‘Gaudí’s Casa Milà is a joyous festival of curves – it’s almost as if the building is breathing’

For 30 years Thomas Heatherwick has been one of the world’s most imaginative designers: his bold, beautiful creations are full of originality, inventiveness and humanity. In the first of a major three-part serial of his new book, ‘Humanise: A Maker’s Guide to Building Our World’, he reveals how an encounter with a Barcelona apartment block stunned him as a young man – and sparked his vision of a world full of brilliant, soulful buildings

Casa Milà: the Barcelona building that lay the foundation for Heatherwick’s architectural vision (Heatherwick Studio/Raquel Diniz)

The best £6.99 I ever spent was on a January afternoon in Brighton in 1989, when I saw something in a student book sale that grabbed my attention. I’d made the journey for an open day at the University of Sussex, to have a look at the Three-Dimensional Design course. Ever since I was small, I’d been fascinated by inventions and new ideas and the design of objects. Now that I was 18 years old, I was working towards a BTEC National Diploma in Art and Design at Kingsway Princeton College in London, studying drawing, painting, sculpture, fashion, textiles and three-dimensional design. Years earlier, I’d given up on the idea of pursuing building design, because what I’d seen of that world known as “architecture” felt cold, impenetrable and uninspiring. But then I wandered into the student union sale, picked up this book, opened it at a random page and a switch in my brain flicked on.

There I saw photographs of a large, dirty building on the corner of a street in central Barcelona. The building was called Casa Milà; it was unlike anything I’d ever seen in my life. It simultaneously had the qualities of an incredible raw, carved stone sculpture and a contemporary apartment block.

Thomas holds ‘Gaudí’ by Rainer Zerbst (Heatherwick Studio/Raquel Diniz)