Heatherwick Studio is the London-based design studio founded in 1994 by Thomas Heatherwick (b. 1970, London) — RIBA Stirling Prize winner 2024 for Maggie's Centre Yorkshire. The studio bridges architecture, sculpture, and product design at scales ranging from individual furnishings to city-scale urban interventions, with a global practice of approximately 200 staff. Its substantial New York portfolio — Lantern House at 515 West 18th Street (2021), The Vessel at Hudson Yards (2019), and Little Island at Hudson River Park (with MNLA, 2021) — constitutes the most substantial NYC presence of any contemporary European design practice.
The London-based design studio whose Lantern House on West 18th Street, The Vessel at Hudson Yards, and Little Island at Hudson River Park together constitute the most substantial New York City portfolio of any contemporary European design practice — founded in 1994 by Thomas Heatherwick, with a design philosophy that bridges architecture, sculpture, and product design at scales ranging from the individual furnishing to the city-scale urban intervention.
At a glance
| Founded | 1994 |
| Founder | Thomas Heatherwick (b. 1970, London) |
| Headquarters | King's Cross, London |
| Staff | Approximately 200 |
| RIBA Stirling Prize | 2024 (for Maggie's Centre Yorkshire) |
| Major NYC work | Lantern House at 515 West 18th Street (2021); The Vessel at Hudson Yards (2019); Little Island at Hudson River Park (with MNLA, 2021) |
Why Heatherwick Studio matters
Heatherwick Studio is the contemporary international design practice whose substantive New York portfolio across the 2016–2026 period — Lantern House at 515 West 18th Street (the firm's first NYC residential), The Vessel at Hudson Yards (the climbable sculptural staircase at the center of the Hudson Yards public plaza), and Little Island at Hudson River Park (the pier-form park constructed in partnership with the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation) — has anchored the firm as one of the most-substantive international design practices working in the city's contemporary built environment. Founded in 1994 in London by the British designer Thomas Heatherwick, then 24 years old, the studio has developed into a global design practice whose work ranges across the categories of architecture, urban-design infrastructure, transportation design, public sculpture, and product design.
The firm's distinction within the contemporary design profession is structural. Where most architectural practices operate within the architectural professional category — with the formal training, professional licensing, and project-typology specialization characteristic of architectural practice — Heatherwick Studio operates across the broader design discipline category, with substantive project portfolios in architecture, sculpture, transportation, and product design that no single architectural professional category fully accommodates. Heatherwick himself trained in three-dimensional design at the Royal College of Art rather than in architecture; the firm's practice continues to reflect that breadth, with the architectural commissions calibrated against a broader design vocabulary that the firm's founder's training and the firm's institutional position have anchored.
For Manhattan residential buyers evaluating the firm's Lantern House at 515 West 18th Street, the design attribution is a substantive part of the building's structural premium. The firm's international design reputation, the substantive New York portfolio, and the specific architectural character of the residential building together constitute a residential context that no other contemporary Manhattan residential building substantially replicates.
Founding and design philosophy
Thomas Heatherwick was born in London in 1970 and grew up in central London in a creative-family context that anchored his early engagement with design and craft. He studied three-dimensional design at Manchester Polytechnic (now Manchester Metropolitan University) and at the Royal College of Art in London, completing his postgraduate education in 1994. He founded what is now Heatherwick Studio in the same year, beginning as a sole-practitioner design office working on small-scale design commissions and developing into the substantial international design practice the studio has become.
The firm's design philosophy, articulated by Heatherwick across his continuing practice and in the substantial publications about the firm's work, has emphasized several recurring themes that distinguish the firm's work from the broader contemporary architectural production. The first is the substantive engagement with emotional and sensory experience — Heatherwick has consistently characterized the firm's work as designed to produce specific emotional and physical responses in the people who interact with the buildings and objects the firm designs, with the architectural and design strategies calibrated to support those responses. The second is the engagement with materiality and craft at substantive scale — the firm's work routinely incorporates substantial custom material development, the engagement of specialized craftsmen and fabricators, and the substantive material articulation that distinguishes the firm's buildings from the curtain-wall continuity characteristic of much contemporary commercial architecture. The third is the substantive engagement with the urban-design context — the firm's larger projects, particularly the urban interventions at Hudson Yards, Coal Drops Yard, and the King's Cross district, have been designed in substantial part as urban-design infrastructure rather than as individual building objects.
