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116-576: The ArcelorMittal Orbit (often referred to as the Orbit Tower or its original name, Orbit ) is a 114.5-metre (376-foot) sculpture and observation tower in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London . It is Britain's largest piece of public art , and is intended to be a permanent lasting legacy of London's hosting of the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, assisting in

232-526: A Fourth Plinth commission, an invitation for members of the public, chosen by lot, to spend one hour on the vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square in London. This "living art" happening initially attracted much media attention. It even became a topic of discussion on the long-running BBC radio drama series The Archers , where Gormley made an appearance as himself. Throughout the 2000s, Gormley has interrogated

348-549: A crane operator and a site foreman . As an observation tower , Orbit has two indoor viewing platforms on two levels, with each level having capacity for 150 people. According to the Greater London Authority , the observation platform offers "unparalleled views of the entire 250 acres (1.0 km; 0.39 sq mi) of the Olympic Park and London's skyline". According to The Independent , visitors should take

464-574: A " helter-skelter ", or a "supersized mutant trombone ". Orbit is described as "designed by Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond". Kapoor is a Turner Prize winning sculptor, while Balmond is one of the world's leading designers. According to Kapoor, both men are "interested in a place where architecture meets sculpture" and "the way that form and geometry give rise to structure". Kapoor and Balmond stated that their interests have blurred and crossed over into each other's fields since they first began working together in 2002 on Kapoor's Marsyas installation in

580-579: A "different perspective" of the twisting red tower and was completed in June 2016. This follows an option to abseil down the tower, introduced in 2014. According to London mayor Boris Johnson, in around October 2008 he and Tessa Jowell decided that the site in Stratford, London that was to become the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics needed "something extra" to "distinguish the East London skyline", and "arouse

696-505: 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". According to the BBC, the design incorporates the five Olympic rings . Upon its launch Johnson said "It would have boggled the minds of the Romans. It would have boggled Gustave Eiffel." Nicholas Serota, a member of the design panel, said that Orbit

812-401: A 400-foot (120 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 that he was "keen to see stunning, ambitious, world-class art in the Olympic Park", and that work on commissioning the project was at an early stage. Mittal's involvement came about after a chance meeting with Johnson in

928-576: A bit longer seeing the tide come in and how many of them disappear. And then you're encouraged to linger further until they're revealed again. In September 2015, Gormley had his first sculpture installed in New Zealand. Stay is a group of identical cast-iron human form sculptures, with the first installed in the Avon River / Ōtākaro in Christchurch 's central city , and the other sculpture installed in

1044-512: A body and recalled the people Gormley saw asleep in India wrapped in saris or dhotis . After attending Saint Martin's School of Art and Goldsmiths in London from 1974, he completed his studies with a postgraduate course in sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art , between 1977 and 1979. Gormley's work as a student used natural materials such as stone and wood. Gormley's career began with

1160-585: A cloakroom in Davos in January 2009, as they were on their way to separate dinner engagements. In a conversation that reportedly lasted 45 seconds Johnson 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

1276-509: A flag pole at its top. Some of these towers are permanently accessible, either free or with the payment of an admission fee. Others are accessible only at certain times, in most cases only with the payment of an admission fee. At these towers the platform is usually open, with some having a restaurant in the basement. There are also towers with a much more extensive use; for example. the observation tower on Rossberg mountains in Reutlingen contains

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1392-618: A group of 60 enormous steel figures – called Expansion Field . The work was shown at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern . In May 2015 five life-sized sculptures, Land , were placed near the centre and at four compass points of the UK in a commission by the Landmark Trust to celebrate its 50th anniversary. They are at Lowsonford ( Warwickshire ), Lundy ( Bristol Channel ), Saddell Bay ( Scotland ),

1508-460: A hotel within its structure. Although most of these towers were initially built before World War I , such structures are still being built, in particular as attractions at horticultural shows . Modern observation towers are in most cases no longer built of brick, but concrete, steel and wood are used as the preferred building materials. Permanent observation towers are also sometimes found in amusement parks , however in parks where each attraction

1624-517: A lasting monument, only persisting into public acceptance as art through being useful; he also pointed 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

1740-565: A lasting visitor attraction, The Guardian's Mark Brown reflected on the mixed fortunes of other large symbolic London visitor attractions such as the popular, but loss-making, Thames Tunnel ; the Skylon structure, dismantled on the orders of Winston Churchill ; and the successful London Eye . When plans were first reported for an Olympic tower, the media pointed to a manifesto pledge of Johnson's to crack down on tall buildings, in order to preserve London's "precious" skyline. The Times criticised

