ArcelorMittal Orbit
Encyclopedia
The ArcelorMittal Orbit is a 115 metres (377.3 ft) high observation tower
in the Olympic Park
in Stratford, London
. The steel sculpture is Britain's
largest piece of public art
, and is a permanent, lasting legacy of London's hosting of the 2012 Summer Olympics
, assisting in the post-Olympics regeneration of the Stratford area. Sited between the Olympic Stadium
and the Aquatics Centre, allows visitors to view the whole Olympic Park from two observation platforms.
Orbit was designed by Anish Kapoor
in collaboration with engineer Cecil Balmond
. Announced on 31 March 2010, the tower is expected to be completed by December 2011 at the latest. The project came about after Mayor of London
Boris Johnson
and Olympics Minister
Tessa Jowell
decided in 2008 that the Olympic Park needed "something extra". Designers were asked for ideas for an "Olympic tower" of at least 100 metres (328.1 ft), and Orbit was the unanimous choice from various proposals considered by a nine person advisory panel.
The project is expected to cost £19.1m, with £16m of that coming from the involvement of Britain's richest man, the steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal
, chairman of the ArcelorMittal steel company, with the balance of £3.1m coming from the London Development Agency
. The official name of the sculpture, "ArcelorMittal Orbit", combines the name of Mittal's company, as chief sponsor, with Orbit, the original working title of Kapoor and Balmond's design.
Both Kapoor and Balmond believe Orbit represents a radical advance in the architectural field of combining sculpture
and structural engineering
, and believe that it combines both stability and instability in a work that visitors can engage with and experience, via an incorporated spiral walkway. The structure has been both praised and criticised for its bold design, while it has also been criticised as a vanity project, of questionable lasting use or merit as a public art project.
, site being used as the Olympic Park
for the 2012 Olympics needed "something extra", to "distinguish the east London skyline" and "arouse the curiosity and wonder of Londoners and visitors".
A design competition held in 2009 called for designs for an "Olympic tower", receiving around 50 submissions in all. Johnson has said his early concept for the project was something more modest than Orbit, something along the lines of "a kind of 21st century Trajan's Column
", but this was dropped when more daring ideas were received.
The media were reporting unconfirmed details of the project in October 2009, describing steel magnate and Britain's richest man, Lakshmi Mittal
's interest in funding a project which would cost around £15m, with Johnson believed to want something like the Eiffel Tower
or the Statue of Liberty
. At that time, there were understood to be five short-listed artists, including Angel of the North
designer Antony Gormley
, being considered for the project. Early designs reportedly included 'Transmission' by Paul Fryer, a 400 feet (121.9 m) high structure, "resembling a cross between a pylon and a native American totem pole", according to The Times. A spokesman for Johnson would only confirm he was "keen to see stunning, ambitious, world-class art in the Olympic Park", and that work on the commissioning project was at an early stage.
Mittal's involvement in the project came about after a chance meeting with Johnson in a cloakroom in Davos
in January 2009, as they were on their way to separate dinner engagements; in a conversation that took "45 seconds" he pitched the idea to Mittal, who immediately agreed to supply the steel. Mittal later said of his involvement, "I never expected that this was going to be such a huge project. I thought it was just the supply of some steel, a thousand tonnes or so, and that would be it. But then we started working with artists and I realised that the object was not just to supply steel but to complete the whole project. It took us almost 15 months of negotiation and discussion". Johnson has said that, "In reality, ArcelorMittal has given much more than the steel."
Kapoor's Orbit was officially announced as the winner on 31 March 2010. According to The Guardian, Orbit was chosen from a final short-list of three, with Orbit beating one design submitted by Antony Gormley, and another submitted by the architectural firm Caruso St John
. According to The Times
, Gormley's design was a 390 feet (118.9 m) steel colossus titled Olympian Man, a trademark piece of a statue of himself, rejected mainly on the grounds of its £40m cost.
Johnson and Jowell agreed to issue a commission for Orbit in partnership with Mittal, after it was chosen by a 9 person advisory panel brought together by them to advise on a long list of proposals. According to Mittal, the panel made a unanimous decision to pick Orbit, as it both represented the games, and was achievable within the ambitious time frame. Kapoor described it as "the commission of a lifetime".
Johnson pre-empted possible criticism of the project during the official launch, by stating: "Of course some people will say we are nuts – in the depths of a recession – to be building Britain’s biggest ever piece of public art. But both Tessa Jowell and I are certain that this is the right thing for the Stratford site, in Games time and beyond."
".
Kapoor said one of the influences in his design for the tower was the Tower of Babel
, the sense of "building the impossible" that "has something mythic about it.", and that the form "straddles Eiffel
and Tatlin
". Balmond, working on the metaphor of an orbit, envisaged an electron cloud moving, to create a structure that appears unstable, propping itself up, "never centred, never quite vertical" Both believe Orbit represents a new way of thinking, "a radical new piece
of structure and architecture and art" which utilises non-linearity - the use of "instabilities as stabilities." The spaces inside the structure, in between the twisting steel, are "cathedral like", according to Balmond, while according to Kapoor, the intention is that visitors will engage with the piece as they wind "up and up and in on oneself" on the spiral walkway.
The Independent
describes Orbit as "a continuously looping lattice...made up of eight strands winding into each other and combined by rings like a jagged knot", The Guardian
describes it as a "giant lattice tripod sporting a counterweight collar around its neck designed to offset the weight of its head, a two-storey dining and viewing gallery", while according to the BBC, the design incorporates the five Olympic rings.
Upon its launch, Johnson said of the "mind-boggling" design, that "It would have boggled the minds of the Romans. It would have boggled Gustave Eiffel." Design panel member Nick Serota said Orbit was a tower with an interesting twist, with "the energy you might traditionally associate with this type of structure but in a surprisingly female form".
On the public announcement of the design, Johnson conceded that it may become known by something other than its official name, suggesting "Colossus of Stratford" or the "Hubble Bubble", in reference to his belief it resembled a giant shisha pipe
, or variant on people's perceptions that it resembled a "giant treble clef", a "helter-skelter", or a "supersized mutant trombone
".