The firm's design vocabulary has, across the past three decades, included an unusually broad range of project typologies. Heatherwick has at various points designed bus interiors (the New Routemaster bus that operates on the London transit system), distilleries (the Bombay Sapphire Distillery), Olympic infrastructure (the 2012 London Olympic Cauldron, designed as a composition of 204 individual copper-petal elements representing each participating nation), museum conversions (the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, converted from a historic grain silo), public sculpture (the B of the Bang sculpture in Manchester), retail and commercial infrastructure (the Pacific Place mall renovation in Hong Kong, the Coal Drops Yard retail district in King's Cross London), residential buildings (Lantern House in New York), and substantial urban-design interventions (The Vessel at Hudson Yards, Little Island at Hudson River Park).
The combination of this typological breadth and the firm's substantive emphasis on emotional and material engagement has produced a body of work that has been substantially discussed in both the architectural press and the broader cultural press — with the firm's projects routinely attracting substantial public attention, substantial critical engagement, and (in some cases) substantive public controversy.
Major works: international portfolio
The firm's international practice across approximately thirty years includes a substantial portfolio of architecture, sculpture, infrastructure, and product design commissions. The works listed below represent the firm's most-recognized commissions; the full body of work substantially exceeds this list.
Public sculpture and urban interventions
The 2012 London Olympic Cauldron (London, 2012). The firm's design for the cauldron that held the Olympic flame during the 2012 London Olympics. The cauldron consisted of 204 individual copper-petal elements, one representing each participating nation, that were carried into the Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremonies and assembled into the unified cauldron form for the duration of the Games. The design became one of the most-discussed Olympic ceremonial designs in the history of the modern Games.
The Vessel (Hudson Yards, New York, 2019). The firm's design for the 16-story climbable sculptural staircase at the center of the Hudson Yards public plaza. The structure — 154 interconnected staircases, 80 landings, and approximately 2,500 individual steps, arranged in an interconnected pattern derived from Indian stepwell forms — was designed as the principal public sculptural focal point of the Hudson Yards development. The structure has had a substantial and contested public history, including closures during 2020–2021 after several visitor suicides, with the structure reopening in 2023 with modified safety infrastructure.
Little Island (Hudson River Park, New York, 2021). The firm's design for the public park constructed on a pier-form platform projecting into the Hudson River at the western edge of Manhattan, at approximately West 13th Street, with MNLA (Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects) providing the landscape design. The park, funded substantially by the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, consists of 132 tulip-form concrete planters of varying heights supporting the park's landscape program above the Hudson River.
B of the Bang (Manchester, England, 2005). The firm's substantial public sculpture installation at the Manchester City of Manchester Stadium, commissioned to commemorate the 2002 Commonwealth Games hosted in Manchester. The sculpture was subsequently dismantled after structural concerns.
Architectural commissions
Lantern House at 515 West 18th Street (New York, 2021). The firm's first NYC residential commission — covered in detail in the dedicated building guide. The 22-story twin-tower condominium pair on West 18th Street adjacent to the High Line produced the firm's principal application of its design register to the New York residential context.
Coal Drops Yard (King's Cross, London, 2018). The firm's substantial retail-and-restaurant complex constructed by converting two Victorian-era coal-drop warehouse buildings into a unified covered retail district at the King's Cross redeveloped railway lands. The project's distinctive curved-roof intervention — connecting the two original Victorian buildings with a substantial new architectural element — anchored the firm's broader King's Cross district contribution.
Bombay Sapphire Distillery (Laverstoke Mill, Hampshire, England, 2014). The firm's conversion of a historic paper mill into Bombay Sapphire's distillery and visitor centre, with substantial glass-greenhouse architectural elements connecting the historic building infrastructure to the contemporary distillery program.
Zeitz MOCAA (V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, 2017). The firm's conversion of a historic grain silo into the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, with substantial structural intervention to convert the silo's existing concrete infrastructure into the museum's gallery program.
1000 Trees (Shanghai, 2020–2021). The firm's substantial mixed-use development in Shanghai's M50 art district, anchored by a vertical-forest architectural program that places approximately 1,000 trees across the building's various floors.
UK Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010 (Shanghai, 2010). The firm's design for the United Kingdom pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. The pavilion — known as the "Seed Cathedral" — consisted of approximately 60,000 individual transparent acrylic rods extending outward from the pavilion's central core, each rod containing a botanical seed at its tip.