1856-515: A lighthouse is usually between 10 and 50 metres high, and is almost always open air. Some sports facilities have high buildings with observation decks. This is often the case at ski jumps, as these have a tower and are usually unused in the summer. In addition, there are other sports facilities with observation decks, like the inclined tower of the Montreal Olympic stadium. Access to the platform of nearly all sports facilities with observation deck

1972-493: A limited edition vinyl album of ambient sounds from his studio for Record Store Day titled Sounds of the Studio . It consisted of two tracks (one on each side) titled Sounds of the Studio (Part 1) and Sounds of the Studio (Part 2) . It came with an inner with a monochrome print of his studio on one side and text by the artist with a photo on the other. In 2019, Gormley populated the island of Delos with iron "bodyforms" with

2088-570: A long list of proposals. According to Mittal, the panel made a unanimous decision to pick Orbit , as it both represented the Olympic Games and was achievable within the ambitious time frame. Kapoor described it as "the commission of a lifetime". Johnson pre-empted possible criticism 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

2204-479: A man who was pivotal in changing the course of all our lives. It is not about the memorialisation of a death, but about a celebration of the opportunities that a life allowed". Gormley's first solo exhibition in New York , USA , in over eight years opened at White Cube and ran until June 2024. The artist exhibited a new site-specific installation titled Aerial , from which the exhibition took its name. This sculpture

2320-577: A number of large-scale exhibitions, including Living Time at TAG Art Museum in Qingdao, China , and Critical Mass at Musée Rodin in Paris, France , which marked the first time that a living artist has been invited to exhibit in all areas of the museum, including the Hôtel Biron . As part of the exhibition, Gormley showed his major artwork Critical Mass II , a sculpture comprising 60 cast iron bodies, in and around

2436-402: A restaurant. The height of these platforms, which can be glassed or open-air depending on the height of the building, where they are most common on the topmost floor. As a rule access usually requires the payment of an admission fee, is possible by elevator only at dedicated opening times. Also numerous water towers have, a usually open-air observation deck opened for public traffic, whose height

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2552-428: A rule an elevator is available in these buildings for the visitors of the observation deck, as the observation deck lies usually very highly (mostly within the range between 50 and 200 metres, at some towers also more highly). Many of these towers have also a tower restaurant, which can be designed as revolving restaurant. While tower restaurants for the protection of the restaurant guests from the wind are in closed rooms,

2668-609: A rule, since these buildings are mostly not higher than 20 metres. Active watch towers are not as a rule accessible to the public, since they usually serve for the monitoring of sensitive ranges. However watch towers can be quite ordered for forest fire monitoring a platform accessible for the public or be used during times without forest fire risk as observation towers. Shut down watch towers can however be easily converted to observation towers. Also some radio towers were so built that they can be used apart from their function as transmitting tower also as observation tower. A condition for this

2784-497: A solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1981. In this exhibition, Gormley showed a series of works that were concerned with surfaces, skins and inner structures, such as Natural Selection , a ten metre row of objects, including tools, fruits, weapons and vegetables, encased in lead, and Room , an enclosure reminiscent of a barbed-wire fence made from a set of the artist's clothes. Gormley then turned his attention to

2900-404: A structural point of view, Orbit consists of two parts: The trunk has a base diameter of 37 metres (121 ft), narrowing to 5 metres (16 ft) on the way up, then widening again to 9.6 metres (31 ft) just under the observation deck. The trunk is supported and stabilized by the tube, which gives a structural character of a tripod to the entire construction. Further structural integrity

3016-400: A sub-consultant to Arup) made the sculpture into a functional building, for example designing the staircase. The organic design of Orbit demanded an extraordinary amount of structural engineering work. This was done by Arup , which reported that it took up two-thirds of the budget for the project (twice the percentage normally allotted to structural engineering in a building project). From

3132-433: A t-antenna for medium wave and stands on insulators. However one notices at the first experimental transmissions that at the tower voltages would arise, which would have unpleasant consequences for visitors and so the tower was grounded by the elevator shaft. However this shifted direction of main beam of transmitter away from actual supply area, the city of Berlin. As before World War II nearly whole radio traffic took place in

3248-742: 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

3364-443: A work of art and more like a vanity project. In an online poll published by The Guardian , 38.6% of readers considered it a "grand design", while 61.4% considered it "garbage". 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 it cannot carry any corporate branding during

3480-436: A work that visitors can engage with and experience via an incorporated spiral walkway. It has been both praised and criticised for its bold design, and has especially received criticism as a vanity project of questionable lasting use or merit as a public art project. The project was expected to cost £19.1   million, with £16   million coming from Britain's then-richest man, the steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal , Chairman of

