Are you curious about a career in architectural model making but looking for a path that’s a little different from the traditional university route?
We’re inviting expressions of interest for a Modelmaking Degree Apprenticeship with Heatherwick Studio, delivered in collaboration with Arts University Bournemouth. The programme combines studio experience with university learning, offering the opportunity to develop the skills of a professional modelmaker while working towards a degree-level qualification.
At Heatherwick Studio, physical prototypes are a core part of how ideas evolve. Building and testing objects helps to explore form, understand scale and evaluate possibilities in ways drawings and screens cannot. These pieces often shape conversations and influence design decisions as projects develop. As ideas progress, models also become a powerful way to share the final vision, crafted with care and detail so clients and collaborators can experience the design as something tangible, engaging and real.
Over the 3-year programme, you’ll build technical knowledge and practical capability while contributing to ongoing work under the guidance of experienced modelmakers. Apprenticeships are funded by government and employers, so there are no tuition fees to pay, and apprentices receive a salary while they learn, with dedicated time to balance study and studio practice.
If you’re someone who enjoys understanding how things are made, feels at home in a workshop environment and takes satisfaction in turning ideas into physical objects, this could be a great place to begin. Modelmaking is a craft that rewards patience, focus and a willingness to experiment, refine and learn through doing.
Heatherwick Studio is a team of 200 problem solvers dedicated to making the physical world around us better for everyone. Based out of our combined workshop and design studio in Central London, we create buildings, spaces, master-plans, objects and infrastructure. Focusing on large scale projects in cities all over the world, we prioritise those with the greatest positive social impact.
Working as practical inventors with no signature style, our motivation is to design soulful and interesting places which embrace and celebrate the complexities of the real world. The approach driving everything is to lead from human experience rather than any fixed design dogma. The studio’s founder Thomas Heatherwick comes from a background immersed in materials and making. His curiosity and passion for problem-solving matured into the studio’s current design process where every architect, designer, landscape architect and maker is encouraged to challenge and contribute ideas.
Positive and pragmatic, the studio’s team are collaborators whose role is to listen, question, then lead the conception and construction of special and unusual places. Ingenuity and inspiration are used to make projects that are affordable and buildable. And our client is vital, who comes on the journey and challenges our thinking; together we look for the opportunities that might traditionally be overlooked. Our best future projects are the ones that will teach us the most.
