Kapoor Olympic Tower

8/9/2019 Kapoor Olympic Tower

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ArcelorMittalORBIT


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Like many parents we try pathetically toimprove our kids by taking them to seethe big exhibitions. We have troopedthrough the Aztecs and Hockney andRembrandt and yet of all the shows wehave seen there is only one that reallyseemed to re them up.

I remember listening in astonishment asthey sat there at lunch, like a bunch of artcritics, debating the intentions of the

artist and the meaning of the works, butagreeing on one point: that these wereobjects of sensational beauty.

That is the impact of Anish Kapoor onyoung minds, and not just on youngminds. His show at the Royal Academybroke all records, with hundreds ofthousands of people paying 12 to seehis stuff an extraordinary achievementfor a contemporary artist.

So I am thrilled that we are todayannouncing that Anish has won a

competition to design an Olympic visitorattraction to be built in the park for2012.

Of course some people will say we arenuts in the depths of a recession tobe building Britains biggest ever piece ofpublic art. But both Tessa Jowell and I arecertain that this is the right thing for theStratford site, in Games time and beyond.

Our Olympic Park already has so muchto offer, from the stadium and velodrometo shopping at Westeld to Zaha Hadids

aquatics centre. But about 18 monthsago we decided we needed somethingextra, something to distinguish the eastLondon skyline, something to arouse thecuriosity and wonder of Londoners andvisitors.

With 9.3 billion going into the Games,we need to do everything we can toregenerate the area and to ensure thecrowds are still coming here in 2013 andbeyond.

Our ambition is to turn the Stratford site

into a place of destination, a must-seeitem on the tourist itinerary and webelieve the ArcelorMittal Orbit will helpus achieve that aim.

I must confess that my original idea wasmuch more modest. I thought we mighthave a kind of 21st century Trajanscolumn, with a winding frieze of modernLondoners, perhaps done by primaryschool children. That was soon left on thedrawing board, eclipsed by the daringsuggestions of some of the greatestartists in the world.

With the help of a panel of experts,including Nick Serota and Julia Peyton-Jones, we eventually settled on Anish.He has taken the idea of a tower, andtransformed it into a piece of modernBritish art.

It would have boggled the minds of theRomans. It would have boggled GustaveEiffel. I believe it will be worthy ofLondons Olympic and Paralympic Games,

and worthy of the greatest city on earth.

In helping us to get to this stage,I especially want to thank David McAlpineand Philip Dilley of Arup, and everyoneat the GLA, ODA and LOCOG. I amgrateful to Tessa and also to Sir RobinWales and Jules Pipe for theirencouragement and support.

Above all I want to thank Lakshmi Mittalfor his superb generosity and hiscommitment to London. Had I notbumped into him, for the rst time, in a

Davos cloakroom, we would not be wherewe are today.

Our conversation took about 45 seconds.I explained the idea, which took 40seconds. Great. Ill give you the steel,he said, and that was it. In reality,ArcelorMittal has given much more thanthe steel.

We are not there yet, but I have greatcondence in the team we haveassembled, in the ODA led by DavidHiggins and the organisational skills of

Peter Rogers.So watch this space, folks. Correction:dont just watch this space. I hope you willsoon be able to see this space being built,to climb up it with your family, and to beamazed at the view.

Our ambition is to turn theStratford site into a place ofdestination, a must-see item onthe tourist itinerary and webelieve the ArcelorMittal Orbitwill help us achieve that aim.

Boris Johnson

Mayor of London


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I live in London Ive lived here since 1997 and I think its a wonderful city. This project is anincredible opportunity to build something reallyspectacular for London, for the Olympic Gamesand something that will play a lasting role in thelegacy of the Games.

Lakshmi N. MittalChairman and Chief Executive OfcerArcelorMittal


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What was your initial reaction whenBoris rst suggested the idea of anOlympic Park sculpture?

Boris rst mentioned it to me in acloakroom in Davos last year. We wereboth on our way to separate dinnerengagements so we had only a fewmoments to discuss it. But I wasimmediately interested because I

remember the great excitement feltthroughout the city when it wasannounced that London had beenselected to host the 2012 Olympic andParalympic Games. I think the Games areone of the few truly iconic global events;they really bring people together, ascountries unite around the desire to win.

