Humanise

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

In this manifesto for change, one of the world's pre-eminent designers explores how buildings and cities around the world lost their soul - and what we can do about it.

Thomas Heatherwick shows how design has a profound effect on our mental and physical health, the climate, as well as the peace and cohesion of societies. He shows how a flawed idea of utility and 'efficiency' has engulfed our towns and cities and hardened into a form of bland minimalism. But it doesn't have to be this way: there are other ways to build - with the power to lift our spirits, engage and connect us.

Heatherwick draws on his own work, the ideas of other experts in the field, and recent advances in neuroscience and cognitive psychology to offer both a case against the inhumanity of modernist design and a rallying cry to everyone to imagine the world anew. Looking through his eyes, we take in places around the world, old and new, famous and obscure, that can sap the life out of us - or nourish our senses and our psyche.

Humanise is a tautly argued provocation and an urgent call-to-arms to make the world around us a far better place for everyone to live.

'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

'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

©2023 Thomas Heatherwick (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

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. The Age of Boring might just have ended right now

Alain de Botton

Thomas Heatherwick echoes many things I find myself saying as I travel round the country. How the hell did that monstrosity get built? Why is this place so depressing? Why is so much of the built environment so boring? This book will wind up quite a few architects, planners and developers who labour under the delusion that they are the adults in the room. Good. These people need to develop some compassion for the people who have to live with their joyless, bland, unlovable creations. 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

Thomas Heatherwick brings a velvet sledgehammer to the way we think about buildings and how they change our lives. In simple, elegant words, he demands that we put people first. Not developers, politicians or architects. I want to live in the kind of city Heatherwick imagines! Vive la revolution!

Simon Sinek, Optimist and New York Times-bestselling author of Start with Why and The Infinite Game

This book will help frustrated ordinary people and communities see what is possible

David Byrne

A revelation. Humanise offers an accessible, compelling and entirely unique perspective on the world in which we live. Heatherwick’s storytelling ability shines through on each and every page – pushing boundaries and challenging perspectives. At a time where thoughtful and constructive ideas and solutions, that put the public at the centre of decision-making, are sought more than ever – this book provides a spark to ignite conversations across our city, country and the globe on how to build a better world for everyone

Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London

Heatherwick makes the case for human buildings that nurture our health and happiness. Out with the ‘blandemic’ of boring buildings and let’s get back to interestingness. He calls for us all to engage with our built environment and so we should

Dame Sally Davies

Architecture has the ability to uplift and inspire, support connection, and fuel invention – bringing life and vitality to our cities by making them better, more beautiful, more sustainable places to live and work. Thomas Heatherwick’s new book offers us a powerful prescription for buildings that put the public first and help set the course for a brighter future for humanity

Mike Bloomberg, entrepreneur, philanthropist, former Mayor of New York City

In a social and economic tour de force, Thomas Heatherwick explodes the waste of bad design: the neighbourhoods destroyed, the wellbeing lost, the carbon burned. And then he pivots to the potential of bending the straight line into a curve, the building into the feeling, and the narrowly rational into the fully human

Mark Carney

Humanise ignites the urgent public conversation I’ve been calling for for years

Sir Terry Farrell CBE, architect and urban designer

A book that will change how you see the world

Simon Jenkins

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