The Humanise Campaign, launched by Heatherwick Studios in October 2023, aims to spark a global movement calling for radically more human buildings. The campaign shines a light on the catastrophic impact boring, soulless buildings have on our mental health and the health of our planet.

But most people don’t realise that boring buildings are even an issue.

We needed to open people’s eyes in a bold, compelling way.

Most people may not care about everyday buildings.

So we decided to link this issue to buildings that people actually do care about.

Interesting buildings lie at the heart of British culture.

Our cities are full of iconic streets and priceless landmarks.

But a lot of what we’re building for the future is drab, dreary and depressing.

So what if we could take our most beloved buildings, and ruin them using today’s most boring architectural trends?

Using artificial intelligence, fed with 75 years of soulless development data, UnLandmarks reimagines Britain’s most beloved buildings through the eyes of its most boring architectural trends.

A dystopian warning to the future and a wake-up call to create cities that are radically more joyful and human. The UnLandmarks project spotlights a century-old global issue: how most new buildings have become increasingly soulless, worsening our health and contributing to the climate crisis.

The series of images shows six of the most loved and quintessentially British landmarks stripped of their personality to reveal their boring alter-egos.

These include the Tower of London, Houses of Parliament, ‘Hovis’ Hill, Edinburgh Castle, The Liver Building, and Buckingham Palace. All were chosen because of their cherished status in British culture — based on a 2015 survey of Britain’s top 10 most loved buildings.

The series of images shows six of the most loved and quintessentially British landmarks stripped of their personality to reveal their boring alter-egos. These include the Tower of London, Houses of Parliament, ‘Hovis’ Hill, Edinburgh Castle, The Liver Building, and Buckingham Palace. All were chosen because of their cherished status in British culture — based on a 2015 survey of Britain’s top 10 most loved buildings.

The resulting images replace the unique character of these global icons with monotonous designs emblematic of so many new buildings around the world.

The visualisations were made with a combination of AI graphic tools including Stable Diffusion, ComfyUI, MidJourney and Photoshop Generative Fill, with 200 variations created of each landmark.

As part of this initiative, Humanise and Uncommon took over a souvenir shop in London, replacing classic tourist souvenirs like mugs, tea towels, fridge magnets and postcards with the boring and cheeky UnLandmarks.

These items were also packaged up and sent to Britain’s most influential voices in the world of design, architecture and media.

The campaign has only just launched - but has already received major coverage across national publications such as The National in Scotland as well as magazines across the world of design, architecture and art. It’s been picked up by major British figures like Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, and the Director-General of the National Trust, Hillary McGrady.

It has also led to a 56% increase in signups, doubled the amount of engagement across all platforms, and tripled the amount of inbound leads and messages to the Humanise movement - while leading to over double the number of visitors to the Humanise online platform.