Heatherwick Studio Partners with Uncommon Creative Studio to Launch New Humanise Campaign

Heatherwick Studio - the multi-award winning British design and architecture studio - is collaborating with Uncommon Creative Studio to help launch Thomas Heatherwick’s new book, and the broader Humanise campaign.

Heatherwick’s ambition is to spark 10 million conversations and trigger a global movement to encourage people to be more aware of the buildings around them. Uncommon has been enlisted as a founding partner to help shape the movement through activations as well as develop a new brand world, a website and visual identity.

The book and campaign shine a spotlight on the quiet global catastrophe that has enveloped cities around the world. The global blandemic of boring buildings has got us stressed and depressed and it’s contributing to the climate emergency.

Heatherwick Studios | Visitors to Vessel, New York

The Humanise book offers a fiercely passionate analysis from Thomas Heatherwick of why we’re surrounded by buildings that make people sick and unhappy and damage the planet, and how we can make them better for everyone. Drawing on 30 years of making bold, beautiful buildings, and recent advances in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Heatherwick argues that buildings have the power to lift us up and make us feel like we matter.

Thomas Heatherwick

Heatherwick will be unveiling his new book ‘Humanise’ at the Southbank Centre in London on the 19th October as part of the London Literature Festival with a keynote presentation teasing and building on the work developed by Uncommon.

Thomas Heatherwick, founder at Heatherwick Studio said, “We’re living through an epidemic of boringness. It’s not just that most new buildings today are characterless, or not nice; there’s compelling scientific evidence they’re impacting our mental, physical and societal health. On top of that, unloved and unlovable buildings also have a surprisingly devastating environmental impact. A story that has barely been told. Humanise calls for a more soulful and humanised world at a time when we’ve never needed it more. Finding the right partner to help us articulate this vision to the world was fundamental in unleashing its power — Uncommon are the most progressive communicators — we can’t wait to share what we’ve been working on together.”

Heatherwick Studios | Maggie’s Yorkshire in Leeds, a respite for people with cancer

Nils Leonard, co-founder at Uncommon added, “It’s easy to feel like we are passengers in our environments. That we have no say in them and that we live despite them. But the built world around us, akin to the content we consume and the brands and products we buy, create the energy we live in. Positive or negative they are the story we live inside. Heatherwick Studios and Uncommon share the same passion to create the world we all wish existed, not be hostage to a world created with a lack of care, to a bromide none of us bought into. We created Uncommon to work on the most important and influential briefs of our time, this partnership brings that conviction closer to reality.”

Heatherwick comes from a background immersed in materials and making. His curiosity and passion for problem-solving matured into the studio’s current design process where every architect, designer, landscape architect and maker is encouraged to challenge and contribute ideas. Similarly, Uncommon has been called a studio — since its inception five years ago — with the process of making baked into its core offering from producing features such as Nick Cave’s ‘This Much I Know To Be True’ and Naqqash Kahlid’s upcoming debut ‘In Camera’ shortlisted at the BFI’s London Film Festival to to designing a new brand identity, logo and vision for the world’s biggest game EA Sports FC.