' at 60m. According to The Independent
and The Guardian
it will become Britain's largest piece of public art.
The authority itself on announcing the project, chose to describe Orbit's height in comparison to the Statue of Liberty
, relaying how it will be 22 metres (72.2 ft) taller than that iconic New York City
landmark. The statue of Liberty is 93 metres (305.1 ft) high, when counting the 46 metres (150.9 ft) statue together with its pedestal. While the media picked up the apparent intention of the authority to cast the Orbit as London's answer to the Eiffel Tower
, The Guardian
related how it was "considerably shorter" than that Parisian icon; the Eiffel Tower is 324 metres (1,063 ft) tall. The Guardian also noted that, with respect to comparisons to Eiffel's Tower, it is even "20 metres (65.6 ft) shorter than the diminutive Blackpool Tower
".
The structure's height was also compared in the media with other London landmarks. It was described as being "slightly taller" or "nearly 20 metres (65.6 ft) taller" than the Big Ben clock tower, the centrepiece of the Palace of Westminster
. It was also described as being "twice as tall" or "more than double the height" of Nelson's Column
, the monument honouring Admiral Nelson
located in Trafalgar Square
. Others reports described how it was "just short of" or "almost as tall as" the Great Pyramid of Giza
in Egypt, the ancient tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu
. Big Ben is 96.3 metres (315.9 ft) tall, Nelson's Column is 51.5 metres (169 ft) tall in total, including statue and column. The Giza Pyramid was thought to have been constructed as 280 Egyptian cubits or 146.478 metres (480.6 ft) tall, although with erosion it has reduced in height by nearly 10 metres.
, the Orbit will contain two indoor viewing platforms on two levels, with each level having the capacity for 150 people. In comparison to the Orbit's 115m height, the nearby Olympic Stadium
will be 193 feet (58.8 m) high. According to the Greater London Authority
, the observation platform will offer "unparalleled views of the entire 250 acre (1 km²; 0.390625345380447 sq mi) of the Olympic Park and London's skyline".
According to the Greater London Authority, visitors will travel up the tower in a lift
, and will have the option of descending using a spiral staircase
incorporated into the structure. Kapoor however suggests visitors will be able to ascend using the walkway, as they wind "up and up and in on oneself." Similarly, The Independent
reports that visitors will be able to climb the structure, and The Guardian
reports that people will be able to "sprint up and down its 500 winding stairs". Kapoor describes the walkway as "a long way to walk" and "pretty steep".
The tower was expected to be able to cope with visitor numbers of 700 people per hour. As of March 2010, it was undecided whether visitors would be charged to enter the tower. The base of the tower will include a visitor pavilion and educational exhibition. The top of the tower may also include a dining area.
Once completed, Orbit will be owned and operated by the Olympic Park Legacy Company. The ambition is that, as well as being a focal point for the Olympic Park during the Games, it will also form part of the wider Stratford regeneration plans, which aim to turn the Olympic site into a permanent tourist destination after the Games. Tessa Jowell
said Orbit will be "like to honey to bees for the millions of tourists that visit London each year". Boris Johnson predicted the tower would become "the perfect iconic cultural legacy". According to Lord Coe, chairman of the London 2012 Olympic organisers, the tower would play a central part in the Game's role of leaving a lasting legacy and transformed landscape in east London.
. This consists a £10m cash donation, and £6 million in underwriting of capital costs, which could be potentially recovered from profits generated after the Games. According to Johnson, the cost of the project would be recouped after the games through the private hire of a dining area at the top of the tower, predicting it would become a "corporate money-making venture".
Mittal said he was immediately interested in the project after he remembered the excitement that surrounded the announcement that London had won the Olympic bid. He saw it as an opportunity to leave a lasting legacy for London, showcase the "unique qualities of steel" and play a role in the regeneration of Stratford. Mittal said of his involvement in the project, "I live in London – I’ve lived here since 1997 – and I think it’s a wonderful city. This project is an incredible opportunity to build something really spectacular for London, for the Olympic Games and something that will play a lasting role in the legacy of the Games."
Advisory panel member and director of the Tate
gallery, Nicholas Serota
, said Orbit was "the perfect answer to the question of how sport and art come together", and praised Mr Mittal's "really impressive piece of patronage" for supporting a "great commission".
criticised the idea as a vanity project of Johnson's, with a design "matching his bravado", built to "seal his legacy", surmising it would be compared to other similar vanity projects such as Benito Mussolini
's "wedding cake", the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II built in Rome, or the Neutrality Arch
, a rotating golden statue erected by Turkmenistan's President Saparmurat Niyazov
, while comparing Johnson to Ozymandias
. Art critic Brian Sewell
said "Our country is littered with public art of absolutely no merit. We are entering a new period of fascist gigantism. These are monuments to egos and you couldn't find a more monumental ego than Boris."
Richard Morrison of The Times described Orbit as "like an enormous wire-mesh fence that has got hopelessly snagged round the bell of a giant french horn", adding that it "seems like an awful lot of trouble just to look at East London", in comparison to a music hall comedian's refrain at the $16 million cost of the Brooklyn Bridge
. Morrison not only compared Johnson not only to Ozymandias, but the 20th century dictators Adolf Hitler
, Joseph Stalin
and Nicolae Ceauşescu
, in their acts of "phallic politics" in building grandiose monuments. Criticising the lack of public involvement, he described how it would be an "undesired intrusion by the few into the consciousness of the many". He feared that it could become one of the many "thousands of naff eyesores" of recent public art in Britain, citing the embracing couple at St Pancras station
(The Meeting Place), the Dockland's Traffic Light tree
, and the proposed Rotherhithe Tunnel 'match-stick man' tribute to Isambard Kingdom Brunel
, as London based examples.
