Modern Monuments

[Lokasenna]

Somebody in another thread mentioned a giant, tacky illuminated cross that had been erected in their city as a monument, and that got me thinking about works of public art.

I'll admit I'm something of a sceptic when it comes to modern art. At university, I'm a ten minute drive from the Angel of the North:

http://echostains.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/angel_of_the_north.jpg

Personally, I think it's hideous. It looms horribly over the otherwise very picturesque Durham dales. However, opinion is divided over its artistic merit.

Now, however, we come to Britain's latest planned piece of public art, the ArcelorMittal Orbit:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/03/31/article-1262533-08F09C44000005DC-828_634x476.jpg

This thing is ostensibly being constructed to commemorate the Olympics, but I'm not quite sure how that works. It's going to cost an estimated £19million (and will doubtless go over budget), and at 377ft it will tower over everything else in that area of London. Also, not only do I think it hideous, but I'm also deeply unhappy that the wretched thing is going to be named after ArcelorMittal, Britain's largest company, which is owned by the world's fifth richest man. I understand that Lakshmi Mittal will be donating some of the material, but to a man of his wealth it will be a drop in the ocean, and he'll have this whacking great piece of advertising in the middle of London. Art should not be corporate!

I didn't like the Millenium Dome either, and the London Eye is, at best, passable. I'm all for public works of art - I think its important to leave something for the future - but the current trend seems to be towards the most horrible eyesores imaginable, designed to appeal only to the most pretentious and detached art critics, and not to the public.

So, what are your thoughts on public artworks? Any examples you would like to share - either good or bad?

[Scheherazade]

Loka,

The ArcelorMittal Tower (?) has been an ongoing discussion topic among my friends as well since the announcement. Can't help wonderinng why the UK seems to end up spending millions (and millions) of pounds for such projects that lack charm and some of these things (like "Angel of the North") make me want to cry.

If so much public money is to be spend, it sould at least be spent on something functional, I believe.

[kiki1982]

I don't know, I think those two you mentioned are rather wonderful, actually :blush:. I have seen a lot of sad 'art' in Belgium and this is quite alright.

About the name you are right, though, Mithal should not have this name on it just because he has sponsored it. His name will already go into history as 'sponsor of', so there is no need to name it after him...

I found the design of that tower quite nice, actually. A little Eiffel-Tower-esk but not a copy of it. I guess it'll end up like the Atomium in Brussels: a remnant of the World Expo in 1958. Everything is gone (or you can't see the buildings anymore for what they were: pavillions), but the atomium is still there to remind us. The Olympic Tower will also be like that: 'Once,' people will say, 'the Olympics were here, and there was the Olympic Village, and there... And everyone thought horrible things about his tower, but it has become a landmark.'

That said: In Leuven, the Belgian town where I as born, in front of the Universiy Library, there is a monument to research (and what is mostly done with it?) of a giant beetle pricked through with a giant needle that goes up into the air. I find it a wonderful artwork by a great Belgian artist called Jan Fabre who has done great things with sticking beetles on skulptures (not sure how nice that is for the beetles though, but he didn't do too many of them) and used parma ham for coating columns of a museum in Ghent (looked like real marble, amazing). There are of course people that find it horrible, but I rather like it.

[Niamh]

I really like the Angel of the North!
But as for that thing to corespond with the olympics... What are they thinking! Seriously!

In Dublin we have The Spire of Dublin (also known as the Monument of light)

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj271/chuckmcp/OConnell%20Street/IMG_0011.jpg

It has many nicknames... Stilletto in the Ghetto being one of them.

its 398ft in height.

[MarkBastable]

I rather like the Angel of the North. I'm still thinking about the Olympic Doodle, but I agree with you about the name. The Eye, I think, is more an attraction than a monument, and it has grown on me. And the Dome is okay in context - the context being the completely unorganic and self-satisfied Docklands. I work there - and the Dome is the most interesting thing for miles.

Although part of the reason for such monuments is to provoke exactly this kind of discussion, it's time, I think, that decides. The Eiffel Tower was roundly vilified when it first went up.

“And during twenty years we shall see, stretching over the entire city, still thrilling with the genius of so many centuries, we shall see stretching out like a black blot the odious shadow of the odious column built up of riveted iron plates.”[12] Signers of this letter included Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Charles Gounod, Charles Garnier, Jean-Léon Gérôme, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and Alexandre Dumas. (Wikipedia)

That same article mentions Maupassant's declaration that the best restaurant in Paris was the one halfway up the Eiffel Tower, because it was the only one from which one couldn't see the Eiffel Tower.