3596-480: Is 96.3 metres (316 ft) tall, Nelson's Column is 51.5 metres (169 ft) tall, including statue and column. The Giza Pyramid was thought to have been constructed as 280 Egyptian cubits or 146.478 metres (480.57 ft) tall, although with erosion it has reduced in height by nearly 10 metres. Orbit is located in the southern area of the Olympic Park, between London Stadium and the Aquatics Centre . After

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3712-709: Is a British sculptor. His works include the Angel of the North , a public sculpture in Gateshead in the north of England, commissioned in 1994 and erected in February 1998; Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool ; and Event Horizon , a multipart site installation which premiered in London in 2007, then subsequently in Madison Square in New York City (2010), São Paulo , Brazil (2012), and Hong Kong (2015–16). Gormley

3828-669: Is a sufficiently stable construction, which permits a permanent safe visitor entrance without interruption of the transmission services. This is the case for towers for radio services in the UHF/VHF-range the case, not however for most types of radio towers for long and medium wave, why a use of these structures as observation tower is impossible in most cases. That the use of a tower as radio tower for medium wave and observation tower not well fits, showed up in Radio Tower Berlin , which originally carried together with an 80 metres high mast

3944-437: Is given to the construction by octagonal steel rings that surround the tube and trunk, spaced at 4 metres (13 ft) and cross-joined pairwise by sixteen diagonally mounted steel connectors. A special part of the construction is the canopy, the conic shape that hangs off the bottom of the trunk. Originally planned as a fibreglass composite construction, costs forced the use of steel for this section as well. Centraalstaal

4060-436: Is in contrast to the entrance of the church usually only possible under payment an admission fee at the opening times of the church. The height of the observation decks is usually in the range between 20 and 50 metres. The platform is nearly always open-air. Some lighthouses have an observation deck open to the public. Access is usually by stairs. An admission fee is often charged and hours may be limited. The observation deck of

4176-521: 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." The Times reported the description of it being the "Godzilla of public art". In October 2012, ArcelorMittal Orbit was nominated and made the Building Design magazine shortlist for the Carbuncle Cup —an award for

4292-486: Is mostly as the height of older observation towers in the height range between 10 and 50 metres. It can be reached depending upon tower by stairs or by an elevator. Some water towers have also a tower restaurant. Prospect platforms of water towers are nearly only accessible under payment during the opening times, which are different for each tower. Also some church towers possess observation decks. However elevators are only available in rare cases. The entrance of this platform

4408-427: Is not separately paid for, panorama rides are preferred. Watch towers are observation towers, on which persons supervise a larger area. Strictly speaking, control towers also fall into this category, although surveillance from these structures is mostly done in a non-optical way using Radar . Watch towers usually have a closed pulpit to protect the observer against bad weather. Watch towers do not have an elevator as

4524-551: Is only possible during opening times after paying an admission fee. Depending upon the building the access can be done by an elevator and/or a stairway. The platforms can be vitreous or open. The height above ground lies usually between 10 and 50 metres. Fire lookout towers have been used widely in Australia, Canada, and the United States to hoist fire lookout persons to heights where they can identify and report new wildfires. In

4640-528: Is positioned) underwent reconstruction for its long-term legacy use as a public outdoor space. It re-opened to the public on 5 April 2014. The structure incorporates the world's tallest and longest – 178 m (584 ft) – tunnel slide, designed by Carsten Höller . The idea was originally envisioned by the London Legacy Development Corporation as a way to attract more visitors to the tower. The slide includes transparent sections to give

4756-519: Is that the sculpture, as well as being a focal point for the Olympic Park during the Games, will 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 honey to bees for the millions of tourists that visit London each year". Boris Johnson predicted it would become "the perfect iconic cultural legacy". According to Lord Coe , chairman of

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4872-501: Is the right thing for the Stratford site, in Games time and beyond." The completed structure was officially unveiled to the press and public on 11 May 2012. An image of the structure was included in the 2015 design of the British passport . The structure was re-purposed with the world's longest slide in 2016, as a way to attract more visitors. According to Kapoor, the design brief from

4988-723: Is £3,401,250 for a maquette of the Angel of the North , set at Christie's , London, on 14 October 2011. While at the Slade School of Fine Art, Gormley met Vicken Parsons , who was to become his assistant, and in 1980, his wife, as well as a successful artist in her own right. The couple have a daughter and two sons. Gormley is a patron of Paintings in Hospitals , a charity that provides art for health and social care in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. In June 2022 Gormley said that he had applied for German citizenship , to which he