Jay Merrick of The Independent
said of Orbit that "its sculptural power lies in its ability to suggest an unfinished form in the process of becoming something else", describing how its artistic riskiness elevated it above the banal artworks of the public art movement that have been built elsewhere in Britain's towns and cities. Merrick was of the opinion that it would be either loved or hated, being a design which is "beautifully fractious, and not quite knowable".
Jonathan Glancey
of The Guardian described Orbit as "Olympian in ambition" and a "fusion between striking art and daring engineering", and said that, the Aquatics Centre apart, it represented the architecturally striking Joker in the pack, given that the rest of the landscaping and architecture for the Games "promises little to get excited about". He believed it would become a "genuine eyecatcher" for the Olympics television coverage, with its extraordinary form being a "strange and enticing marriage of sorts" between the Eiffel Tower
and the un-built early Soviet era Tatlin's Tower
, with the biblical Tower of Babel
as "best man".
Describing it as looking like a "catastrophic collision between two cranes", the Daily Mail
reported how the structure had been immediately been nicknamed the 'Eyeful Tower', as well as reflecting specific internet comments of it being 'a rollercoaster that costs £19million a go', or that it resembled 'twisted spaghetti', 'horrific squiggles' and 'Meccano on crack'. The Times also reported the description "Godzilla of public art".
With regard to its potential as a lasting visitor attraction, Mark Brown of The Guardian reflected on the mixed fortunes of other large symbolic London visitor attractions, the popular but loss making Thames Tunnel
, the Skylon
tower, dismantled on the orders of Winston Churchill
, and the successful London Eye
.
Tom Dyckhoff of The Times, while calling it a "a gift to the tabloids" and a "giant Mr. Messy", questioned whether the Olympic site needed another pointless icon, postulating whether Orbit would stand the test of time like the London Eye and become a true icon to match the Eiffel Tower, or a hopeless white elephant. Suggesting the project had echoes of Tatlin's Monument to the Third International, and especially Constant Nieuwenhuys
' utopian city New Babylon
, he asked whether Orbit was just as revolutionary or possessed the same ideological purpose, or whether it was merely "a giant advert for one of the world’s biggest multinationals, sweetened with a bit of fun".
Rowan Moore
of The Guardian
questioned if Orbit was going to be anything more than a folly, or whether it would be as eloquent as the Statue of Liberty. He speculated that the project might mark the time when society stops using large iconic projects as a tool for lifting areas out of deprivation. He questioned its ability to draw people's attention to Stratford after the Games, in a similar manner to the successes of the Angel of the North or the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
. He also questioned the piece's ability to strike a chord like the Angel, which he believed had at least "created a feelgood factor and sense of pride" in Gateshead, or whether it would simply become one of the "many more unloved rotting wrecks that no one has the nerve to demolish". He postulated that the addition of stairs and a lift made Orbit less succinct than Kapoor's previous successful works, while ultimately he said "hard to see what the big idea is, beyond the idea of making something big".
John Graham-Cumming
of The Guardian rejected the comparison's to the goal of being an icon like the Eiffel Tower, pointing out that that structure had not intended to be a lasting monument, only persisting into public acceptance as art through being useful, while also pointing out the Colossus of Rhodes collapsed within a few decades, and the Tower of Babel was "constructed to glorify those that constructed it." He suggested that Johnson should reconsider whether it should be pulled down after 20 years. Questioning its corporate role, he believed that meant it looked less and less like a work of art and more like a vanity project.
Responding to concerns from The Times that ArcelorMittal's sponsorship and naming of Orbit would represent an improper incursion of corporate branding into public life, Johnson stated that Olympic rules mean that the Orbit cannot carry any corporate branding during the games. Felicity Carus of The Guardian's environment blog questioned whether ArcelorMittal's record on carbon emissions was good enough to mean Orbit represented a fitting monument for the 2012 Olympics, billed as a 'world's first sustainable Olympics'.
A Guardian online poll published on the official launch, posing the question "Anish Kapoor's Olympic tower: a grand design?", recorded 38.6% for "Yes, it's a grand design" and 61.4% for "No, it's garbage".
In announcing the winning design, Johnson also thanked the Greater London Authority
, the Olympic Delivery Authority
and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, as well as David McAlpine and Philip Dilley of Arup, and Sir Robin Wales
and Jules Pipe
for their involvement and support in the project.
Observation tower
An observation tower is a structure used to view events from a long distance and to create a full 360 degree range of vision. They are usually at least tall and made from stone, iron, and wood. Many modern towers are also used as TV towers, restaurants, or churches...
in the Olympic Park
Olympic Park, London
The Olympic Park in London is a new sporting complex currently under construction, adjacent to the Stratford City development in Stratford, Bow, Leyton & Homerton in East London for the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics....
in Stratford, London
Stratford, London
Stratford is a place in the London Borough of Newham, England. It is located east northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the major centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically an agrarian settlement in the ancient parish of West Ham, which transformed into an industrial suburb...
. The steel sculpture is Britain's
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
largest piece of public art
Public art
The term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that have been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all...
, and is a permanent, lasting legacy of London's hosting of the 2012 Summer Olympics
2012 Summer Olympics
The 2012 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the "London 2012 Olympic Games", are scheduled to take place in London, England, United Kingdom from 27 July to 12 August 2012...
, assisting in the post-Olympics regeneration of the Stratford area. Sited between the Olympic Stadium
Olympic Stadium (London)
The London Olympic Stadium will be the centrepiece of the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. The stadium is located at Marshgate Lane in Stratford in the Lower Lea Valley and has capacity for the Games of approximately 80,000 making it temporarily the third largest stadium in Britain behind...
and the Aquatics Centre, allows visitors to view the whole Olympic Park from two observation platforms.
Orbit was designed by Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor CBE RA is a British sculptor of Indian birth. Born in Mumbai , Kapoor has lived and worked in London since the early 1970s when he moved to study art, first at the Hornsey College of Art and later at the Chelsea School of Art and Design.He represented Britain in the XLIV Venice...
in collaboration with engineer Cecil Balmond
Cecil Balmond
Cecil Balmond is a Sri Lankan/British designer, engineer, artist, architect, and writer. He has been hailed as "one of the most important forces in contemporary architecture today," and in 2003 received the prestigious RIBA Charles Jencks award for Theory in Practice. He is also the recipient of...