I'm willing to bet that when Stonehenge went up, there were people huddled round fires mixing up the next day's woad and saying that it was a blot on the plainscape and what the hell was it supposed to be, anyway, and why couldn't they have just carved a nice white horse like that one in Uffington, you can't go wrong with a white horse, can you? Lovely, that.

Though apparently you can go wrong with a white horse. The proposed southern equivalent of the Angel of the North is this (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4580486/Giant-horse-as-high-as-Statue-of-Liberty-to-be-souths-answer-to-Angel-of-the-North.html), which will stand in Kent... It's straightforwardly representational, absolutely comprehensible - and local people voted for it too. But someone won't like it.

Oh, hang on. It's me.

[OrphanPip]

Ug my least favorite in Montreal would be the Biosphere. Built by the Americans for the World Fair in '69, and now pretty much the only thing left of the Expo grounds.

The city had this clever idea of putting an aquarium in it, so for a while it housed Montreal's large public aquarium with a good deal of expensive fish. Then the aquarium workers decided to form a union and go on strike, all the fish died and the city refused to replace them. Now it contains some sort of ecological museum about the local river, I've never been.

http://www.wearesuperfamous.com/wp-content/800px-biosphere_montreal.jpg

The Olympic Stadium is pretty horrible too, it's in the middle of the ghetto. When it was built it was the world's largest opening stadium roof, it worked once at the opening ceremonies and subsequently broke. They never fixed it and then the frigging roof collapsed and they replaced it with a non-opening one.

http://lisareports.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/montreal-olympic-stadium.jpg

Of course, there's also the tacky cross mentioned before.

[TheFifthElement]

I think it's just a matter of taste Loka. Now I'm no art critic but I totally love The Angel of the North, and I was pretty fond of The B of the Bang:

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd68/TheFifthElement_photos/bofthebang.jpg

before it was dismantled, although that is partly because it leant itself to the idea of football fans being impaled on it which is always an appealing thought. And I find Jodrell Bank aesthetically pleasing and Lloyds of London and Blackpool Tower and the bullet train and wind turbines, which of course many people think are eyesores (but forget that powerstations don't look very appealing out of your back window either), and electricity pylons. And I also find the wild moors appealing and lakes and forests and so on. And people and otters and those sorts of things. All are good, in their own ways. Conversely I find the Cow Parade and Super lamb banana things really irritating. There's no sense to it, it's just the way it is.

As to the ArcelorMittal Orbit, well I'm not fond of it. I'm not sure what they're trying to say with it although as a representation of modern British society perhaps it has a point. Who knows? Perhaps it will look different when it's built, it is often hard to tell. I don't especially object to it carrying the name of its corporate benefactor either. Britain has a fairly longstanding tradition of permitting rich benefactors to put their name on public buildings - the John Rylands Library (which I also like) being an example which immediately springs to mind - so this isn't really much different to that. I guess we're just not used to it anymore.

At least it looks like it'd be fun to climb.

[Katy North]

I don't think the orbit will be so bad... though I do agree with Schezernade that the fact that they're using public funds to build it is foolish. If this Mittal guy wants it named after him, he should pay for the whole thing gosh darn it!

I also rather like the Spire of Dublin, though personally, I think the Angel of the North looks like someone decided to bang a figure out of a bunch of rusty old dust bins and call it art. Maybe it's more impressive in person... :skep:

[TheFifthElement]

Oh, and I just remembered these:

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd68/TheFifthElement_photos/crosbybeach.jpg

on Crosby beach near Liverpool. I kind of like these too, but they amuse me more because people kept ringing the RNLI when the tide came in, thinking it was someone stuck in the sand. Made me smile :D

[LitNetIsGreat]

No, I don't like bits of twisted rusty metal that often passes for art. Give me a smooth marble figure any day...

[Lulim]

Perhaps, it's only my old-fashined view of things, but I do have the impression that there seems to be some kind of competition in creating ugliness, just to call for attention. Small, subtle details wouldn't be noticed anymore. Moreover, the handiwork becomes increasingly sloppy (not just in terms of art but in almost every area of life). There are instances where artwork started to crumble only three years after construction. What is to be made of it when not even the artist himself doesn't consider his/her work worthwhile to put some effort in?

Subjecting food to decay by converting it to "art" is, in my opinion, pure decadence, derision to millions of starving people.