5104-586: The ArcelorMittal steel company, and the balance of £3.1   million coming from the London Development Agency . The name "ArcelorMittal Orbit" combines the name of Mittal's company, as chief sponsor, with Orbit , the original working title for Kapoor and Balmond's design. The ArcelorMittal Orbit temporarily closed after the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games while the South Plaza (in which Orbit

5220-714: 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 in Trafalgar Square . Other 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

5336-827: The Henninger Turm , a grain silo with tower restaurant and observation deck in Frankfurt, the bell tower of Berlin Olympic stadium , whose platform is accessible by an elevator, the winding tower of the mining industry museum in Bochum, which has an open-air observation deck to which an elevator runs or a wind turbine in Holtriem wind park, which is equipped with a closed platform accessible over stairs. Also aerial tramway support towers, which serve as observation tower (and aerial tramway station), were realized, like Torre Jaume I in Barcelona. Even on

5452-629: The Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance for the set design for Babel (Words) at Sadler's Wells in collaboration with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet. He was the recipient of the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and is the 2013 Praemium Imperiale laureate for sculpture. Gormley was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to the arts, having previously been appointed OBE in 1998 . For Room , he received

5568-724: The Ministry of Culture to take place in Delos, a UNESCO World Heritage Site . He installed 29 sculptures made during the last 20 years, including five new works specially commissioned by the NEON Organization, both at the periphery and integrated amongst Delos's archaeological site and museum animating the geological and archaeological features of the island. Also in 2019, the Royal Academy held an exhibition filling its 13 main galleries with Gormley's works, including some new (designed to fit

5684-601: The Royal Academy of Arts in London , Art Changsha in China and Forte di Belvedere in Florence . The 2006 Sydney Biennale featured Gormley's Asian Field , an installation of approximately 200,000 small clay figurines crafted by around 300 Chinese villagers in five days from 100 tons of red clay. Use of others' works attracted minor comment. Some figurines were stolen. Also in 2006,

5800-459: The Royal Institute of British Architects , honorary doctor of the universities of Teesside , Liverpool , University College London , and Cambridge , and a fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleges , Cambridge. In October 2010, along with 100 other leading artists, he signed an open letter to Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt protesting cutbacks in the arts. On 13 March 2011, Gormley was awarded

5916-731: The Southbank Centre , London, presented by Koestler Trust showing artworks by prisoners, detainees, and ex-offenders. In addition, he judged their annual category prize, also on the theme "inside". Gormley then held the first solo exhibition at the newly remodelled Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, England . Two new bodies of work, known as Rooters and Polyhedra Works , were shown that year at White Cube in Hong Kong and Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg , respectively. On 21 April 2018, Gormley released

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6032-498: The UHF / VHF range ( FM sound broadcasting , TV, public rural broadcasting service, and portable radio service). In some cases this usage of the tower is at least as important as its use as an observation tower. Such towers are usually called TV towers or telecommunication towers. Many towers are also equipped with a tower restaurant and allow visitors access via elevators. Also common is the usage of water towers as observation towers. As in

6148-498: 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". Fellow Guardian writer John Graham-Cumming rejected comparisons to icons like the Eiffel Tower, which had itself not been intended to be

6264-1485: The 2015 Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture . In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked Gormley number four in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture ". Gormley's work is held in major public and private collections around the world, including the Arts Council of England ; Tate , London; British Museum , London; British Council , England; National Galleries of Scotland , Edinburgh; Royal Academy of Arts , London; Victoria and Albert Museum , London; Wellcome Collection , London; Art Gallery of New South Wales , Sydney; National Gallery of Australia , Canberra; Middelheim Museum , Antwerp; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art , Humblebaek; Centre Georges Pompidou , Paris; Lehmbruck Museum , Duisburg; SCHAUWERK Sindelfingen, Sindelfingen; M+ , Hong Kong; Irish Museum of Modern Art , Dublin; Uffizi Gallery , Florence; National Museum of Modern Art , Tokyo; Museum Voorlinden , Wassenaar; State Hermitage Museum , St. Petersburg; Malmo Konsthall , Malmo; Pinchuk Art Centre , Kyiv; MIT List Visual Arts Center , Cambridge, Massachusetts; Museum of Contemporary Art , Los Angeles; Phillips Collection , Washington D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art , San Francisco; Walker Art Center , Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Yale Center for British Art , New Haven, Connecticut. Gormley's auction record

6380-457: The Hall. Gormley also unveiled True, for Alan Turing at King's College, Cambridge . This sculpture, made from slabs of Corten steel, celebrates the life and enduring influence of mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing . Speaking on the sculpture, Gormley stated "Alan Turing unlocked the door between the industrial and the information ages. I wanted to make the best sculpture I could to honour

