With pretty much every building that is built these days looking like every other building that is built these days, we should send out a huge ‘hurrah’ to the people that design and fund weird and wonderful (and utterly pointless) constructions.
And so, this design has been unveiled as London’s lasting Olympic legacy. The 120 foot ArcelorMittal Orbit has been designed by Anish Kapoor and will tower over the Olympic site in East London. It’s supposed to represent the five Olympic rings, I believe.
Bozza was, of course, at the launch of the £19.1m project. The Mayor said: “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 [Olympics minister] and I are certain that this is the right thing for the Stratford site, in games time and beyond.”
And do you know what? He’s right. If everyone had mumbled about the cost of projects in the past, we’d have no Great Pyramid, Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty to look at, would we?
BoJo continued in his inimitable style. “Some may choose to think of it as a Colossus of Stratford, some eyes may detect a giant treble clef, a helter-skelter, a supersized mutant trombone. Some may even see the world’s biggest ever representation of a shisha pipe and call it the Hubble Bubble. But I know it is the ArcelorMittal Orbit and it represents the dynamism of a city coming out of recession, the embodiment of the cross-fertilisation of cultures and styles that makes London the world capital of arts and culture.
“Also, it will generate money with the restaurant at the top of the thingy.”
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