[TheFifthElement]

We also have this:
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd68/TheFifthElement_photos/buckshawman-1.jpg
at the entrance to our village. He's lovely. One day we'll burn a policeman in him.

[MarkBastable]

Moreover, the handiwork becomes increasingly sloppy (not just in terms of art but in almost every area of life). There are instances where artwork started to crumble only three years after construction.

That has always happened. I'd cite the pre-Raphaelite murals in Oxford.

The Oxford Union murals (1857–1859) are a series of mural decorations in the Oxford Union library building. The series was executed by a team of Pre-Raphaelite artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. The paintings depict scenes from Arthurian myth.

The process of painting the murals was notoriously chaotic. Ruskin said that the artists were "all the least bit crazy and it's very difficult to manage them."[2] As the murals were painted directly onto the wall without plaster or adequate underpainting they began to suffer decay very quickly.[2] William Morris later completely repainted his design for the ceiling. (Wikipedia)

There are other examples - but, by definition, there are many, many more examples that we don't know about, because the work didn't survive to tell us it didn't survive. But it's not a modern phenomenon.

[kiki1982]

@TheFitfthElement:

Permit me to say that I find that looks suspiciously like The Angel of the North... It doesn't mean it is bad, but artists should be creative, right?

About that horse:

I find that... hmm, how to say. It fits in its surroundings of fields, it is big enough to be seen, it is well made (if it'll look like its animation), but if it is an over-sized sculpture of a horse, genuinely coloured like a horse, what is the point of it? There are enough sculptures of kings on horses that there needs to be no other one without its jockey... Give me the cows in all funky colours of that Belgian (?) artist any day...

Yes, sloppy handy-work... I suppose it makes a point about 'decay'? One can always find an explanation... :D

I very much like wind turbines actually. They give a very calming regular movement in the background. Much better than those ugly electricity plants (whether nuclear or not). Oh, but Battersea is rather nice, not to mention the Tate. But those wonderful times of sturdy industrial real English building with detail are over :(.


That has always happened. I'd cite the pre-Raphaelite murals in Oxford.

The Oxford Union murals (1857–1859) are a series of mural decorations in the Oxford Union library building. The series was executed by a team of Pre-Raphaelite artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. The paintings depict scenes from Arthurian myth.

The murals were commissioned by John Ruskin and the subject was probably chosen as a result of earlier Pre-Raphaelite interest in Arthurian themes, such as the illustrations to Edward Moxon's 1857 edition of Tennyson.[1] In addition to Rossetti, Morris and Burne-Jones, several other artists agreed to contribute. These were the painters Val Prinsep, Arthur Hughes, J.H. Pollen, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope and the sculptor Alexander Munro.[2]

The process of painting the murals was notoriously chaotic. Ruskin said that the artists were "all the least bit crazy and it's very difficult to manage them."[2] As the murals were painted directly onto the wall without plaster or adequate underpainting they began to suffer decay very quickly.[2] William Morris later completely repainted his design for the ceiling. (Wikipedia)

There are other examples - but, by definition, there are many, many more examples that we don't know about, because the work didn't survive to tell us it didn't survive. But it's not a modern phenomenon.

Haha. They wanted to know it better like Leonardo Da Vinchi as he painted his Last Supper with his latest experimental technique. They are still fighting to keep it on the wall as the paint is comming off...
Fortunately, he only tried that tehnique once, because it didn't work...

[TheFifthElement]

@TheFitfthElement:

Permit me to say that I find that looks suspiciously like The Angel of the North... It doesn't mean it is bad, but artists should be creative, right?
I didn't say it was original, only that it was nice ;) And it was funny when someone attached 3 appropriately shaped balloons to its nether regions. And for a while they tried to train ivy up it, an experiment which has now been abandoned, which made it look like it had hairy legs.

Actually even The Angel of the North follows in the footsteps of the Celtic traditional wicker man (hence the reference to burning policemen) so probably isn't that original. But it is big (and beautiful)!


I very much like wind turbines actually. They give a very calming regular movement in the background. Much better than those ugly electricity plants (whether nuclear or not). Oh, but Battersea is rather nice, not to mention the Tate. But those wonderful times of sturdy industrial real English building with detail are over :(.
Hehehe, we must have similar taste kiki. I like the Tate and Battersea as well.

[Lokasenna]

I agree with the general gist of what most people are saying - it often comes down to personal taste, though I think (and I'm not the only one!) that some of them are trying to be ugly.

