GOOD DESIGN CAN BE FOOD FOR THE SOUL
British architect and designer Thomas Heatherwick thinks the construction industry is in a crisis. “We’ve just got so used to buildings that are boring,” said the man behind London’s revived Routemaster bus, Google’s Bay View, and New York’s Little Island. “New buildings, again and again, are too flat, too plain, too straight, too shiny, too monotonous, too anonymous, too serious. What happened?” While those features can often be aesthetically appropriate on their own, Heatherwick notes that it’s the relentless combination of them in the aesthetics of modern buildings and urban spaces that makes them over-whelmingly boring.
This boredom, he adds, isn’t just a nuisance—it can actually be harmful. “Boring is worse than nothing,” Heath-erwick writes in his latest book, Humanise. “Boring…