6496-550: The London 2012 Olympic organisers, it would play a central part in the Game's role of leaving a lasting legacy and transformed landscape in east London. During the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Paralympics , Joe Townsend (a Royal Marine and double amputee) delivered the Paralympic flame into Olympic Stadium via a zipline that was attached to the top of Orbit . In 2016, a permanent slide designed by German artist Carsten Höller

6612-588: The March 2010 confirmation of the winning design, construction began in November 2010; it reached its full height in November 2011. Steel is the primary material used in the sculpture. According to Balmond, there was no feasible alternative, as steel was the only material that could give the minimum thickness and maximum strength represented in the coiling structure. It was built from approximately 2000 tonnes of steel, produced as much as possible from ArcelorMittal plants, with

6728-606: The Martello Tower ( Aldeburgh , Suffolk), and Clavell Tower ( Kimmeridge Bay , Dorset). The Dorset sculpture was knocked over into Kimmeridge Bay by a storm in September 2015. On 6 September 2015, Another Place marked the 10th anniversary of its installation at Crosby Beach in Merseyside . Gormley commented: I'm just delighted by the barnacles! Every time I'm there, just like any other visitor, you're encouraged to linger

6844-406: The Mayor's office was for a "tower of at least 100 metres (330 ft)", while Balmond said that he was told the Mayor was "looking for an icon to match the Eiffel Tower ". Kapoor said that one of the influences on his design 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

6960-436: The Olympic Park needed "something extra". Designers were asked for ideas for an "Olympic tower" at least 100 metres (330 ft) high: Orbit was the unanimous choice from proposals considered by a nine-person advisory panel . Kapoor and Balmond believed that Orbit represented a radical advance in the architectural field of combining sculpture and structural engineering , and that it combined both stability and instability in

7076-459: The Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern . As well as Orbit , in 2010 Kapoor and Balmond were also working on the Tees Valley Giants , a public art project in northern England. The sculpture was engineered by the Global engineer Arup, who developed the overall geometry, structural design and the building services including the lighting displayed extensively during the Olympic games. Architectural input by Kathryn Findlay ( Ushida Findlay Architects , as

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7192-425: The UK's tallest sculpture, surpassing the 60-metre (200 ft) tall Aspire in Nottingham. On announcing the project, the Greater London Authority described Orbit ' s height in comparison with the Statue of Liberty , stating that it would be 22 metres (72 ft) taller – the Statue of Liberty is 93 metres (305 ft) high, including the 46-metre (151 ft) statue and its pedestal. The media picked up

7308-417: The United States, there once were over 5,000 fire lookout towers. Areas where birdlife congregates are often associated with bird observation towers to assist with viewing. Hyperboloid structures have a hyperboloid shape that is usually lattice framework and an observation deck on top. There are also some very different observation towers, which don't fit into other categories. Examples for this are

7424-450: The apparent intention to cast the Orbit as London's answer to the Eiffel Tower , which is 324 metres (1,063 ft) tall. The Guardian related how it was "considerably shorter", also noting that it is even "20 metres (66 ft) shorter than the diminutive Blackpool Tower ". Its height was also compared in the media with other London landmarks. It was described as being "slightly taller" or "nearly 20 metres (66 ft) taller" than

7540-461: The architectural firm Caruso St John . According to The Times , Gormley's design was a 390-foot (120 m) steel colossus titled Olympian Man , a trademark piece of a statue of himself, rejected mainly on the grounds of its projected cost, estimated at £40   million. Johnson and Jowell agreed to issue a commission for Orbit in partnership with Mittal after it was chosen by a nine-person advisory panel brought together by them to advise on

7656-440: 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 to Ozymandias, but also to the 20th century dictators Adolf Hitler , Joseph Stalin and Nicolae Ceaușescu , in their acts of "phallic politics" in building grandiose monuments. Criticising

7772-535: The burning of Gormley's 25-m high The Waste Man formed the zenith of the Margate Exodus . Other collaborative projects include Clay and the Collective Body , Inside Australia , Domain Field and Gormley's ongoing Field works, including Asian Field , Amazonian Field , American Field , Field for the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Field for the British Isles . In 2007, Gormley's Event Horizon , consisting of 31 life-sized and anatomically correct casts of his body, four in cast iron and 27 in fiberglass ,

7888-674: The case of TV towers the visitor will usually reach the observation deck by elevator, which is usually at a lower height above ground The typical height of the observation deck of water towers is 20 metres up to 50 metres, while the typical height of the platform of TV towers is from 80 metres up to 200 metres. Finally, some church towers may have observation decks, albeit often without an elevator. Many other buildings may have towers which allow for observation. In particular prior to World War I rambler associations, and some municipalities, built observation towers on numerous summits. Usually these towers were built of stone, however sometimes wood or iron