I'd heard of Dublin's giant needle-thing, but never actually seen a picture of it till now. It looks massively out of place - I don't know if Dublin has many tall buildings, but you can't see any in the picture, which must mean you can see the thing for miles..?

I do think the Angel of the North ugly, but like I said, opinion is divided. One of my friends has the Angel as the view from his living room, and he thinks it looks dramatic and wonderful (and you must like something if you buy a house that looks over the thing).

I do fear, like the examples given in Montreal, that a lot of these things will become obsolete once the event they were constructed for is forgotten, and they will just be left to rust and rot.

It's not the cost I object to - I'm all for building great monuments, and I certainly don't think we should measure our public endeavours in terms of baby incubators and such. It would be nice if the public was allowed a bit more of a say on them though, rather than a few select art critcs - if the people of Kent want a damn great horse (why!?!), then at least it's their choice, and the critics can be ignored.

We should celebrate the Olympics, but I think a nice park with a glorious baroque fountain would be infinitely more pleasent, and you'd only notice it if you actually went to see it - it wouldn't poision the skyline, like the Orbit.

...oh, and I HATE wind-farms. They've just built a load of the wretched things in the bay; this is a tourist town! Is destroying the view really going to help our flagging economy? They also continue to plant endless numbers of them on the Durham dales, which I have to look at every time I go walking. Anyway, that's a rant for another day.

[Emil Miller]

I agree with the general gist of what most people are saying - it often comes down to personal taste, though I think (and I'm not the only one!) that some of them are trying to be ugly.

I'd heard of Dublin's giant needle-thing, but never actually seen a picture of it till now. It looks massively out of place - I don't know if Dublin has many tall buildings, but you can't see any in the picture, which must mean you can see the thing for miles..?

I do think the Angel of the North ugly, but like I said, opinion is divided. One of my friends has the Angel as the view from his living room, and he thinks it looks dramatic and wonderful (and you must like something if you buy a house that looks over the thing).

I do fear, like the examples given in Montreal, that a lot of these things will become obsolete once the event they were constructed for is forgotten, and they will just be left to rust and rot.

It's not the cost I object to - I'm all for building great monuments, and I certainly don't think we should measure our public endeavours in terms of baby incubators and such. It would be nice if the public was allowed a bit more of a say on them though, rather than a few select art critcs - if the people of Kent want a damn great horse (why!?!), then at least it's their choice, and the critics can be ignored.

We should celebrate the Olympics, but I think a nice park with a glorious baroque fountain would be infinitely more pleasent, and you'd only notice it if you actually went to see it - it wouldn't poision the skyline, like the Orbit.

...oh, and I HATE wind-farms. They've just built a load of the wretched things in the bay; this is a tourist town! Is destroying the view really going to help our flagging economy? They also continue to plant endless numbers of them on the Durham dales, which I have to look at every time I go walking. Anyway, that's a rant for another day.

You are of course quite right about public consultation. It is obviously wrong that a handful of self appointed arbiters of public taste should be able to spend public money on their own pet projects. The ridiculous monstrosity planned for the olympic site won't bother me personally because I never go to that part of London but I pity the inhabitants who will have to live with it, and all because some vainglorious designer aided and abetted by an equally vainglorious Mayor of London have dictated that it should be so. In a true democracy all such public projects should be approved by the public they are supposed to be erected for. Unfortunately we live in an age of charlatanry where it is possible to foist almost anything on to a dispirited and gullible public as the above-mentioned examples clearly indicate.

[Niamh]

There is kind of a skyline preservation order in Dublin City Centre so you dont see anything (other than the awful liberty hall building) going above our Georgian skyline. At first i thought it was very out of place on O'Connell St, but after what.. a decade of lookin at it it has become a part of the city. It not all that bad...

[MarkBastable]

The ridiculous monstrosity planned for the olympic site won't bother me personally because I never go to that part of London but I pity the inhabitants who will have to live with it.



Ah - just as I was wavering, I find a reason to like the Olympic doodle. If BB hates it, it must be pretty good.

[Emil Miller]

Ah - just as I was wavering, I find a reason to like the Olympic doodle. If BB hates it, it must be pretty good.

I like helping people to make up their mind.

[The Atheist]

Somebody in another thread mentioned a giant, tacky illuminated cross that had been erected in their city as a monument, and that got me thinking about works of public art.

Whereas every time I see or hear about one of them, I laugh at my hypothesis on humans and art being confirmed.

On the other hand, some pretty idiotic structures become icons throughout the world. I don't know what the recognition factor of Eiffel, Rio's christ and the Sphinx have, but if you manage to nail a good piece of public art, it can give you historical immortality, so there's a good carrot for them.

