Orbit v. Tower

The ArcelorMittal Orbit, which goes by the tag “public art”, at the site of the 2012 London Olympics in Stratford, London, is drawing much criticism.

I am not an architect and I have no idea how to interpret semi-literary statements of architects about their creations. For example, the architects Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond believe the structure “represents a radical advance in the architectural field of combining sculptural and structural engineering, and that it combines both stability and instability in a work that visitors can engage with and experience via an incorporated spiral walkway.”

Now, that is what I mean by semi-literary, and it is quasi-technical (though carrying no meaning) to boot. Combining “both stability and instability” is impossible in structural engineering, but the sentence does have a whiff of being of literature, though not quite of a high order (cannot expect that from architects, can we?). And, as a structural engineer let me tell you that any tower that is merely 115 m tall and looks as ugly as this one cannot be a challenge to structural engineering. Engineers have better aesthetic sense!

As per the architect Kapoor, “one of the influences on his design for the tower was the Tower of Babel, the sense of ‘building the impossible’”. A more sophisticated explanation for the name is it represents a moving “electron cloud.” Wow, this architect, I am sure, has read some popular physics books! But, the electron cloud moving? I have to learn my physics more thoroughly. Let me also give a more pie-in-the-sky explanation for the name offered by the architect – “symbolised a continuous journey, a creative representation of the ‘extraordinary physical and emotional effort’ that Olympians undertake in their continuous drive to do better.”

Anyway, the name Orbit just does not excite me. Is the name only because there are a couple of lattices that give a vague hint of a circle / ellipse? Check out the picture below and decide for yourself. I can only guess, but for this piece let me go by its given name.

 As an aside, the main stadium for the Beijing Olympics acquired its nickname Bird’s Nest solely from its appearance. No such immediate justification for Orbit.

The Orbit represents the Olympic Games only by the fact that it stands in the Olympic Park and not for any other reason. Situate this anywhere else and it could as easily be said to represent that area. This can only mean that it represents nothing.

That gets me to a true structural engineering challenge and architectural contextualization. The Eiffel Tower. The architect-cum-designer was Gustav Eiffel.

Why did I choose the Eiffel Tower to pick on ArcelorMittal Orbit? Because the mayor of London, Boris Johnson seems to have had his eyes set on replicating something like the skyline defining tower in Paris, “built in 1889 as the entrance arch to the 1889 World’s Fair.”

Look at the pictures below. Do you see the arches? Wait for a few more paragraphs and see how the arches evolved, almost out of the blue.

 

Boris Johnson was reportedly looking for a “stunning, ambitious, world-class art in the Olympic Park.”

Then, came in Lakshmi Mittal, with his wads of British currency (about 20 million in all) and poor Boris could not say no. But, that was a digression.

The main story lies in how the Paris tower was received by the cognoscenti and how that compares to the Orbit’s reception.

Below are some select negative comments on the sculpture / structure (There are a few positive comments too and if you are interested you could go to the Wikipedia page; much of this post is from what is given at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArcelorMittal_Orbit):

“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."

"[L]ike an enormous wire-mesh fence that has got hopelessly snagged round the bell of a giant french horn"

"[U]ndesired intrusion by the few into the consciousness of the many"

"[T]housands of naff eyesores"

"[C]atastrophic collision between two cranes"

Now, to be fair, even the Eiffel Tower had its critics, and faced very severe criticisms at that. But before I give you a hint at the criticisms, let us hear what Eiffel himself thought of his tower and contextualized it:

“[N]ot only the art of the modern engineer, but also the century of Industry and Science in which we are living, and for which the way was prepared by the great scientific movement of the eighteenth century and by the Revolution of 1789, to which this monument will be built as an expression of France's gratitude.” No electron clouds here! Below is the first effort at design. You do not see any arch but it materializes like magic in the final form! 

Nonetheless, the criticism poured in (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower):

“We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection…of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower … To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for twenty years … we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal.”

But, Eiffel and his tower have had the last laugh.

Will opinion about ArcelorMittal Orbit also come around?

I hope not.

Raghuram Ekambaram