8004-465: The countryside, as they must rise over trees and other obstacles to ensure clear vision. Older control rooms have often been likened to medieval chambers. The heavy use of stone, iron, and wood in their construction helps to create this illusion. Modern towers frequently have observation decks or terraces with restaurants or on the roof of mountain stations of an aerial ropeway. Frequently observation towers are used also as location of radio services within

8120-427: The curiosity and wonder of Londoners and visitors". A design competition held in 2009 called for designs for an "Olympic tower". It received about 50 submissions. Johnson has said that his early concept for the project was something more modest than Orbit , along the lines of "a kind of 21st-century Trajan's Column ", but this was dropped when more daring ideas were received. The media reported unconfirmed details of

8236-400: The desire existed to provide these towers with a tower restaurant and an observation deck, in order to make the building of towers more economical via admission fees and increased notability. Several water towers were also built with this in mind, but many have not survived to the modern day. Antony Gormley Sir Antony Mark David Gormley OBE RA (born 30 August 1950)

8352-533: The elevator in the late 19th century made taller observation decks possible. Most notably, the Eiffel Tower and the Blackpool Tower were built in this era. Radio towers developed as combined sending and observation tower between 1924 and 1926 in the city of Berlin . After World War II , a great need for tall observation towers arose, due to their dual usage as television and radio transmitters. In large cities,

8468-538: The exact sourcing being determined by the grades of steel required and the technical requirements of the project. Of this, 60% was recycled steel produced by the Esch Belval steel plant in Luxembourg . On 14 March 2011, with construction already underway on the main pylon, The One Show broadcast footage of the on-site status of project, and profiled the four-man team putting it together, comprising two steel erectors ,

8584-545: The exhibition Sight . Organised and commissioned by the NEON Organization and presented in collaboration with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades , this project marked the first time that an artist took over the archaeological site of Delos since the island was inhabited over 5,000 years ago, and is the first time a contemporary art installation has been unanimously approved by the Greek Archaeological Council of

8700-457: The exhibition, a new installation, Resting Place , filled a room with 244 bodies built from fired bricks, and a row of what the artist calls concrete "bunkers" ran down the gallery's central corridor. In 2024, Time Horizon , an installation of 100 cast iron sculptures, opened at Houghton Hall in Norfolk . The installation responded to the specific landscape of the parkland and the history of

8816-405: The final name and prepend ArcelorMittal (as the project supporter). On the public announcement of the design Johnson conceded that it might become known by something other than its official name, suggesting "Colossus of Stratford" or the "Hubble Bubble", in reference to his belief that it resembles a giant shisha pipe , or a variant on people's perceptions that it resembled a "giant treble clef ",

8932-438: The first works in which I used my own body. I was trying to map out the phenomenology of the body and to find a new way of evoking it as being less a thing, more a place; a site of transformation, and an axis of physical and spatial experience." Throughout the 1980s, Gormley's lead body-cases were extended, suspended, sealed, pierced and also doubled into two joined forms. Gormley describes his work as "an attempt to materialise

9048-770: 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'. In 2024, The New York Times ' architecture critic Michael Kimmelman called Orbit "possibly the worst public sculpture of the 21st century." Observation tower Observation towers that are used as guard posts or observation posts over an extended period to overlook an area are commonly called watchtowers instead. Similar instances of observation towers are recognised as crow's nests , observatories , viewing platforms , etc. Observation towers are an easily visible sight on

9164-506: The history of art at Trinity College, Cambridge , from 1968 to 1971. He travelled to India and the Dominion of Ceylon / Sri Lanka to learn more about Buddhism between 1971 and 1974. When Gormley returned to England, and inspired by his time in India, he made one of his first artworks, Sleeping Place , by laying a plaster-soaked sheet over a friend. Its hollow plaster shell hinted at the form of

9280-443: The human body, creating moulds of his own body in plaster that he would then encase in lead. These works, such as the three-part sculptures Three Ways: Mould Hole and Passage and Land Sea and Air II , as well as the single body-case works Plateau , Night and Peer , attempt to investigate the body as a space. In Gormley's words, "How to make bodies into vessels that both contain and occupy space? The early three-piece lead works are

9396-602: 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 the "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

9512-531: The inference Ad maiorem Dei gloriam – "to the greater glory of God". Gormley grew up in a Roman Catholic family living in Hampstead Garden Suburb . The family was wealthy, with a cook and a chauffeur, with a home overlooking the golf course; Gormley's father was an art lover. He attended Ampleforth College , a Benedictine boarding school in Yorkshire , before reading archaeology, anthropology, and