. Announced on 31 March 2010, the tower is expected to be completed by December 2011 at the latest. The project came about after Mayor of London
Mayor of London
The Mayor of London is an elected politician who, along with the London Assembly of 25 members, is accountable for the strategic government of Greater London. Conservative Boris Johnson has held the position since 4 May 2008...
Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a British journalist and Conservative Party politician, who has been the elected Mayor of London since 2008...
and Olympics Minister
Minister for the Olympics
The Minister for the Olympics was a position within the United Kingdom Government created on 6 July 2005 as a result of the selection of London to host the 2012 Summer Olympics and was merged into the position of Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport in May 2010.Tessa Jowell was...
Tessa Jowell
Tessa Jowell
Tessa Jowell is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Dulwich and West Norwood since 1992. Formerly a member of both the Blair and Brown Cabinets, she is currently the Shadow Minister for the Olympics and Shadow Minister for London.-Early life:Tessa Jane...
decided in 2008 that the Olympic Park needed "something extra". Designers were asked for ideas for an "Olympic tower" of at least 100 metres (328.1 ft), and Orbit was the unanimous choice from various proposals considered by a nine person advisory panel.
The project is expected to cost £19.1m, with £16m of that coming from the involvement of Britain's richest man, the steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal
Lakshmi Mittal
Lakshmi Narayan Mittal is an Indian steel magnate. He is the chairman and chief executive officer of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaking company....
, chairman of the ArcelorMittal steel company, with the balance of £3.1m coming from the London Development Agency
London Development Agency
The London Development Agency is the Regional Development Agency for Greater London, England. It is a functional body of the Greater London Authority...
. The official name of the sculpture, "ArcelorMittal Orbit", combines the name of Mittal's company, as chief sponsor, with Orbit, the original working title of Kapoor and Balmond's design.
Both Kapoor and Balmond believe Orbit represents a radical advance in the architectural field of combining sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
and structural engineering
Structural engineering
Structural engineering is a field of engineering dealing with the analysis and design of structures that support or resist loads. Structural engineering is usually considered a specialty within civil engineering, but it can also be studied in its own right....
, and believe that it combines both stability and instability in a work that visitors can engage with and experience, via an incorporated spiral walkway. The structure has been both praised and criticised for its bold design, while it has also been criticised as a vanity project, of questionable lasting use or merit as a public art project.
History
According to Boris Johnson, around October 2008, he and Tessa Jowell decided the Stratford, LondonStratford, London
Stratford is a place in the London Borough of Newham, England. It is located east northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the major centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically an agrarian settlement in the ancient parish of West Ham, which transformed into an industrial suburb...
, site being used as the Olympic Park
Olympic Park
An Olympic Park is a sports campus for hosting the Olympic Games. Typically it contains the Olympic Stadium and the International Broadcast Centre. It may also contain the Olympic Village or some of the other sports venues, such as the aquatics complex in the case of the summer games, or the main...
for the 2012 Olympics needed "something extra", to "distinguish the east London skyline" and "arouse the curiosity and wonder of Londoners and visitors".
A design competition held in 2009 called for designs for an "Olympic tower", receiving around 50 submissions in all. Johnson has said his early concept for the project was something more modest than Orbit, something along the lines of "a kind of 21st century Trajan's Column
Trajan's Column
Trajan's Column is a Roman triumphal column in Rome, Italy, which commemorates Roman emperor Trajan's victory in the Dacian Wars. It was probably constructed under the supervision of the architect Apollodorus of Damascus at the order of the Roman Senate. It is located in Trajan's Forum, built near...
", but this was dropped when more daring ideas were received.
The media were reporting unconfirmed details of the project in October 2009, describing steel magnate and Britain's richest man, Lakshmi Mittal
Lakshmi Mittal
Lakshmi Narayan Mittal is an Indian steel magnate. He is the chairman and chief executive officer of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaking company....
's interest in funding a project which would cost around £15m, with Johnson believed to want something like the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
or the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
. At that time, there were understood to be five short-listed artists, including Angel of the North
Angel of the North
The Angel of the North is a contemporary sculpture, designed by Antony Gormley, which is located in Gateshead,formerly County Durham, England.It is a steel sculpture of an angel, standing tall, with wings measuring across...
designer Antony Gormley
Antony Gormley
Antony Mark David Gormley OBE RA is a British sculptor. His best known works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in the North of England, commissioned in 1995 and erected in February 1998, Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool, and Event Horizon, a multi-part site...
, being considered for the project. Early designs reportedly included 'Transmission' by Paul Fryer, a 400 feet (121.9 m) high structure, "resembling a cross between a pylon and a native American totem pole", according to The Times. A spokesman for Johnson would only confirm he was "keen to see stunning, ambitious, world-class art in the Olympic Park", and that work on the commissioning project was at an early stage.
Mittal's involvement in the project came about after a chance meeting with Johnson in a cloakroom in Davos
Davos
Davos is a municipality in the district of Prättigau/Davos in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. It has a permanent population of 11,248 . Davos is located on the Landwasser River, in the Swiss Alps, between the Plessur and Albula Range...
in January 2009, as they were on their way to separate dinner engagements; in a conversation that took "45 seconds" he pitched the idea to Mittal, who immediately agreed to supply the steel. Mittal later said of his involvement, "I never expected that this was going to be such a huge project. I thought it was just the supply of some steel, a thousand tonnes or so, and that would be it. But then we started working with artists and I realised that the object was not just to supply steel but to complete the whole project. It took us almost 15 months of negotiation and discussion". Johnson has said that, "In reality, ArcelorMittal has given much more than the steel."
Kapoor's Orbit was officially announced as the winner on 31 March 2010. According to The Guardian, Orbit was chosen from a final short-list of three, with Orbit beating one design submitted by Antony Gormley, and another submitted by the architectural firm Caruso St John
Caruso St John
Caruso St John is an architectural firm established in 1990 by Adam Caruso and Peter St John.They have gained an international reputation for excellence in designing contemporary projects in the public realm. The practice came to public attention with the New Art Gallery in Walsall, a commission...
