Olympic tower takes unconventional route

Balmond is the lesser-known partner in the two-man design team 8211; whose other member is the celebrated artist Anish Kapoor 8211; responsible for the ArcelorMittal Orbit.

Rising 114 metres,or almost a third higher than the dome of St Pauls Cathedral,the Orbit will be a central feature of the Olympic site in east London,which will host most of next summers events.

Of its 22.7m cost,19.6m is coming from the ArcelorMittal steel company. Its chairman and main owner,Lakshmi Mittal,was keen to bankroll the project to publicise his company and act as a showcase for steel.

One of the worlds leading structural engineers,the Sri Lanka-born Balmond said a key part of the thinking behind the 2,000-tonne structure was to be radical and different.

A normal tower is built with a stiff spine where every element is connected in a vertical plane. We turned to an entirely new idea,according to which the structure supports itself,but through a series of seemingly unconnected points in space.

The 560-metre length of steel in the structure 8211; broken up into a series of individual sections that form into loops 8211; traces a continuous pattern.

If you follow the lines of steel on a piece of paper,you can move a pencil around the entire structure without taking the pencil off the page, said Balmond.

The 67-year-old engineer lives in London but teaches architecture at Pennsylvania University in the US and ended a 42-year career with Arup,the UK engineering services group,last year to start his own practice.

His best-known structure is the striking CCTV headquarters in Beijing 8211; featuring a huge overhang pushing out at right angles from two vertical blocks.

The crucial parts of the London structure are nine key nodal points in the steel web which are almost impossible to spot but keep the metal in it from tumbling to the ground.

Rather than following a simple plan that is easy to understand,the structure makes connections where it can, said Balmond.

You can think of it as a metaphor for the way people build up opinions and judgments through a series of jumps in thinking coupled with episodic observations.

The ideas behind the tower,he says,fit in with modern non-linear thinking in disciplines as diverse as biology,economics and computer science.

Roughly two-thirds complete,the Orbit should reach its full height by the end of October,with final fitting out,including the installation of a large viewing platform capable of accommodating 5,000 visitors a day,due early in 2012. The towers exterior is currently obscured by giant cranes,with some pieces of steel left jutting out of unfinished loops at peculiar angles.

An informal poll by the Financial Times of 30 people passing nearby uncovered a resoundingly favourable view,with 25 expressing a positive response,and only five registering disapproval.

In a place like London,if you have something thats controversial and doesnt really fit in,then its going to work, said Paul Storrie,an art student. Zubayer Habib,a Tesco worker,said: The tower is going to have massive appeal and I think will bring in visitors from everywhere.

Architect Simon Loring was unmistakably negative about the tower I think its appalling,its the last thing this part of London needs 8211; but the view from Gill Watson,touring the Olympics site on a day out from Sussex,could hardly have been more upbeat: This the tower is going to be part of the National Trust of the future.

2011 The Financial Times Limited