9628-689: 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. Fellow Times writer Tom Dyckhoff, while calling it "a gift to

9744-561: 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 ". Richard Morrison of The Times described Orbit as "like an enormous wire-mesh fence that has got hopelessly snagged round

9860-560: The lift to the top and descend the 455-step staircase; this should allow them to appreciate the views around which Anish Kapoor arranged the sculpture. It is designed to cope with 700 visitors per hour. During the Olympic Games the entrance fee was £15 for adults and £7 for children. The tower does not include a dining area, however there is a cafe, shop and other facilities at the South Park Hub building, which opened in April 2014. The ambition

9976-464: The long -, medium and shortwave range, first after World War II with introduction of radio services in UHF/VHF-range required towers only acting as antenna carriers, radio towers with observation decks built. For this the closed reinforced concrete construction way was nearly always used. Radio towers with observation decks often serve for TV transmission or for radio relay link services and are called therefore usually TV tower or telecommunication tower. As

10092-400: 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 that Orbit represents a new way of thinking, "a radical new piece of structure and architecture and art" that uses non-linearity – the use of "instabilities as stabilities." The spaces inside the structure, in between

10208-478: The museum and its grounds. Inside the Hôtel Biron, Gormley placed four sculptures in dialogue with Rodin's own work and also selected a number of his working models to be seen alongside Rodin's plaster maquettes. Later in the year, Gormley opened Body Politic at White Cube in London , a solo exhibition of new sculptures responding to themes of movement and containment, as well as the topic of migration. As part of

10324-593: The nearby Arts Centre in early 2016. In 2015, at the Forte di Belvedere in Florence , Gormley presented a group of cast iron works that acted as points of ″acupuncture″ throughout the historical fortress. Gormley returned to Florence in 2018 with the exhibition Essere at the Uffizi Gallery . The exhibition featured both historical and recent work, notably Room from 1980, Sense from 1991 and Passage from 2016. In 2017, Gormley curated Inside , an exhibition at

10440-420: 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 and Balmond's Orbit was announced as the winner on 31 March 2010. According to The Guardian , Orbit was chosen from a short list of three, beating a design by Antony Gormley and one by

10556-410: The place at the other side of appearance where we all live." His work attempts to treat the body not as an object, but as a place and in making works that enclose the space of a particular body to identify a condition common to all human beings. The work is not symbolic but indexical – a trace of a real event of a real body in time. In the 1990s, the hollow body-cases became solid, with Gormley casting

10672-619: The post-Olympics regeneration of the Stratford area. Sited between London Stadium (formerly called the Olympic Stadium) and the Aquatics Centre , it allows visitors to view the whole Olympic Park from two observation platforms. Orbit was designed by Turner Prize –winning artist Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond of Arup Group , an engineering firm. Announced on 31 March 2010, it was expected to be completed by December 2011. The project came about after Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell decided in 2008 that

10788-506: The private hire of a dining area at the top, predicting it would become a "corporate money-making venture". Mittal said he was immediately interested in Orbit 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

10904-544: The project in October 2009, describing the interest of the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal , one of Britain's richest men, in funding a project that would cost around £15   million. Boris Johnson was believed to want something like the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty . At that time there were understood to be five artists being considered, including Antony Gormley . Early designs reportedly included 'Transmission' by Paul Fryer,

11020-448: 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

11136-417: The prospect platform can be open or in a closed room. An open platform is more favourable for photographing, since no reflexes at the disk arise, while closed platforms are for many visitors more pleasant. Prospect outlooks on TV towers are opened only at certain times and their entrance is possible only under payment of an admission fee. Also numerous highrise buildings have observation decks , sometimes even

11252-505: The pylons of suspension bridges were already observation decks installed, as the example of Nový Most in Bratislava shows. A very unusual observation tower is Pont basculant de la Seyne-sur-Mer . It was once a bascule bridge, now permanently put upright and used as observation tower. In Germany, observation towers first appeared on the countryside at the end of the 18th century. These early towers were often built by wealthy aristocrats . It

11368-504: The question of how sport and art come together", and praised Mittal's "really impressive piece of patronage" for supporting a "great commission". In October 2015 Len Duvall , a Labour member of the London Assembly , stated that the tower was losing £520,000 a year; LLDC said they had revised their visitor target from 350,000 to 150,000 per year. Overall reception to Orbit was mixed, but mostly negative. With regard to its potential as