. According to The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, Gormley's design was a 390 feet (118.9 m) steel colossus titled Olympian Man, a trademark piece of a statue of himself, rejected mainly on the grounds of its £40m cost.
Johnson and Jowell agreed to issue a commission for Orbit in partnership with Mittal, after it was chosen by a 9 person advisory panel brought together by them to advise on a long list of proposals. According to Mittal, the panel made a unanimous decision to pick Orbit, as it both represented the games, and was achievable within the ambitious time frame. Kapoor described it as "the commission of a lifetime".
Johnson pre-empted possible criticism of the project during the official launch, by stating: "Of course some people will say we are nuts – in the depths of a recession – to be building Britain’s biggest ever piece of public art. But both Tessa Jowell and I are certain that this is the right thing for the Stratford site, in Games time and beyond."
Interpretation
According to Kapoor, the design brief from the Mayor's office was for a "tower of at least 100 metres (328.1 ft)", while Balmond said he was told the Mayor was "looking for an icon to match the Eiffel TowerEiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
".
Kapoor said one of the influences in his design for the tower was the Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel , according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar .According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where...
, the sense of "building the impossible" that "has something mythic about it.", and that the form "straddles Eiffel
Gustave Eiffel
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was a French structural engineer from the École Centrale Paris, an architect, an entrepreneur and a specialist of metallic structures...
and Tatlin
Vladimir Tatlin
Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin was a Russian and Soviet painter and architect. With Kazimir Malevich he was one of the two most important figures in the Russian avant-garde art movement of the 1920s, and he later became the most important artist in the Constructivist movement...
". Balmond, working on the metaphor of an orbit, envisaged an electron cloud moving, to create a structure that appears unstable, propping itself up, "never centred, never quite vertical" Both believe Orbit represents a new way of thinking, "a radical new piece
of structure and architecture and art" which utilises non-linearity - the use of "instabilities as stabilities." The spaces inside the structure, in between the twisting steel, are "cathedral like", according to Balmond, while according to Kapoor, the intention is that visitors will engage with the piece as they wind "up and up and in on oneself" on the spiral walkway.
The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
describes Orbit as "a continuously looping lattice...made up of eight strands winding into each other and combined by rings like a jagged knot", The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
describes it as a "giant lattice tripod sporting a counterweight collar around its neck designed to offset the weight of its head, a two-storey dining and viewing gallery", while according to the BBC, the design incorporates the five Olympic rings.
Upon its launch, Johnson said of the "mind-boggling" design, that "It would have boggled the minds of the Romans. It would have boggled Gustave Eiffel." Design panel member Nick Serota said Orbit was a tower with an interesting twist, with "the energy you might traditionally associate with this type of structure but in a surprisingly female form".
Name
According to Mittal, Orbit was already a working title of the design by Kapoor and Balmond, as it symbolised a continuous journey, a creative representation of the "extraordinary physical and emotional effort" that Olympians undertake in their continuous drive to do better. It was decided to keep this as the final name, and prepend the name of Mittal's company ArcelorMittal as the project supporter.On the public announcement of the design, Johnson conceded that it may become known by something other than its official name, suggesting "Colossus of Stratford" or the "Hubble Bubble", in reference to his belief it resembled a giant shisha pipe
Hookah
A hookah A hookah(Gujarati હૂકાહ) A hookah(Gujarati હૂકાહ) (Hindustani: हुक़्क़ा (Devanagari, (Nastaleeq) huqqah) also known as a waterpipe or narghile, is a single or multi-stemmed (often glass-based) instrument for smoking in which the smoke is cooled by water. The tobacco smoked is referred to...
, or variant on people's perceptions that it resembled a "giant treble clef", a "helter-skelter", or a "supersized mutant trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
".
Height
Orbit will be 115 metres (377.3 ft) tall. Other contradictory reports have suggested it will be 120 metres (393.7 ft) tall. The Greater London Authority have stated that it will become, when completed, the tallest sculpture in Britain, currently 'AspireAspire (sculpture)
Aspire is a work of art, constructed on the Jubilee Campus of the University of Nottingham, in Nottingham, England. It is a 60-metre tall, red and orange steel sculpture, and is the tallest free standing public work of art in the United Kingdom, taller than B of the Bang, Nelson's Column, the Angel...
' at 60m. According to The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
and The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
it will become Britain's largest piece of public art.
The authority itself on announcing the project, chose to describe Orbit's height in comparison to the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
, relaying how it will be 22 metres (72.2 ft) taller than that iconic New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
landmark. The statue of Liberty is 93 metres (305.1 ft) high, when counting the 46 metres (150.9 ft) statue together with its pedestal. While the media picked up the apparent intention of the authority to cast the Orbit as London's answer to the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
related how it was "considerably shorter" than that Parisian icon; the Eiffel Tower is 324 metres (1,063 ft) tall. The Guardian also noted that, with respect to comparisons to Eiffel's Tower, it is even "20 metres (65.6 ft) shorter than the diminutive Blackpool Tower
Blackpool Tower
Blackpool Tower Eye is a tourist attraction in Blackpool, Lancashire in England which was opened to the public on 14 May 1894. . Inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it rises to 518 feet & 9 inches . The tower is a member of the World Federation of Great Towers...
".
The structure's height was also compared in the media with other London landmarks. It was described as being "slightly taller" or "nearly 20 metres (65.6 ft) taller" than the Big Ben clock tower, the centrepiece of the Palace of Westminster
Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, is the meeting place of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom—the House of Lords and the House of Commons...
. It was also described as being "twice as tall" or "more than double the height" of Nelson's Column
Nelson's Column
Nelson's Column is a monument in Trafalgar Square in central London built to commemorate Admiral Horatio Nelson, who died at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The monument was constructed between 1840 and 1843 to a design by William Railton at a cost of £47,000. It is a column of the Corinthian...