The 2012 Games are now only two yearsaway and I think everyone in Londonwants to put on an amazing show for theworld. So when Boris mentioned the ideaof constructing a special piece of art to

commemorate the Olympics, I wasfascinated to know more, particularlywhen he said he wanted it to be builtfrom steel.

I live in London Ive lived here since1997 and I think its a wonderful city.This project is an incredible opportunityto build something really spectacular forLondon, for the Olympic and ParalympicGames and something that will play alasting role in the legacy of the Games.

Why is ArcelorMittal fundingthis project?

ArcelorMittal is a global company withoperations in more than 60 countries.Our purpose is to produce steel. Steel isused in so many aspects of life: the carswe drive, the houses we live in and thestadiums being constructed for theLondon 2012 Games. Building a hugesteel structure to celebrate the LondonOlympic and Paralympic Games is agreat opportunity for ArcelorMittal toshowcase the unique qualities of steel

and its critical role in the worldsinfrastructure. It is also a fantastic wayto give a lasting gift to London, to play apart in the regeneration of a specic areaof London and to signal our support foran iconic global sporting event.

How much steel will be used in theproject and where will it comefrom?

The ArcelorMittal Orbit will useapproximately 1400 tonnes of steel.The steel will be sourced fromArcelorMittal plants around the world,with exact locations depending on thegrades of steel required and the technical

requirements of the project. As much ofit as possible will be provided byArcelorMittal.

Who came up with the nameArcelorMittal Orbit?

The Orbit was the name given to theinitial working design by Anish and Cecil.Their creation is an orbit, a continuousloop or continuous journey from the startto the nish. There are no crossroads orlinks, it starts at one end and nishes atthe other.

This was very much part of Anish andCecils creative representation of theOlympics and the extraordinary physicaland emotional effort that peopleundertake when they compete. Like theOrbit, the Olympics has a beginning andend but throughout it is a continuousdrive to do better, to challenge oneself todo as well as possible.

So while it started off as the name ofthe working design, we all liked it and feltthat it represented both the Games and

what the sculpture is in a creative sense.We called it the ArcelorMittal Orbitbecause ArcelorMittal is supporting theproject and is proud to be the companythat is enabling such a unique piece ofart to be constructed.

What was it about the design thatmade it stand out from the othersubmissions?

Last year we held a competition andasked people to submit a design for anOlympic tower. We had around 50submissions, which was fantastic in itself,but what was really extraordinary was theway in which the word tower was

interpreted by the different artists.The judging panel made a unanimousdecision to go for Anish and Cecilsdesign. Anish and Cecil have a unique,well-documented and very successfulworking relationship. They have createdsome remarkable art in recent years,and the judging panel really felt that theirentry not only represented the essenceof the Games, but it was also buildablewithin an ambitious time frame.

We are delighted with the outcome.We have a bold, beautiful and magnicentsculpture which, when built, will be one ofthe worlds largest sculptures. We think itwill be a phenomenal addition to Londonsskyline and the cultural landscape.

When will the sculpture becomplete?

We will be starting work as soon aspossible and we anticipate it will becomplete by the end of December 2011at the latest. Visitors will have access tothe ArcelorMittal Orbit during and after

the Games. It will also be available forhospitality and will offer a wonderfulview of the stadium.

How do you think Londoners willreact to the sculpture?

I hope they react very positively. I hopethis great piece of art will becomeanother reason for people to visit Londonand, in particular, draw them to that areaof the city. Anish Kapoor is undoubtedlyone of the worlds greatest living artists

and I hope the people of London will feelproud that such a unique sculpture isbeing built in their city to celebrate theGames. We at ArcelorMittal are certainlyproud to be part of it.


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We are both interested in a place where architecturemeets sculpture, says Kapoor. We are also reallyinto geometry and the way that form and geometrygive rise to structure thats been an ongoing debatebetween Cecil and me for the last 10 years or so,coming from our two very different perspectives.

Anish Kapoor

Cecil Balmond


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Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond onthe inspiration and creative processbehind the ArcelorMittal Orbit.

