We’ve marvelled at the curvaceous rise of the Francis Crick Institute building, now almost ready to open on its vast site behind the British Library. Staff will be gradually moving in over the next few months, fulfilling the dream of a world-class centre of excellence in the study of disease under one roof.
And, like the proverbial icing on a very large and complicated cake, a brand new public sculpture funded by the Wellcome Trust (who simply love to support the confluence of art and science) finally took up permanent residence too this week, slap bang in front of the main entrance.
At 14 metres high and weighing in at over 25 tonnes of rugged, weathered steel, it’s a suitably ambitious statement piece by widely acclaimed sculptor and geometry fan Conrad Shawcross.
A lifetime local lad, you may remember his previous work Timepiece, which transformed Camden’s iconic Roundhouse into a vast all-night time-keeping device a couple of summers ago.
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This new piece, called Paradigm, looks like a slender inverted pyramid hewn from a twisted stack of tetrahedrons. It starts at a base of only one metre across and unfolds upwards to reach five metres wide at its tallest point, so is a considerable feat of structural engineering, with the required wow factor.
And anyone catching a train from St Pancras can easily nip out of the station to ogle the work, making it brilliantly accessible to all.
Shawcross, who is currently the youngest living artist elected to the Royal Academy, says Paradigm is a ”bold totem” and a “beacon for progress and endeavour”
“But it contains fallibility and should serve as a constant reminder of the precariousness of knowledge: for ideas to progress old paradigms need to be toppled by new ones.”
Shawcross chose weathered steel as the material for the sculpture due its utilitarian properties and “its rich, honest surface making it true to the industrial pallet of the area.”
We’d say it sounds like a very suitable piece to do justice to this new biomedical research facility, that will undoubtedly help improve the health and quality of our loved ones, and our own lives in years to come.
Go check it out, in all it’s rusty, tetrahedral glory.