, the monument honouring Admiral Nelson
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté, KB was a flag officer famous for his service in the Royal Navy, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars. He was noted for his inspirational leadership and superb grasp of strategy and unconventional tactics, which resulted in a number of...
located in Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square is a public space and tourist attraction in central London, England, United Kingdom. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. There are a number of statues and sculptures in the square, with one plinth displaying changing pieces of...
. Others reports described how it was "just short of" or "almost as tall as" the Great Pyramid of Giza
Great Pyramid of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering what is now El Giza, Egypt. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact...
in Egypt, the ancient tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu
Khufu
Khufu , also known as Cheops or, in Manetho, Suphis , was a Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom. He reigned from around 2589 to 2566 BC. Khufu was the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty. He is generally accepted as being the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of...
. Big Ben is 96.3 metres (315.9 ft) tall, Nelson's Column is 51.5 metres (169 ft) tall in total, including statue and column. The Giza Pyramid was thought to have been constructed as 280 Egyptian cubits or 146.478 metres (480.6 ft) tall, although with erosion it has reduced in height by nearly 10 metres.
Use
As an observation towerObservation tower
An observation tower is a structure used to view events from a long distance and to create a full 360 degree range of vision. They are usually at least tall and made from stone, iron, and wood. Many modern towers are also used as TV towers, restaurants, or churches...
, the Orbit will contain two indoor viewing platforms on two levels, with each level having the capacity for 150 people. In comparison to the Orbit's 115m height, the nearby Olympic Stadium
Olympic Stadium (London)
The London Olympic Stadium will be the centrepiece of the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. The stadium is located at Marshgate Lane in Stratford in the Lower Lea Valley and has capacity for the Games of approximately 80,000 making it temporarily the third largest stadium in Britain behind...
will be 193 feet (58.8 m) high. According to the Greater London Authority
Greater London Authority
The Greater London Authority is the top-tier administrative body for Greater London, England. It consists of a directly elected executive Mayor of London, currently Boris Johnson, and an elected 25-member London Assembly with scrutiny powers...
, the observation platform will offer "unparalleled views of the entire 250 acre (1 km²; 0.390625345380447 sq mi) of the Olympic Park and London's skyline".
According to the Greater London Authority, visitors will travel up the tower in a lift
Elevator
An elevator is a type of vertical transport equipment that efficiently moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel or other structures...
, and will have the option of descending using a spiral staircase
Spiral staircase
Spiral staircase may refer to:* A type of stairway characterized by its spiral shape* The Spiral Staircase , a 1946 American psychological thriller film* The Spiral Staircase , a 1975 British film, a remake of the 1946 film...
incorporated into the structure. Kapoor however suggests visitors will be able to ascend using the walkway, as they wind "up and up and in on oneself." Similarly, The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
reports that visitors will be able to climb the structure, and The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
reports that people will be able to "sprint up and down its 500 winding stairs". Kapoor describes the walkway as "a long way to walk" and "pretty steep".
The tower was expected to be able to cope with visitor numbers of 700 people per hour. As of March 2010, it was undecided whether visitors would be charged to enter the tower. The base of the tower will include a visitor pavilion and educational exhibition. The top of the tower may also include a dining area.
Once completed, Orbit will be owned and operated by the Olympic Park Legacy Company. The ambition is that, as well as being a focal point for the Olympic Park during the Games, it will also form part of the wider Stratford regeneration plans, which aim to turn the Olympic site into a permanent tourist destination after the Games. Tessa Jowell
Tessa Jowell
Tessa Jowell is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Dulwich and West Norwood since 1992. Formerly a member of both the Blair and Brown Cabinets, she is currently the Shadow Minister for the Olympics and Shadow Minister for London.-Early life:Tessa Jane...
said Orbit will be "like to honey to bees for the millions of tourists that visit London each year". Boris Johnson predicted the tower would become "the perfect iconic cultural legacy". According to Lord Coe, chairman of the London 2012 Olympic organisers, the tower would play a central part in the Game's role of leaving a lasting legacy and transformed landscape in east London.
Funding
At the time of its public launch, the total cost of the Orbit project was announced as £19.1m. ArcelorMittal was to fund up to £16m of the cost, with the remaining £3.1m being provided by the London Development AgencyLondon Development Agency
The London Development Agency is the Regional Development Agency for Greater London, England. It is a functional body of the Greater London Authority...
. This consists a £10m cash donation, and £6 million in underwriting of capital costs, which could be potentially recovered from profits generated after the Games. According to Johnson, the cost of the project would be recouped after the games through the private hire of a dining area at the top of the tower, predicting it would become a "corporate money-making venture".
Mittal said he was immediately interested in the project after he remembered the excitement that surrounded the announcement that London had won the Olympic bid. He saw it as an opportunity to leave a lasting legacy for London, showcase the "unique qualities of steel" and play a role in the regeneration of Stratford. Mittal said of his involvement in the project, "I live in London – I’ve lived here since 1997 – and I think it’s a wonderful city. This project is an incredible opportunity to build something really spectacular for London, for the Olympic Games and something that will play a lasting role in the legacy of the Games."
Advisory panel member and director of the Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
gallery, Nicholas Serota
Nicholas Serota
Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art curator. Serota was director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, before becoming director of the Tate, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art in 1988. He was awarded a knighthood in 1999. He...
, said Orbit was "the perfect answer to the question of how sport and art come together", and praised Mr Mittal's "really impressive piece of patronage" for supporting a "great commission".
Reception
When plans were first reported for an Olympic tower, the media pointed to a previous manifesto pledge of Johnson's to crack down on tall buildings, in order to preserve London's "precious" skyline. The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
criticised the idea as a vanity project of Johnson's, with a design "matching his bravado", built to "seal his legacy", surmising it would be compared to other similar vanity projects such as Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
's "wedding cake", the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II built in Rome, or the Neutrality Arch
Neutrality Arch
The Neutrality Arch is a monument located in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.The arch is tall and was built in 1998 on the orders of Turkmenistan's President Saparmurat Niyazov to commemorate the country's official position of neutrality. It cost $12 million to construct. The three-legged arch was...
