‘in a city full of eye-catching structures, our first thought was that it shouldn’t just be something to look at,’ explains heatherwick. ‘instead we wanted to make something that everybody could use, touch, relate to. influenced by images we had seen of indian stepwells, made from hundreds of flights of stairs going down into the ground, an idea emerged to use flights of stairs as building elements.’

https://www.designboom.com/architecture/thomas-heatherwick-vessel-hudson-yards-new-york-09-14-2016/

if you look up other works by this designer/studio, there sure seems to be a theme of pretty bazinga ted talk stuff

and they seem to be a bit of a nepo baby too