With public institutions, it seems to manifest itself in dreaming up the most outlandish structures in a vain effort to emulate the Pharoahs. But even then, once in a while you get the Sydney Opera House.


Now, however, we come to Britain's latest planned piece of public art, the ArcelorMittal Orbit:

Now, this I can admire.

A bloke who has made billions of dollars from steel gets a public organisation to pay for a structure in his name.

No doubt, all that steel will go back to one of his mills when it falls over/rusts.

A masterstroke of 21st century self-promotion.

[Nightshade]

Now I'm no art critic but I totally love The Angel of the North, and I was pretty fond of The B of the Bang:

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd68/TheFifthElement_photos/bofthebang.jpg

before it was dismantled, .

Didn't they close the road because in the big gale in my first year of uni so 2007 parts were wiggled loose and they were afraid it would start impaling people? I never liked that thing! But if you are talking Manchester modern art there funky metal christmas tree thing in sackville gardens. Oh and the peace garden opposite Town hall is abit odd. As is that stute outside Central library.
Though really manchesters greatest monuments are its big victorian building and industrial warehouses and factories although I can never help but feel the victorians would be horrified at the fact there beautifyul old banks and buisssness building being turned into pubs and discos which always amuses me I used to like to pretend scences where various charcters from Gaskell, Dickens and such novels turned up and saw manchester how would they react?

But I do like the Angel of the north, then again I LOVE the sight of wind farms... I find them beautiful and wind mills. So maybe the shape of the angel reminds me of that someohow?

[Paulclem]

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=785&pictureid=6656

The Whittle Arch

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=785&pictureid=6657

The Whittle Arch

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=785&pictureid=6658

Frank Whittle - inventor of the jet engine from Coventry.

These are views of Millennium Place in the centre of Coventry. It has the Whittle Arch with a traditional picture of Frank Whittle standing underneath. I once asked one of my students what he thought the Whittle arch was supposed to be, and he suggested that it was the vapour trails of the jet engines Frank Whittle invented. I think it is a good example of the combination of traditional and modern.

I do like the Angel of the North. I think, beyond like and dislike, it has become an iconic image of the North-east.

[Annamariah]

Finland is such a small country that we don't have any huge monuments (even in Helsinki buildings are so low that a high tower/statue/thing would really pop out and look out of place), but some smaller ones of course.

If you were shown just one photograph of Helsinki, it would most likely have Helsinki Cathedral in it.
http://lomat.suntuubi.com/datafiles/gallery/1/Helsingin%20tuomiokirkko.jpg

Tampere is known for Näsinneula tower that stands in the amusement park Särkänniemi.
http://www.16valve.net/talo/Tampere2006/Tampere17-7-06-009.jpg

As I said, we don't have anything large here, but at least the designer of the Gateway Arch in Missouri was Finnish American :D
http://home.comcast.net/~DiazStudents/SymbolsGatewayArch.jpg


But hey, there's one piece of art about half a kilometre from where I live and I kind of like it. It's a big gorilla made of old car tyres.
http://www.helsinki.fi/viikki/Verkkoarkisto2009/verkon_kuvat09/gorilla1.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PLPlNc8QGOI/SsdyJ28snrI/AAAAAAAABfg/hQhr7VZOypo/s320/Mohairmekko+kaislikossa+078.JPG
It might not be what Helsinki is known for, but it's the thing to see in my part of the town :lol:

[OrphanPip]

Oh God, I remembered one interesting one left over from the world fair.

Habitat 67

http://25.media.tumblr.com/SqHZoTWKZfe0dz6shsWr7W5Uo1_500.jpg

http://www.planetware.com/i/photo/habitat-67-montreal-cdn1125.jpg

People actually live in these things.

[Niamh]

wow! thats one funky apartment block! :p

[dizzydoll]

Interesting thread. We dont have money for monuments, altho who's to say after this world cup, I hope not the money can best be used elsewhere -- but I am practical like that.

[Lokasenna]

Oh God, I remembered one interesting one left over from the world fair.

Habitat 67

http://25.media.tumblr.com/SqHZoTWKZfe0dz6shsWr7W5Uo1_500.jpg

http://www.planetware.com/i/photo/habitat-67-montreal-cdn1125.jpg

People actually live in these things.

Good God, it's like lego on crack!