, a rotating golden statue erected by Turkmenistan's President Saparmurat Niyazov
Saparmurat Niyazov
Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov; , was a Turkmen politician who served as President of Turkmenistan from 2 November 1990 until his death in 2006...
, while comparing Johnson to Ozymandias
Ozymandias
"Ozymandias" is a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818 in the January 11 issue of The Examiner in London. It is frequently anthologised and is probably Shelley's most famous short poem...
. Art critic Brian Sewell
Brian Sewell
Brian Sewell is an English art critic and media personality. He writes for the London Evening Standard and is noted for artistic conservatism and his acerbic view of the Turner Prize and conceptual art...
said "Our country is littered with public art of absolutely no merit. We are entering a new period of fascist gigantism. These are monuments to egos and you couldn't find a more monumental ego than Boris."
Richard Morrison of The Times described Orbit as "like an enormous wire-mesh fence that has got hopelessly snagged round the bell of a giant french horn", adding that it "seems like an awful lot of trouble just to look at East London", in comparison to a music hall comedian's refrain at the $16 million cost of the Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River...
. Morrison not only compared Johnson not only to Ozymandias, but the 20th century dictators Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
, in their acts of "phallic politics" in building grandiose monuments. Criticising the lack of public involvement, he described how it would be an "undesired intrusion by the few into the consciousness of the many". He feared that it could become one of the many "thousands of naff eyesores" of recent public art in Britain, citing the embracing couple at St Pancras station
St Pancras railway station
St Pancras railway station, also known as London St Pancras and since 2007 as St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus celebrated for its Victorian architecture. The Grade I listed building stands on Euston Road in St Pancras, London Borough of Camden, between the...
(The Meeting Place), the Dockland's Traffic Light tree
Traffic Light tree
The Traffic Light tree was created by French sculptor Pierre Vivant following a competition run by the Public Art Commissions Agency. It is situated on a roundabout near Canary Wharf, at the junctions of Heron Quay Bank, Marsh Wall and Westferry Road...
, and the proposed Rotherhithe Tunnel 'match-stick man' tribute to Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, FRS , was a British civil engineer who built bridges and dockyards including the construction of the first major British railway, the Great Western Railway; a series of steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship; and numerous important bridges...
, as London based examples.
Jay Merrick of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
said of Orbit that "its sculptural power lies in its ability to suggest an unfinished form in the process of becoming something else", describing how its artistic riskiness elevated it above the banal artworks of the public art movement that have been built elsewhere in Britain's towns and cities. Merrick was of the opinion that it would be either loved or hated, being a design which is "beautifully fractious, and not quite knowable".
Jonathan Glancey
Jonathan Glancey
Jonathan Glancey is an architectural critic and writer who is the architecture and design editor at The Guardian, a position he has held since 1997. He previously held the same post at The Independent. He also has been involved with the architecture magazines Building Design, Architectural Review,...
of The Guardian described Orbit as "Olympian in ambition" and a "fusion between striking art and daring engineering", and said that, the Aquatics Centre apart, it represented the architecturally striking Joker in the pack, given that the rest of the landscaping and architecture for the Games "promises little to get excited about". He believed it would become a "genuine eyecatcher" for the Olympics television coverage, with its extraordinary form being a "strange and enticing marriage of sorts" between the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
and the un-built early Soviet era Tatlin's Tower
Tatlin's Tower
Tatlin’s Tower or The Monument to the Third International is a grand monumental building envisioned by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin, but never built. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd Tatlin’s Tower or The Monument to the Third International is a grand monumental...
, with the biblical Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel , according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar .According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where...
as "best man".
Describing it as looking like a "catastrophic collision between two cranes", the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
reported how the structure had been immediately been nicknamed the 'Eyeful Tower', as well as reflecting specific internet comments of it being 'a rollercoaster that costs £19million a go', or that it resembled 'twisted spaghetti', 'horrific squiggles' and 'Meccano on crack'. The Times also reported the description "Godzilla of public art".
With regard to its potential as a lasting visitor attraction, Mark Brown of The Guardian reflected on the mixed fortunes of other large symbolic London visitor attractions, the popular but loss making Thames Tunnel
Thames Tunnel
The Thames Tunnel is an underwater tunnel, built beneath the River Thames in London, United Kingdom, connecting Rotherhithe and Wapping. It measures 35 feet wide by 20 feet high and is 1,300 feet long, running at a depth of 75 feet below the river's surface...
, the Skylon
Skylon (tower)
The Skylon was a futuristic-looking, slender, vertical, cigar-shaped steel tensegrity structure located by the Thames in London, that apparently floated above the ground, built in 1951 for the Festival of Britain....
tower, dismantled on the orders of Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
, and the successful London Eye
London Eye
The London Eye is a tall giant Ferris wheel situated on the banks of the River Thames, in London, England.It is the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe, and the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom, visited by over 3.5 million people annually...
.
Tom Dyckhoff of The Times, while calling it a "a gift to the tabloids" and a "giant Mr. Messy", questioned whether the Olympic site needed another pointless icon, postulating whether Orbit would stand the test of time like the London Eye and become a true icon to match the Eiffel Tower, or a hopeless white elephant. Suggesting the project had echoes of Tatlin's Monument to the Third International, and especially Constant Nieuwenhuys
Constant Nieuwenhuys
Constant Anton Nieuwenhuys was a Dutch painter, and one of the foremost innovators of Unitary Urbanism. In 1941, he became deeply interested in the work of Paul Cézanne, Cubism and German Expressionism....
' utopian city New Babylon
New Babylon (Constant Nieuwenhuys)
New Babylon is a Utopian anti-capitalist city designed in 1959-74 by artist-architect Constant Nieuwenhuys. Henri Lefebvre explained: "a New Babylon -- a provocative name, since in the Protestant tradition Babylon is a figure of evil...