The key to the unique collaborations byCecil Balmond and Anish Kapoor lies inthe pairs refusal to be labelled.

Its tempting to pigeonhole Cecil Balmondas the down-to-earth pragmatist whocounterbalances the visionary fantasies

of Anish Kapoor to categorise him asthe structural technician bringing theartists creative genius to reality.Tempting, but misleading.

Such a straightforward analysis of theirroles in creating some of the worldsgreat monumental artworks is far toosimplistic, and does not do justice to theindividuals talent and broad vision.

Of course, the 56-year-old Kapoor is anartist, while Balmond, a decade older, is astructural engineer by trade. But they are

both unconstrained by these convenientlabels. Over his 30-year career, Kapoorhas developed a reputation for grand-scale installations and public sculptures,effectively blurring the lines between theelds of art and architecture, betweenconcept and construction, form andfunction.

Similarly Balmond, Deputy Chairman ofglobal engineering company Arup, haslong forged highly productiverelationships with many of the worldsleading architects including Rem

Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind and Toyo Ito.He has also designed buildings andstructures himself, is an acclaimed authorin the eld of design and heads up ArupsAdvanced Geometry Unit (AGU), aquasi-academic research group whichblends science, maths and architecturaldesign to explore the impossible in termsof structural engineering.

So the coming together of two suchmultidisciplined creative talents alwayshad the potential to produce work ofsignicant impact, not least because both

parties have a reputation for thinking farbeyond the conventional.

Its important for every structureto have a sense of the poetic, saysBalmond. We want people to forgetthe engineering, the construction, thematerials and simply experience it.To illustrate this point, he uses theanalogy of a world-record breakingathlete: we dont want to know aboutthe years of hard training, we simplywant to witness the magic of someone

running faster than ever before.

Anish Kapoor, who was born in Mumbaibut has lived and worked in London sincearriving as a teenager to study art, rstcame to national prominence on winningthe Turner Prize in 1991. Over thefollowing decade his work becameincreasingly grand in scale, frequentlyemploying apparently simple curvedforms that housed a series of aperturesand cavities. In 1999 his 35-metre tall

Taratantara was installed at GatesheadsBaltic Flour Mills, followed by his SkyMirror, erected outside the NottinghamPlayhouse to reect the sky andsurroundings in 2001 (and laterreplicated in even larger form outsideNew Yorks Rockefeller Center).

But it wasnt until Kapoor was invitedto provide the installation for the TateModerns Turbine Hall in 2002 that herst worked with Cecil Balmond. By thisstage, the quietly spoken Balmond hadalready shifted the perceived role of the

engineer in architecture from enablerto co-creator via his ground-breakingwork with Koolhaass OMA group andhis realisation of the captivating 2002Serpentine Pavilion in conjunction withJapanese architect Ito.

So trespassing into the art world felt likean entirely natural step for a man whodescribes himself as an intuitive ratherthan mathematical thinker. However,Balmond has recalled how Kapoor wasan artist who is not used to sharing who had to be persuaded to work ingenuine collaboration to create abuildable structure for the Tate project.

That structure evolved into Marsyas, theextraordinary 450-feet blood-red PVCtubular sculpture that, like many ofBalmonds pieces, seemed to defy gravity.Interestingly, Balmond recalls that theart world heaped praise on Kapoorfor creating a wonderful piece of art ,while the architecture critics ravedover Balmonds feat of engineering.

Sculpture is about seeing something

in 3D from the outset, whereas mostarchitects tend to see things in plan form.Anish tells me I think more like a sculptor,and he nds fertile ground in workingwith us (at AGU) in that respect,says Balmond.

As well as taking on numerous projectsindependently Kapoors acclaimedCloud Gate in Chicago and Balmondswork on Beijings Birds Nest stadiumspring to mind the pair has maintaineda fruitful partnership. They are currentlyworking together on the Tees ValleyGiants project ve enormous piecesof public art commissioned by TeesValley Regeneration as well as the

ArcelorMittal Orbit.We are both interested in a place wherearchitecture meets sculpture, saysKapoor. We are also really into geometryand the way that form and geometry giverise to structure thats been an ongoingdebate between Cecil and me for the lastten years or so, coming from our twovery different perspectives.

