The British Council teamed up with IAI-EU, Pelita Harapan University and Konteks Online to hold a public talk with Ole Smith, Project Leader from Heatherwick Studio at UPH Karawaci on 14 March 2015.
On that Saturday morning almost 200 university students, design and architecture practitioners and partners arrived at Pelita Harapan University to attend the studio’s first-ever event in Indonesia. Several studio works and installations by students of UPH’s Architecture faculty were also displayed outside the venue and grabbed the visitors’ attention, including Ole Smith himself.
The discussion started with a quick introduction by Ole on Heatherwick Studio, then continued with him explaining the studio’s award-winning UK Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010, then to other projects such as the Garden Bridge in London, the new hybrid Routemaster double-decker London bus in 2010 and their recent project, winning a competition to design the Learning Hub at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Ole explained how this first project in Southeast Asia has made Thomas Heatherwick and the team face both challenges and new positive experiences in working with local designers and contractors, including his appreciation of the craftsmanship values in Asia.
During the Q&A session moderated by Henry G Tjhi (owner of HGT Architects), the audience were enthusiastically raising questions to Ole about Heatherwick’s works and also how to succeed as a designer. Several lucky audiences were randomly selected out of those who proposed questions as well as those who live-tweeted about the event to @idBritishArts to win goodie bags. At the end of the talk Ole mentioned he hopes this will not be the studio’s last visit- they hope to collaborate with Indonesian designers here to create exciting projects in the future. The talk ended with a networking session between Ole, Henry, media with the audience over refreshments.
For more information about the event follow our updates on Twitter.