[Niamh]

:lol: thats definitely one way of putting it! :lol:

[Annamariah]

I actually like that habitat 67 :D Of course you need to be careful about where that kind of building is located, placed in a wrong area it would look just ridiculous and completely out of place.

[TheFifthElement]

But hey, there's one piece of art about half a kilometre from where I live and I kind of like it. It's a big gorilla made of old car tyres.
http://www.helsinki.fi/viikki/Verkkoarkisto2009/verkon_kuvat09/gorilla1.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PLPlNc8QGOI/SsdyJ28snrI/AAAAAAAABfg/hQhr7VZOypo/s320/Mohairmekko+kaislikossa+078.JPG
It might not be what Helsinki is known for, but it's the thing to see in my part of the town :lol:
Wow, that's amazing. I love it :D

[Annamariah]

There was also a Hummer truck built of twigs and sticks in the nearest traffic circle for a while last autumn, but that work was only borrowed for a while from some young artist, I think. When I first caught a glimpse of it for a moment I was like "who has parked his car in the middle of a traffic circle?", then I took another look and realised it was made of wood :D

http://www.vihrealanka.fi/files/lanka/images/imagefield/risuhummer_ilkka_karhu.jpg

[Niamh]

now THATS amazing!

[TheFifthElement]

Yep, I agree. It's wicked!

[papayahed]

This is in my hometown:

http://img.groundspeak.com/cache/log/f63d7f19-b34b-49d2-9397-0886de9c3c44.jpg

Doesn't it just scream Welcome??

[Emil Miller]

This is in my hometown:

http://img.groundspeak.com/cache/log/f63d7f19-b34b-49d2-9397-0886de9c3c44.jpg

Doesn't it just scream Welcome??

What is it called? Officially that is.

[papayahed]

What is it called? Officially that is.

I really don't know and couldn't find one on the the interwebs. We just call it the Joe Louis' fist statue.

[Annamariah]

Hanging by those wires it looks like you could push it from one end to make the fist punch someone... sure, I agree with you about the welcome part :D

[Paulclem]

This is in my hometown:

http://img.groundspeak.com/cache/log/f63d7f19-b34b-49d2-9397-0886de9c3c44.jpg

Doesn't it just scream Welcome??

I think it's brilliant.

[Niamh]

Very Welcoming. :D Its actually quite an eye catcher!

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

...I'll admit I'm something of a sceptic when it comes to modern art. At university, I'm a ten minute drive from the Angel of the North:

...So, what are your thoughts on public artworks? Any examples you would like to share - either good or bad?

Great topic Lokasenna.
I was curious to know if the "Angel of the North" is fixed in place? It would seem that a decent gust of wind or a storm no less would allow the angel to take flight.


Ug my least favorite in Montreal would be the Biosphere. Built by the Americans for the World Fair in '69, and now pretty much the only thing left of the Expo grounds...

Buckminster Fuller's endearing legacy!


Finland is such a small country that we don't have any huge monuments (even in Helsinki buildings are so low that a high tower/statue/thing would really pop out and look out of place), but some smaller ones of course.

...But hey, there's one piece of art about half a kilometre from where I live and I kind of like it. It's a big gorilla made of old car tyres.
http://www.helsinki.fi/viikki/Verkkoarkisto2009/verkon_kuvat09/gorilla1.jpg

It might not be what Helsinki is known for, but it's the thing to see in my part of the town :lol:

I like that one too Annamariah!



This is in my hometown:

Doesn't it just scream Welcome??

Papayahed,
I don't know what to say.
It certainly does not suggest that the town welcomes you with open arms.
More like clenched fists!

Very interesting (?) none the less.

Gilliatt

[Lokasenna]

Great topic Lokasenna.
I was curious to know if the "Angel of the North" is fixed in place? It would seem that a decent gust of wind or a storm no less would allow the angel to take flight.


I've never gone that close to it, but it seems well bolted onto the scenery. Hasn't blown over yet!

[Niamh]

Recently its bridges that have become the new monuments in Dublin.

Here is the Latest.

Samuel Beckett Bridge
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y250/jspruit/Ireland-Dublin%20February2%202010/IMG_7866.jpg

It is designed on a Harp lying sideways. :) It also opens by swinging into the centre of the river to allow boats to pass.

Before that was the Sean O' Casey Bridge (yes, most of our new bridges are being named after famous Irish Writers. Dublin is proud of its literary heritage!)

http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q268/niamhking/seanobridge.jpg

[Lokasenna]

Ooh, I rather like that one! It looks surprisingly nice for a modern bridge.