They meet regularly to sketch and drawas well as assess models and computeranimations, frequently checking back that

the work adheres to the fundamentaltruth of the project.

The latest challenge for this uniqueartistic partnership is bigger than ever:creating a highly signicant monumentalartwork that is effectively a functioningbuilding at the same time, neither puresculpture nor pure architecture.

But the relationship between thesetwo men spurring each other forward,nding solutions to material andstructural obstacles and challengingour very notion of stability, space andform both reects and enhances thepossibilities inherent when creativedisciplines coalesce. All we can do isexpect the unexpected.


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In conversation with Anish Kapoorand Cecil Balmond.

How did the ArcelorMittal Orbitcome about?

AK: Cecil and I have worked togetherover a long period of time. We wereinvited by the Mayors ofce to submita proposal for a tower of at least 100metres, on the Olympic site. Towerstructures are something weve toyedaround with before, so it seemed naturalto us to take this on and try and understandwhat a 21st century tower could be like.

CB: The opening comment to me wasBoris Johnson is looking for an icon tomatch the Eiffel Tower. So of coursethat was irresistible to me.

What inspired you in this work?

AK: One of the references was the Towerof Babel. There is a kind of medievalsense to it of reaching up to the sky,building the impossible. A procession, ifyou like. Its a long winding spiral: a follythat aspires to go even above the cloudsand has something mythic about it.

What Im interested in is the way 21stcentury thinking about older technologiesallows one to go both forwards andbackwards.

The form straddles Eiffel and Tatlin.

CB: The word Orbit came to mind;just the word as a metaphor. We startedsketching, the hand went round thisway rst, then it gradually became morecomplex and I was thinking of an electroncloud moving. As you look up you will feelas if its compiling itself in space.

AK: Its this notion of a journey that takesyou upwards.

Anish and I have debated over the yearsabout nonlinearity, which is usinginstabilities as stabilities. Its a newway of thinking, a radical new pieceof structure and architecture and art,and London is the place to do it.

Can you explain the form, and howit works?

CB: What is new in this piece is itsgeometry and how its been put together.

All tower structures are pyramidal, butwe wanted to see if we could create astructure that seemed unstable, seemedto be propping itself up. So, weve slowlyevolved a form that seems to beteetering, weaving itself, a loop.

The whole thing is in a twist, it s nevercentred, never quite vertical. That takes

a certain amount of engineering prowessto put together but it also gives acertain form.

What is the signicance of thematerial used in constructing theArcelorMittal Orbit?

CB: The ArcelorMittal Orbit could reallyonly be built in steel, to give the minimumthicknesses and the maximum strength.I didnt really think of any other material.Actually, you couldnt really do this coilingstructure in anything else.

Tell me a bit about the way the twoof you collaborated on this project.

AK: We are really interested in geometryand the way that form and geometry giverise to structure, and thats somethingthats an ongoing debate between usfrom our two very different perspectives.

CB: Over the years, Anish and I havebeen debating and trying to nd theessence of a form that has its own

architecture, sculpture and structure.By merging these into one piece of work,we think it has deep resonance more thanany single piece of art or architecture.

Scale is a vital part of this process. Weretalking of something that is 120 metrestall. The spaces in between the structureare cathedral like; theyre very tall, verybig. In between the mass and the jumbleof it, theres the geometry.

All the people who work with meare great 3D thinkers. In the worldof architecture a lot of people designin section, but a sculpture is seeingsomething in 3D from the outset.

I have a team of architects and engineersin my Advanced Geometry Unit (AGU) atArup. It is a very special group, includingDaniel Bosia and Florian Gauss. They havebeen instrumental in realising this project.

What will the ArcelorMittal Orbitmean for the Olympics, and forLondon?

With the Olympic Village and the wholearea being developed, this sculpturecompletes the composition and adds afabulous exclamation mark. It celebratesthe site.

This is not just for the Olympics, this isfor London, and the ArcelorMittal Orbitshould stand the test of time.

This site, while it looks over London,is a bit of virgin land where one canset the parameters again. Viewing isa very important part of what it is.

