Humanise

From one of the world's most imaginative designers comes a story about humanity told through the lens of our buildings. 'This book is a super-accessible guide as to why we shouldn't put up with soulless buildings and how we might change that' GRAYSON PERRY * Our world is losing its humanity. Too many developers care more about their shareholders than society. Too many politicians care more about power than the people who vote for them. And too many cities feel soulless and depressing, with buildings designed for business, not for us. So where do we find hope? Thomas Heatherwick has an alternative. By changing the world around us, we can improve our health, restore our happiness, and save our planet. The time has come to put human emotion back at the heart of the design process. Drawing on thirty years of making bold, beautiful buildings, neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Heatherwick brings together vivid stories and hundreds of beautiful images into a visual masterpiece. Humanise will inspire us to do nothing less than remake our world. * 'Thomas Heatherwick brings a velvet sledgehammer to the way we think about buildings and how they change our lives . . . I want to live in the kind of city Heatherwick imagines!' SIMON SINEK 'Humanise is a masterwork. It's quietly furious, impassioned, rigorous and forensic in all the right doses. It leaves me very hopeful indeed about how things could go from here' ALAIN DE BOTTON

Thomas Heatherwick is one of the world's most prolific designers, whose varied work over two decades is characterised by its originality, inventiveness and humanity. Defying conventional classifications, Heatherwick founded his studio in 1994 to bring together architecture, urban planning, product design and interiors into a single creative workspace. Led by human experience rather than any fixed dogma, the studio creates emotionally compelling places and objects with the smallest possible carbon footprint. From their base in London, Heatherwick's team is currently working on over thirty projects in ten countries, including Toranomon-Azabudai, a six-hectare mixed-use development in the centre of Tokyo, the new headquarters for Google in London and Airo, an electric car that cleans the air as it drives. The studio has also recently completed Bay View, Google's first ground-up campus and Little Island, a park and performance space on the Hudson River in New York as well as the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town; and Coal Drops Yard, a major new retail district in King's Cross, London.