Orbit was commissioned by the Greater London Authority from a shortlist of artist’s proposals for a permanent artwork for the Olympic Park. Construction started in November 2010 and it is due for completion in March 2012.
Sketchbook drawings
Orbit models
“I wanted the sensation of instability, something that was continually in movement. Traditionally a tower is pyramidal in structure, but we have done quite the opposite, we have a flowing, coiling form that changes as you walk around it. … It is an object that cannot be perceived as having a singular image, from any one perspective. You need to journey round the object, and through it. Like a Tower of Babel, it requires real participation from the public” — Anish Kapoor
The Tower of Babel Pieter Bruegel the Elder, oil on panel, c. 1563
“There is a kind of medieval sense to it of reaching up to the sky, building the impossible. A procession, if you like. It's a long winding spiral: a folly that aspires to go even above the clouds and has something mythic about it.” — Anish Kapoor
Studio
Digital drawings
Orbit drawings
Press / / / The Guardian 26.01.2010 / / / It looks as if Anish Kapoor will be let loose on the site of the London 2012 Olympics at Stratford, east London, to design a gargantuan tower sponsored by steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal. Like the altogether more modest Skylon – an ethereal, skypiercing mast on the South Bank designed by the architects Powell and Moya as a signpost for the 1951 Festival of Britain – Kapoor's tower, designed in collaboration with the imaginative structural engineer Cecil Balmond, will draw attention to the Olympics Park more persuasively than any of the architecture commissioned for the event. Only Zaha Hadid's Aquatics Centre will be able to hold anything like a flaming torch to this structure. (more)
Orbit models
Orbit drawings
Orbit digital renders
Press / / / de zeen 31.03.2010 / / / Award winning London-based artist Anish Kapoor has been given the commission of a lifetime to design the spectacular new public attraction in the Olympic Park. The stunning artwork, to be entitled ‘The ArcelorMittal Orbit’, will ensure the Park remains an unrivalled visitor destination following the 2012 Games, providing the key Olympic legacy Mayor of London Boris Johnson envisaged for the East End. The breathtaking sculpture – thought to be the tallest in the UK – will consist of a continuous looping lattice of tubular steel. Standing at a gigantic 115m, it will be 22m taller than the Statue of Liberty in New York and offer unparalleled views of the entire 250 acres of the Olympic Park and London’s skyline from a special viewing platform. Visitors will be able to take a trip up the statuesque structure in a huge lift and will have the option of walking down the spiralling staircase. (more)
Inkjet print and pen on paper
Studio
Press / / / Financial Times 09.04.2010 / / / At long last: the cultural wing of the London Olympic Games has its first tangible talking point. Anish Kapoor’s monument for the Olympic Park, the ArcelorMittal Orbit , was unveiled with no little sense of relief by Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, at an exuberant City Hall press conference. Finally we had something to look at, other than the dizzying procession of zeroes that attaches itself to the Games’ debit column whenever our attention wanders. The mayor was in prime form. The conference was, even by the standards of this most jocular of authority figures, a light-hearted affair. Boris joshed with Anish, Anish shared a laugh with steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, whose £16m has made the project possible, and the famously austere Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota, part of the committee that made the choice, was pictured in the accompanying literature in – gasp – an open-necked shirt and no tie. (more)
Orbit Viewing Platform model
Orbit digital renders
Orbit 3D views
Daylight study
Orbit digital render 2011
Orbit fabrication
Aerial view of the Olympic Park
Press / / / The Telegraph 14.09.2011 / / / The moment Anish Kapoor arrived at the Olympic Park site in East London on a recent visit, he knew that something was wrong. A pile of large steel tubes was lying on the ground. When joined together, they would form the beginnings of the winding steel intestine for his towering new structure, the ArcelorMittal Orbit. But to the acclaimed sculptor’s exacting eye, the painted steel was not the right red. So out went colour number RAL 3002, in came RAL 3003. “I wanted to get it the right shade,’’ says Kapoor, simply. The changes didn’t stop there. The bolts intended to connect the pipes weren’t quite right either. The workers had anticipated a sheath of uniform colour and had had the bolts coloured red. But Kapoor wanted the sculpture to reveal its construction method, so the bolts were returned to galvanised steel, matching the silver grey tone of the 1,150ft spiral staircase that will snake its way down from the top of the Orbit. (more)