It is a radical piece of work, and thatalways attracts its own interest in time.Something that has its own intrigue inarchitectural terms will always drawpeople. Its for the Olympics, Londonand the world.

How will people who visit theArcelorMittal Orbit engage with it,do you think?

CB: I believe we all love to see somethingbeing built. As kids we all play with

building blocks. The real threedimensionality of this piece is going toanimate and excite people to be part of it.

There comes a moment when you areaware that a piece has been engineeredand I am ghting against that. Ultimatelyit has to be designed, calculated, built andconstructed, but you should not noticethe effort.

AK: The experience will be about windingup and up and in on oneself. It is a longway to walk. And its pretty steep. Thenof course at the top we have a trulyspectacular view of London.

You want to forget the construction andengage with what youre experiencing.People will make it their own.


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Anish Kapoor is one of the most inuentialsculptors of his generation.

Born in Bombay in 1954, he has lived andworked in London since the early 70s. Hestudied at Hornsey College of Art,London (1973 1977) and at ChelseaSchool of Art, London (1977 1978).

His rst solo exhibition was held at PatriceAlexandre, Paris in 1980. His international

reputation was quickly established withan array of solo exhibitions held in variouscountries around the world. He hasrepresented Britain in the Paris Biennale in1982, and again in 1990 at the VeniceBiennale, for which he was awardedPremio Duemila.

The following year he won the prestigiousTurner Prize Award. He recently acted asGuest Artistic Director of the BrightonFestival 2009. He was elected RoyalAcademician in 1999 and has beenawarded Honorary Fellowships by the

London Institute and Leeds University(1997), University of Wolverhampton(1999) and the Royal Institute of BritishArchitects (2001).

His recent major solo exhibition atthe Royal Academy of Arts in London(26 September 11 December 2010),showcasing a number of new andpreviously unseen works, was the mostsuccessful ever presented by acontemporary artist in London.

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1 Marsyas, 2002

PVC and steel

Inst: Tate Modern, 2002-2003

Photo: John Riddy

Courtesy: Tate

2 Dismemberment, Site I, 2003-2009

PVC and steel

25 metres x 84 metres

(west end: 25 x 8 m, east end: 8 x 25m)

Photo: Jos Wheeler

Courtesy: the artist

3 Cloud Gate, 2004

Anish Kapoor

Stainless steel

33 ft x 66 ft x 42 ft

Millennium Park, Chicago

Photo: Peter.J.Schluz , Patrick Pyszka

Courtesy: the City of Chicago

and Gladstone Gallery

4 Svayambh, 2007

Wax and oil-based paint

Dimensions variable

Inst: Royal Academy of Arts, 2009Photo: Dave Morgan

Courtesy: the artist and Royal Academy of Arts

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Anish Kapoor


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Cecil Balmonds work is an open-endedvisual application of theory. It has led towhat could be described as a newforensic in aesthetics: a distillation ofunrealised design potential that taps intosources that are not readily associatedwith architecture. It is also a compellingdesign force for architecture whereBalmonds principle that structure isarchitecture puts a whole new rigour into

his forms overlapping art with science.He says: I see structure as a punctuationof space, episodic and rhythmic. Theseare wholly architectural concerns.

Cecil Balmond founded The AdvancedGeometry Unit at Arup in 2000 to pursuesuch ideas in the built form. It has beenhighly inuential in a raft of renownedprojects including Casa de Musica, inPortugal, with Rem Koolhaas; Marsyasat the Tate Modern, with artist AnishKapoor; and Serpentine Pavilions, with

Daniel Libeskind and Toyo Ito, plus AlvaroSiza and Eduardo Souto de Moura.His designs for the bridge in Coimbra,Portugal, the Weave bridge in Philadelphia,and the museum buildings in the Emiratescreate new typologies.