Maggie's Yorkshire (Leeds, England, 2020). The firm's design for the Maggie's Yorkshire cancer-care centre, which won the 2024 RIBA Stirling Prize for Architecture (the United Kingdom's principal architectural prize). The award marked the firm's most-substantive architectural recognition.
Google Bayview Campus (with Bjarke Ingels Group, Mountain View, California, 2022). The firm's collaboration with BIG on Google's Bayview campus headquarters, with the substantial dragon-scale roof structure designed to incorporate solar-energy generation across the building's surface.
Transportation and product design
New Routemaster bus (London, 2012). The firm's design for the replacement of the London Routemaster bus — the iconic red double-decker bus that had served the London transit system since the 1950s. The new design incorporated contemporary engineering, modified passenger flow, and an updated visual identity while maintaining the cultural-historical reference to the original Routemaster.
The firm's product-design portfolio across its history has also included furniture, lighting, and various commissioned design objects.
The firm's New York portfolio
Heatherwick Studio's New York City portfolio is substantively concentrated in the 2019–2021 window, when three substantial New York commissions reached substantial completion within a two-year period: The Vessel at Hudson Yards (2019), Little Island at Hudson River Park (2021), and Lantern House at 515 West 18th Street (2021). The geographic concentration of these projects — all on the western side of Manhattan, all within approximately fifteen blocks of each other — produced a substantial cluster of the firm's work in a single concentrated New York district.
Lantern House at 515 West 18th Street — the firm's residential commission, a 22-story twin-tower condominium pair completed 2021. Covered in detail in the dedicated building guide.
The Vessel — the firm's Hudson Yards public-sculpture commission, completed 2019. Located within the Hudson Yards public plaza adjacent to Hudson Yards' principal retail and residential infrastructure. The structure has had a contested public history (covered above) and continues to operate within the Hudson Yards public program.
Little Island — the firm's Hudson River Park pier-form park commission, completed 2021 with MNLA providing landscape design. Located at approximately West 13th Street, projecting into the Hudson River at the western edge of the West Village.
The firm's New York work has also included various smaller commissions and design proposals across the period. The substantial geographic and typological concentration of the major commissions has anchored the firm's contemporary New York profile.
Working with Heatherwick Studio
The firm continues to accept select architectural and design commissions globally, with its substantial international workload across the architecture, infrastructure, and product-design categories. The firm's residential commissions are typically negotiated through the studio's senior principals; the substantial design-and-construction timeline characteristic of the firm's larger projects, and the firm's substantive engagement with custom material development and craft fabrication, are structural considerations for any prospective commission.
For buyers evaluating the firm's existing NYC residential inventory — Lantern House — the firm's design significance and the substantive New York portfolio are substantive components of the building's structural premium.
Considering a Heatherwick Studio-designed building?
The Roebling Team at Compass works the Manhattan trophy-tier new-development inventory as a structural element of our luxury practice, with substantive engagement in the architecturally and design-significantly differentiated residential market. We publish this design-practice profile because Manhattan residential buyers and sellers deserve substantive intelligence about the firms whose work has shaped the contemporary inventory.
If you're considering a purchase or sale at Lantern House or any of the broader contemporary new-development inventory anchored in significant contemporary design practice, a 30-minute consultation is the right starting point.
Corey Cohen, Principal The Roebling Team at Compass
646.939.7375 · c.cohen@compass.com
Run the numbers
Related buildings
- Lantern House at 515 West 18th Street — the firm's principal Manhattan residential commission
Related guides
- New Development in Manhattan: The 2016–2026 Research Guide — the broader context for the firm's NYC residential work
- Co-op vs Condo in Manhattan — the ownership-structure framing for new-development purchases
- Foreign-Buyer Guide — relevant for the international buyer demographic that the firm's residential commissions have attracted
This page reflects publicly available information on Heatherwick Studio's practice, the architectural and design-press coverage of the firm's major commissions across its history, the firm's published portfolio, and The Roebling Team transaction experience with the firm's NYC residential inventory. The Roebling Team at Compass does not represent Heatherwick Studio or the firm's institutional or residential commissioning clients. Specific project attributions, completion years, and current operational details should be confirmed independently. © 2026 The Roebling Team at Compass.
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