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Illustrator David Janes has created the button badge, now available to buy, in protest against the Thomas Heatherwick-designed 'Garden Bridge'

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It's a familiar story, and one that happens in every walk of life, from politics to pop music - one day you're the best thing since sliced bread and the next - well, people aren't being so nice all of a sudden.

The world of design and architecture is no exception, as British design polymath Thomas Heatherwick found out recently when his design for a new 'garden bridge' over the River Thames was almost universally panned by everyone with a serious interest in London and what happens there.

Complaints tended to focus on reports that groups of more than eight people would have to get permission to use the bridge and that it would be closed at night. There was also ire at the idea that it would be closed occasionally for private functions.

The Observer's Rowan Moore said: 'It is not a tranquil walk in woodlands. It is not a genuinely public place. It is not free. It is not a well-conceived piece of transport infrastructure. It is a crowded and overstyled chunk of heavy engineering garnished with urban parsley.

'It is an ill-informed gamble with one of the great places of Britain.'

The proposed Garden Bridge. Picture: Arup

The man once vaunted as the Leonardo da Vinci of our times now seems more like the design world's answer to Nick Clegg. Like Clegg (the politician who drew the Liberal Democrats into a controversial coalition with the Conservatives and went in the process from everybody's favourite truth-talker to just another career politician) Heatherwick has, so many people seem to think, got a bit too close to the Tories himself - and a bit above ordinary folk; in doing so he may have fallen foul of the very people who once saw him as a leading light.

The latest salvo in the War on Heatherwick comes from illustrator David Janes, who has created a Stop Heatherwick Now button-badge.

'I do not believe wasting vast quantities of public cash on a vanity project which will cause mass overcrowding in an already swamped location would be beneficial to London,' says Janes, referring to the Garden Bridge. He continues: 'Londoners are already saddled with an expensive bus that does not work and often I find myself wondering whether Thomas Heatherwick had a wonderful dream and somehow we are all forced to live inside of it.'

The idea for the badge came from a Tweet by the journalist Owen Hatherley, who opined:

someone please produce STOP THOMAS HEATHERWICK now badges already

— Owen Hatherley (@owenhatherley) December 2, 2014

 

Aftter seeing the Tweet, Janes says he 'thought, "yes, a badge. That will stop the bridge being built", and within minutes, I had placed an order for 500 badges'.

The badges are available for £1 + P&P.

Of course, success always comes with criticism - ask Zaha Hadid or Frank Gehry. But there's also the fact that the bigger the project - and the more people it affects - the more angry people are going to get if they don't think it offers what it should to the people who will use it - especially if, like the garden bridge, it's part-funded by the taxpayer.

What does Heatherwick think of this? It's hard to tell. He isn't on Twitter and it's anyone's guess whether he knows about the badge. He can't, however, have avoided the general criticism altogether.

To our knowledge, design degrees don't teach you how to deal with a public mauling, but if you're going to be successful and work on large public projects, it's probably something you'll have to get used to - perhaps Heatherwick could ask Hadid for some advice?