Balmond is the author of No. 9 (1998),and Informal (2002), which wonthe Banister Fletcher prize for the bestbook of the year on architecture.The publication of his latest bookElement (2007) coincided with theopening of the series, Frontiers ofArchitecture at Louisiana Museum ofModern Art, Denmark with a widelyacclaimed exhibition on Cecil Balmonds

and the Advanced Geometry Units work.Balmonds installation, H-edge, was rstunveiled at Artists Space in New York(2006). He rebuilt it for The GrahamFoundation for Advanced Studies in theFine Arts in Chicago together with anumber of new installation pieces(2008-2009). H-edge is currently atthe Carnegie Museum of Art; meanwhile,the Tokyo City Opera gallery is hostingan exhibition of Balmonds designs thatopened in January 2010. The Tokyoexhibition is a tour-de-force, introducing

visitors to an art form that blurs theboundaries between art, architecture,engineering and science.

Cecil Balmond was born in Sri Lanka,where he trained as a civil engineer.He joined Arup in London in 1968.

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1 Danzer Installation

Tokyo City Art gallery

2 Institute of the Pen

Emirates

3 Serpentine Gallery

2002

4 CCTV Headquarters Building

Beijing

5 Weave Bridge

Philadelphia

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Cecil BalmondDeputy Chairman ofOve Arup & Partners Limited


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How is Anish Kapoor pushing theboundaries of his own body of workwith this piece?

Anish Kapoor is an artist never content torest despite his success. He is alwaysquestioning himself and us and ourresponses to his work. Hes prepared totake on the idea of reinventing what atower might mean and give it new

energy. Most towers are just verticalerections, but this has a twist theenergy you might traditionally associatewith this type of structure but in asurprisingly female form. The twotogether are really interesting.

Is it art or architecture?

Anish Kapoor increasingly works on anenvironmental scale, but his Marsyasproject at Tate Modern in 2003 showedhes capable of working on anarchitectural scale. Cecil Balmond gives

that ambition a reality and conviction thata sculptor working on his own might notachieve, so its a building designed incollaboration with a great engineer and agreat artist. I think it will make awonderful addition to the London skyline.

Art and sport seem like strangebedfellows. Why should suchcollaborations be of interest to us?

Art and sport are not as far apart aspeople sometimes think. The Olympicswere initially conceived as a festival of thebody and the mind that is to say sportand culture and the arts and one of thegreat things about 2012 is that it will

help to bring these elements backtogether in a way that hasnt beenachieved in previous Games.

Anishs work has this sense of energy,twist and excitement that one associateswith the human body as it explodes offthe blocks down the 100m straight. In anabstract form, the sense of movementyou have in the body is very muchpresent in this sculpture. As such, its theperfect answer to the question of howsport and art come together and its agreat commission as well. For someone to

help bring this into being in the way thatMr Mittal has is a really impressive pieceof patronage.

What are the strengths of this kindof experiential installationcompared with more traditionalsculpture?

A sculpture of this kind that can beenjoyed by walking through, travelling upin the lift, and looking out from theplatform will make people aware of their

own bodies and their place in the world.Many artists have sought to controlspace in this way in recent years and thissculpture-cum-tower-cum-engineeringfeat is at the leading edge of where weare heading.

Sir Nicholas Serota, Director,Tate, on probing the parallelsbetween art and sport.

Sir Nicholas SerotaDirector, Tate


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Thanks to all those who haveparticipated in the development of theArcelorMittal Orbit so far including:

Tony Aikenhead

Andrew Altman

Gareth Baker

Emily Black

Giles Borton

Daniel Bosia

Jan Boud

Ben Cackett

Neale Coleman

Sujogya Dash

Nicola Davidson

Paul Deighton

Pierre Engel

Simon Evans

Jerome Frost

Florian Gauss

Guto Harri

Samantha Hart

Dan Hawthorn

Oli Heywood

David Higgins

Roisha Hughes

Patrick Le Pense

David Lewis

James Lingwood

Sir Stuart Lipton

Ian Louden

James Lough

Barbara Marino

Ben McKnight

Munira Mirza

Serge Mitrovic

Michael Morris

Johanna Pearson

JuliaPeyton-Jones

Giles Read

Mike Richards

Peter Rogers

Malcolm Ross

Marion Saul

Stefan Schwarz

Sir NicholasSerota

Justine Simons

Mark Sorrell

Chris Townsend

HansUlrich-Obrist

Sarah Wang

Sarah Weir

Patrick White

StevieWhite-McQuillan

Peter Wright

Anita Zabludowicz


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Kapoor Olympic Tower

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