Never a good sign when " A tourist attraction that opened incomplete, over budget and led to resignations is set to close. "
Never a good sign when " A tourist attraction that opened incomplete, over budget and led to resignations is set to close. "
Remember, this was only supposed to be a temporary structure (due to close Jan '22) to attract visitors back into Oxford Street and shopping. What I dont think Westminster Council knew at the start of this £2m project was that the budget would increase to £3.3m. That could be accounted for in the increase of building products and labour costs over this pandemic but the actual cost of the mound was a staggering £6m (heads did roll with this one).
It didnt help matters that the expectation of visitors never took place. The height of the mound barely looks over the tree line of Hyde Park. Planting takes time to flourish in an artificial landscape. To have a hill in a very busy location that looks patchy is not going to entice people. They went from paid entry to free very quickly and even then the turnout was not that great.
I was in Marble Arch last month and thought I'd check it out and it was a great disappointment, you walk up stairs, get to the top and see a few views, it just wasn't very enticing.
Anthony James light show installation 'Lightfield' in the interior was at least worth the trip.
I had read about this. Initially the design that MVRDV proposed was going to cover the Arch but conservation experts advised against it because of risk to the mortar joints.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jul/23/marble-arch-hill-mound-london-oxford-street
I think that taking out a chunk of the 'hill' just didn't do it any favours.
I suppose that even bad news is good, as long as people talk about it. Some probably just went there to see how bad it was.
Well, the architects who designed the mound published their side of the story.
https://www.mvrdv.nl/stack-magazine/4067/learning-from-marble-arch-mound
There is nothing like communication issues across teams and roles to set up a project (any project) for failure.
In this case MVRDV took a gamble, or so it seems to me, which did not turn out the way they hoped.
Taking up risks such as these is largely a matter of marketing and this time it was not worth it.
Of course, hindsight is always 20/20.
I dont understand the risk bit . Why the gamble
Hello @et2020
This quote is from the article that Jane posted
MVRDV had a small budget for the design phase: £10,000 GBP. For us, this implied a significant loss on the project with staff hours alone far exceeding this. As a rule, we don't work under such conditions, but for installations with a social imperative, we sometimes make an exception, especially in the context of the pandemic.
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