11484-451: The relationship between the human body and architecture, notably in his series of steel and iron "Blockworks". In these works, Gormley replaces anatomy with architectural blocks that recall the built environment. In March 2014, Gormley appeared in the BBC Four series What Do Artists Do All Day? in an episode that followed his team and him in their Kings Cross studio, preparing a new work –

11600-513: The space), some remade for the gallery, and some of his early sculptures, with two rooms of his drawings and sketchbooks. In 2020, Gormley was confirmed to be "lending" a sculpture to Kirklees College to sit atop its new building at Pioneer House in Dewsbury , as part of a major redevelopment in the town. In 2022, a Gormley sculpture called Alert was installed on the main campus of Imperial College London . The installation raised objections from

11716-632: The student body due to its perceived "phallic" interpretation. That year, Gormley also held exhibitions at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Germany and Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar , the Netherlands. In Duisburg, his work was placed in dialogue with Wilhelm Lehmbruck 's expressionistic, elongated sculptures. Gormley's Reflection II has remained on display at the museum. In 2023, Gormley opened

11832-548: The tabloids" and a "giant Mr. Messy ", questioned whether the Olympic site needed another pointless icon, postulating whether it 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

11948-418: 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 described 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

12064-545: The work in iron to create masses that displace space. One of these works, Critical Mass II , was installed in an old tram storage station in Vienna . Comprising 60 life-size sculptures, all presented in a variety of positions and poses, the work has been described by Gormley as "an anti-monument to the victims of the 20th century". This work has since been exhibited in a variety of countries and contexts, each time reconfigured in response to its environment. Notable presentations include

12180-508: The worst British building completed in the past year, which was ultimately awarded to the Cutty Sark renovation. Jay Merrick of The Independent said that "[Orbit's] 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

12296-425: 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". According to Mittal, Orbit was already the working title, as it describes continuous action, 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

12412-447: Was added to the sculpture. The slide is reported to be the world's tallest and longest tunnel slide at 178 metres. Though it was originally reported that admission to the slide would cost around £5, the general adult price for entry to the slide and viewing platforms is £30.00 (£25.00 if bought in advance), as of March 2023. At the time of its public launch, the total cost of Orbit was announced as £19.1   million. ArcelorMittal

12528-657: Was also used. At nearly all these towers access to the observation deck , usually at a height of between 5 and 40 metres, is only possible by way of stairs. Most of these towers are used only for tourism, however some of these towers might also be used, at times of high forest fire risk, as fire observation posts or in times of war as military observation posts with anti-aircraft positions placed beside it. Further uses were not intended at most of these buildings, although some of these towers today now carry antennas for police/fire engine radios, portable radio or low power FM- and TV-transmitters. Older observation towers frequently have

12644-405: Was approached as a special consultant for the design of the steel cone and came up with a design for a cone built out of 117 individually shaped steel panels with a total surface area of 586 square metres. The entire cone weighs 84 tonnes . Early contradictory reports suggested the tower would be 120 metres (390 ft) tall. However, it finally measured in at 114.5 metres (376 ft), making it

12760-794: Was born in Hampstead , London, the youngest of seven children, to a German mother (maiden name Brauninger) and a father of Irish descent. His paternal grandfather was an Irish Catholic from Derry who settled in Walsall in Staffordshire. The ancestral homeland of the Gormley Clan (Irish: Ó Goirmleadhaigh ) in Ulster was east County Donegal and west County Tyrone , with most people in both Derry and Strabane being of County Donegal origin. Gormley has stated that his parents chose his initials, "AMDG", to have

12876-463: Was installed on top of prominent buildings along London's South Bank , and installed in locations around New York City's Madison Square in 2010. Critic Howard Halle said that "Using distance and attendant shifts of scale within the very fabric of the city, [ Event Horizon ] creates a metaphor for urban life and all the contradictory associations – alienation, ambition, anonymity, fame – it entails." In July 2009, Gormley presented One & Other ,

12992-496: 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 it 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

13108-640: Was made from horizontal and vertical aluminium bars that filled the room like "whiskers" and visitors were invited to enter and find their way through this space. Gormley won the Turner Prize in 1994 with Field for the British Isles . Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003, and was a trustee of the British Museum from 2007 to 2015. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and

13224-510: Was not until the mid-19th century that citizens took control of the construction of such towers. In Austria and Switzerland many observation towers were established by alpine and tourist associations, and continue to be cared for by them. In the Waldigen Mountains , many citizen committees were active. Because of the long reign of emperor Franz Joseph , many observation decks carry the name "anniversary observation platform". The invention of

13340-402: 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

13456-401: Was to fund up to £16   million, with the remaining £3.1   million being provided by the London Development Agency . This consists of a £10   million 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

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