, he asked whether Orbit was just as revolutionary or possessed the same ideological purpose, or whether it was merely "a giant advert for one of the world’s biggest multinationals, sweetened with a bit of fun".
Rowan Moore
Rowan Moore
Rowan Moore is an architecture critic. He is the brother of the journalist and newspaper editor Charles Moore. He trained as an architect at Cambridge, but, having gone into practice, turned to journalism. He has been editor of the architecture journal Blueprint, and has written for the Evening...
of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
questioned if Orbit was going to be anything more than a folly, or whether it would be as eloquent as the Statue of Liberty. He speculated that the project might mark the time when society stops using large iconic projects as a tool for lifting areas out of deprivation. He questioned its ability to draw people's attention to Stratford after the Games, in a similar manner to the successes of the Angel of the North or the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, built by Ferrovial, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. It is built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Coast. The...
. He also questioned the piece's ability to strike a chord like the Angel, which he believed had at least "created a feelgood factor and sense of pride" in Gateshead, or whether it would simply become one of the "many more unloved rotting wrecks that no one has the nerve to demolish". He postulated that the addition of stairs and a lift made Orbit less succinct than Kapoor's previous successful works, while ultimately he said "hard to see what the big idea is, beyond the idea of making something big".
John Graham-Cumming
John Graham-Cumming
John Graham-Cumming is a British programmer best known for having originated a successful petition to the British Government asking for an apology for its persecution of Alan Turing for his homosexuality....
of The Guardian rejected the comparison's to the goal of being an icon like the Eiffel Tower, pointing out that that structure had not intended to be a lasting monument, only persisting into public acceptance as art through being useful, while also pointing out the Colossus of Rhodes collapsed within a few decades, and the Tower of Babel was "constructed to glorify those that constructed it." He suggested that Johnson should reconsider whether it should be pulled down after 20 years. Questioning its corporate role, he believed that meant it looked less and less like a work of art and more like a vanity project.
Responding to concerns from The Times that ArcelorMittal's sponsorship and naming of Orbit would represent an improper incursion of corporate branding into public life, Johnson stated that Olympic rules mean that the Orbit cannot carry any corporate branding during the games. Felicity Carus of The Guardian's environment blog questioned whether ArcelorMittal's record on carbon emissions was good enough to mean Orbit represented a fitting monument for the 2012 Olympics, billed as a 'world's first sustainable Olympics'.
A Guardian online poll published on the official launch, posing the question "Anish Kapoor's Olympic tower: a grand design?", recorded 38.6% for "Yes, it's a grand design" and 61.4% for "No, it's garbage".
Advisory panel
The people on the advisory panel were:- Nicholas SerotaNicholas SerotaSir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art curator. Serota was director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, before becoming director of the Tate, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art in 1988. He was awarded a knighthood in 1999. He...
, director of the TateTate-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
gallery - Julia Peyton-Jones, director of the Serpentine GallerySerpentine GalleryThe Serpentine Gallery is an art gallery in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, central London. It focuses on modern and contemporary art. The exhibitions, architecture, education and public programmes attract approximately 750,000 visitors a year...
- Hans-Ulrich Obrist, also of the Serpentine Gallery
- Sarah Weir of the Olympic Delivery AuthorityOlympic Delivery AuthorityThe Olympic Delivery Authority is the statutory corporation responsible for ensuring delivery of venues, infrastructure and legacy for the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in London...
- Stuart Lipton of Chelsfield LLP
- Anita Zabludowicz of the 176 gallery ZabludowiczPoju ZabludowiczChaim "Poju" Zabludowicz , owner of the Liechtenstein-registered Tamares investment group, is a Finnish Jewish businessman based in London...
collection - Michael Morris and James Lingwood, directors of the ArtangelArtangelArtangel is a London-based arts organisation founded in 1985 by Roger Took. Directed since 1991 by James Lingwood and Michael Morris, it has commissioned and produced a string of notable site-specific works, plus several projects for TV, film, radio and the web...
arts commissioning organisation - Munira Mirza, the Mayoral Advisor on Arts and Culture
In announcing the winning design, Johnson also thanked the Greater London Authority
Greater London Authority
The Greater London Authority is the top-tier administrative body for Greater London, England. It consists of a directly elected executive Mayor of London, currently Boris Johnson, and an elected 25-member London Assembly with scrutiny powers...
, the Olympic Delivery Authority
Olympic Delivery Authority
The Olympic Delivery Authority is the statutory corporation responsible for ensuring delivery of venues, infrastructure and legacy for the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in London...
and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, as well as David McAlpine and Philip Dilley of Arup, and Sir Robin Wales
Robin Wales
Sir Robin Andrew Wales is a Labour Party politician and current Mayor of the London Borough of Newham- Early life :Wales was born in Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire, Scotland in 1955, and was educated at the University of Glasgow where he read Chemistry and was chair of the Glasgow University Labour Club...
and Jules Pipe
Jules Pipe
Julian Benjamin Pipe CBE is the first directly elected Mayor of the London Borough of Hackney since his election in October 2002.He worked as a journalist until taking on the full-time position as Mayor....
for their involvement and support in the project.
See also
- B of the BangB of the BangB of the Bang was a sculpture designed by Thomas Heatherwick, in Manchester, England, located next to the City of Manchester Stadium at Sportcity...
, the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games sculpture - SkylonSkylon (tower)The Skylon was a futuristic-looking, slender, vertical, cigar-shaped steel tensegrity structure located by the Thames in London, that apparently floated above the ground, built in 1951 for the Festival of Britain....
, the London 1951 Festival of Britain tower - The White Horse at Ebbsfleet, a proposed giant sculpture for Kent
External links
- Orbit Anish Kapoor website
- The ArcelorMittal Orbit Greater London AuthorityGreater London AuthorityThe Greater London Authority is the top-tier administrative body for Greater London, England. It consists of a directly elected executive Mayor of London, currently Boris Johnson, and an elected 25-member London Assembly with scrutiny powers...
- 360 degree view of the Orbit London Mayor's YouTube channel