Here are just four (from MANY) that I liked...

1. Sitooterie II (above): "The directors of the National Malus (crab-apple) Collection invited Heatherwick Studio to develop the design of a structure called the Sitooterie for their site in Essex. Derived from the Scottish, a 'sitooterie' is a small building in which to literally 'sit oot'.
The structure is a cube punctured by over 5000 long thin windows that project from all its surfaces and lift it off the ground. The cube, which measures 2.4 x 2.4 metres, is precision-machined from 15mm anodised aluminium and the windows are 18mm square-section aluminium tubes glazed with transparent orange acrylic.
As the long thin windows all point at the exact centre of the cube, it only takes a single light source, located at this central point, to send light through every tube, causing the windows to glow orange. A small number of them also project into the cube to form seating."

2. Longchamps, Spring St. NY, NY

"Few New Yorkers will be familiar with the TARDIS, the time traveling vehicle that whisks the time lord Doctor Who through the centuries to save civilization from evil aliens. Yet TARDIS is the inspiration for an extraordinary new building on Spring Street in SoHo. The inside of the new Thomas Heatherwick designed Longchamps store, Spring Street, New York."

3. Plank: "Plank is a six-foot length of solid wood, which can be folded into a coffee table, side table or stool and folded out again to make a plank. It works because its four joints, engineered to high tolerances, cross the board at slight angles, causing it to spiral as it folds."

4. B of the Bang
"Part of the regeneration strategy for Manchester's eastern quarter, Heatherwick Studio won the competition to design a monument to the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The design reacts against the convention for passive-looking monuments to sporting events that celebrate peace and harmony, rather than the dynamism and explosiveness of physical competition.
The 56-metre weathering steel structure is made of 180 identical tapering tubes arranged in twenty-four elliptical groupings of between one and nine spikes. As tall as a twenty-storey building and weighing 180 tonnes, B of the Bang is the same height as the Leaning Tower of Pisa - only leaning ten times as much."