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We’re in a light-flooded room in the middle of Thomas Heatherwick’s vibrant King’s Cross studio and workshop. It’s manned by a total of 48 staff ranging from architects to theatre designers. Phones ring petulantly, computers hum and large detailed architectural models of Heatherwick’s most recent projects rise up around everyone gathered here. Today the Turkish-Cypriot designer Hussein Chalayan MBE, 37, has come to meet Heatherwick, also 37. But while Heatherwick designs buildings, Chalayan designs clothes, and their aim is to examine the similarities and differences between the two processes.

Both men’s work is the antithesis of cheap, ephemeral, celebrity-driven design. Both are celebrated worldwide. Today Chalayan – dressed stylishly in subtle navy cashmere and leather Brasher walking boots – is in good spirits. He’s recently been enlisted as creative director for German sportswear label Puma, owned by PPR (Pinault Printemps La Redoute), who will also invest in Chalayan’s own fashion label. Just three weeks ago, he also won the Brit Insurance Design Awards at the Design Museum for his seminal a/w 2007 Airborne collection. A key feature was crystalline dresses embedded with lasers which made it appear as though the wearer was emitting light (these will be exhibited in the exhibition along with other key Chalayan designs).
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Heatherwick is equally softly spoken and down-to-earth. He is often mistitled an architect but he prefers to be known as a designer. Like Chalayan, he set his studio up in 1994 – and has been in the news ever since. A string of striking modern buildings and interiors has included an award-winning shop interior for luxury fashion label Longchamp’s SoHo, New York branch. He also designed the revolutionary Zip Bag for the brand, which incorporates an extra long zip enabling the handbag to double in size when unzipped.

Heatherwick's East Beach Café (© Andy Stagg. Courtesy Thomas Heatherwick Studio)

Like Chalayan he was shortlisted for the recent Brit Insurance Design Awards under the architecture category for his East Beach Café, a bold weathering steel construction on Littlehampton Beach, West Sussex, overlooking the sea with a shape that mimics the waves. Other recent projects include the rolling bridge in Paddington Basin, which coils-up elegantly into a complete circle using hydraulic rams, and the spectacular, if technically flawed (some of the spikes have been removed for safety reasons), ‘B of the Bang’ sculpture in Manchester, a giant starburst of steel spikes the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, commissioned for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

Though creatively Heatherwick and Chalayan share similarities, their backgrounds couldn’t be more different. Born in Nicosia, Cyprus, Chalayan divided his childhood between London and his troubled homeland, attending Highgate School before following his instinct for fashion and studying a BA in fashion at Central Saint Martins. Remarkably, he sold his 1994 graduate collection – which he buried in his Crouch End garden to get the required decaying effect – to Browns boutique.

Heatherwick's design of a Buddhist temple, currently in development (© Steve Speller. Courtesy Thomas Heatherwick Studio)

Born in London and brought up in Wood Green, Heatherwick, on the other hand, is the product of a bohemian London upbringing. His mother was a jewellery designer with a shop on Portobello Road and his father a musician-turned-charity worker. After studying 3D design at Manchester Polytechnic, he went on to study for an MA in product design (the architecture course was too classical) at the Royal College of Art. A chance meeting in a college corridor with Terence Conran led him to be invited to the designer’s Berkshire home to construct a plywood gazebo, which Conran bought when it was finished. Conran then offered him his own show at the Design Museum.

Both Heatherwick and Chalayan are innovators rather than followers. They look for what hasn’t been done yet, experimenting and inventing new styles. Neither is afraid to go against tradition or, occasionally, even make the odd mistake. But what will they make of each other?

Read Time Out's interview with Hussein Chalayan and Thomas Heatherwick