Thomas Heatherwick - the new Da Vinci of design

As to how he finds design solutions, he says the process is almost the opposite of having a “Eureka” moment. “It is more like solving a crime. The answer is there, and your job is to find it. So we go off and do bits of research that essentially eliminate suspects from the enquiry. And then you follow up leads and gradually narrow down the potential solutions. Ultimately what you’re left with is the answer. Even if you’d thought of it at the beginning of the process, you could never know it was right until the end.”

— Nicholas Wroe, Thomas Heatherwick: the new Da Vinci of design