A year ago I visited an exciting exhibition by Anish Kapoor in Milan. I thought especially the steel structures were very interesting, from an aesthetic point of view as well as interactive: I really enjoyed the sound effects they created when walking through them. The metal had a beautiful rough finish that worked very nicely with the coal that covered part of it, as well as within the space where the exhibition was being held, an old factory.
I was very surprised when I ran into the ArcelorMittal Orbit online. It is the largest piece of art in Britain and it was designed by Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond. The cost of 19.1 million was mostly covered by the richest man in the UK, Lakshmi Mittal, owner of the giant ArcelorMittal steel company, which is where the name of the tower comes from.
50 projects were presented, and this one was chosen to be London's Eiffel tower, a new landmark for the city, and something we will always associate with the Olympics the same way the Eiffel Tower is associated to Paris' 1889 World's fair . The idea was to celebrate the union of architecture and art. What I have an issue with is the “observation” bit. As it is, to me, it looks just like an observation tower with leftover pieces of roller-coaster attached to it. This has nothing to do with the clever installation I saw in Milan. What I find even more frustrating, is the original concept drawing, where the curves flows beautifully compared to the actual final piece.
The building was highly criticised for similar reason to the ones I stated above, but what made an even greater fuss, is the ethic history behind the steel company ArcelorMittal. In 2004, ArcelorMittal acquired a steel mine in Bosnia, near Prijedor, where 12 years earlier, in summer 1992, a concentration camp was set up to detain over 7000 Bosniaks, Bosnian muslims. Being still a deep, open wound for the relatives of the victims, the population of the area was reluctant at first: what convinced them was the promise that a monument will be erected in memory of those 8000 that lost their lives during the Srebrenica massacre. The project was left off when the ArcelorMittal one begun, which means that the ArcelorMittal tower is now a constant (massive and roller-coastery) reminder of what happened in those concentration camps.
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