The Skylon was a futuristic-looking, slender, vertical, cigar-shaped steel tensegrity structure located by the Thames in London, that gave the illusion of floating above the ground, built in 1951 for the Festival of Britain.
A popular joke of the period was that, like the British economy of 1951, "It had no visible means of support". [1]
The Skylon was the "Vertical Feature" that was an abiding symbol of the Festival of Britain. It was designed by Hidalgo Moya, Philip Powell and Felix Samuely, and fabricated by Painter Brothers of Hereford, England, on London's South Bank between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge. The Skylon consisted of a steel latticework frame, pointed at both ends and supported on cables slung between three steel beams. The partially constructed Skylon was rigged vertically, then grew taller in situ. [2] The architects' design was made structurally feasible by the engineer Felix Samuely who, at the time, was a lecturer at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury. The base was nearly 15 metres (50 feet) from the ground, with the top nearly 90 metres (300 feet) high. The frame was clad in aluminium louvres lit from within at night. Questions were asked in Parliament regarding the danger to visitors from lightning-strikes to the Skylon, and the papers reported that it was duly roped off at one point, in anticipation of a forecast thunderstorm. [3]
Both the name and form of the Skylon most likely referenced the Trylon feature of the 1939 New York World's Fair. [4] The name was suggested by Mrs A. G. S. Fidler, wife of the chief architect of the Crawley Development Corporation. [5] Moya wrote, "We were unimpressed at first but soon came to accept that, by combining the suggestions of Pylon, Sky and Nylon (a fascinating new material in 1951), it was wonderfully descriptive name which has lasted forty years, considerably longer than the structure itself." [6]
A few days before the King and Queen visited the exhibition in May 1951, Skylon was climbed at midnight by Philip Gurdon, a student at Birkbeck College, who attached a University of London Air Squadron scarf near the top. Police constable Frederick Hicks was sent up to retrieve the scarf the following morning. [7]
In spite of its popularity with the public, the £30,000 cost of dismantling and re-erecting the Skylon elsewhere (equivalent to £800,000 as of 2021) [8] was deemed too much for a government [9] struggling with post-war austerity. Skylon was removed in 1952 when the rest of the exhibition was dismantled, on the orders of Winston Churchill, who saw the Festival and its architectural structures as a symbol of the preceding Labour Government's vision of a new socialist Britain. [10] [11]
Speculation as to the Skylon's fate included theories from Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, that it was thrown into the River Lea in east London, dumped into the Thames, buried under Jubilee Gardens, [12] made into souvenirs or sold as scrap. The base is preserved in the Museum of London and the wind cups are held in a private collection. [13] An investigation was carried out by the Front Row programme on BBC Radio 4 and the result was broadcast on 8 March 2011. It was revealed that the Skylon and the roof of the Dome of Discovery had been sold to George Cohen, Sons and Company scrap metal dealers of Wood Lane, Hammersmith, and dismantled at their works in Bidder Street, Canning Town, on the banks of the River Lea. Some of the metal fragments were then made into a series of commemorative paper-knives and other artefacts. The inscriptions on the paper-knives read "600" [Note 1] and "Made from the aluminium alloy roof sheets which covered the Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain, South Bank. The Dome, Skylon and 10 other buildings on the site, were dismantled by George Cohen and Sons and Company Ltd during six months of 1952." [14]
The former location of the Skylon is the riverside promenade between the London Eye and Hungerford Bridge, alongside the Jubilee Gardens (the former site of the Dome of Discovery).
In May 2007 D&D London (formerly Conran Restaurants) opened a new restaurant named Skylon on the third floor of the Royal Festival Hall. This restaurant had previously been named The Peoples Palace.
The Millennium Dome was the original name of the large dome-shaped building on the Greenwich Peninsula in South East London, England, which housed a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millennium. As of 2022, it is the ninth largest building in the world by usable volume. The exhibition was open to the public from 1 January to 31 December 2000. The project and exhibition were highly contentious and attracted barely half of the 12 million customers its sponsors forecasted, and so were deemed a failure by the press. All the original exhibition elements were sold or dismantled.
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951.
The Hungerford Bridge crosses the River Thames in London, and lies between Waterloo Bridge and Westminster Bridge. Owned by Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd it is a steel truss railway bridge flanked by two more recent, cable-stayed, pedestrian bridges that share the railway bridge's foundation piers, and which are named the Golden Jubilee Bridges.
The year 1951 in architecture involved some significant events.
The Franco-British Exhibition was a large public fair held in London between 14 May and 31 October 1908. It was the first in the series of the White City Exhibitions. The exhibition attracted 8 million visitors and celebrated the Entente Cordiale signed in 1904 by the United Kingdom and France. The chief architect of the buildings was John Belcher.
Southbank Centre is a complex of artistic venues in London, England, on the South Bank of the River Thames.
Simpsons of Piccadilly was a large retail store situated at 203-206 Piccadilly in central London. It was created by Alexander Simpson and architect Joseph Emberton. When it opened in April 1936 it was the largest menswear store in Britain, and is now a Grade I listed building due to its innovative construction. Its original purpose was to house the entire range of clothing provided by the tailoring company S. Simpsons and DAKS. It was later purchased by the Waterstones chain of bookshops, and currently serves as their flagship store.
Sir Arnold Joseph Philip Powell, usually known as Philip Powell, was an English post-war architect.
John Hidalgo Moya, sometimes known as Jacko Moya, was an American-born architect who lived and worked largely in England.
Jubilee Gardens is a public park on the South Bank in the London Borough of Lambeth. Created in 1977 to mark the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II, the site was formerly used for the Dome of Discovery and the adjacent Skylon during the Festival of Britain in 1951. A multimillion-pound redevelopment of the park was completed in May 2012, just before the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II and the 2012 Summer Olympics, in order to transform it from a state of grassland to a mature looking park with trees and hills. The re-developed Gardens were designed by Dutch landscape architects West 8. Queen Elizabeth II reopened the gardens in October 2012.
The Dome of Discovery was a temporary exhibition building designed by architect Ralph Tubbs for the Festival of Britain celebrations which took place on London's South Bank in 1951, alongside the River Thames. The consulting engineers were Freeman Fox & Partners, in particular Oleg Kerensky and Gilbert Roberts.
Events from the year 1951 in art.
The Lowry is a theatre and gallery complex at Salford Quays, Salford, Greater Manchester, England. It is named after the early 20th-century painter L. S. Lowry, known for his paintings of industrial scenes in North West England. The complex opened on 28 April 2000 and was officially opened on 12 October 2000 by Queen Elizabeth II.
Frank Newby was one of the leading structural engineers of the 20th century, working with such architects as Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, Eero Saarinen, Cedric Price,James Gowan (architect) James Stirling, and the practice of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), and such engineers as Ove Arup and Felix Samuely.
The Design Research Unit (DRU) was one of the first generation of British design consultancies combining expertise in architecture, graphics and industrial design. It was founded by the managing director of Stuart Advertising Agency, Marcus Brumwell with Misha Black and Milner Gray in 1943. It became well known for its work in relation to the Festival of Britain in 1951 and its influential corporate identity project for British Rail in 1965. In 2004, DRU merged with Scott Brownrigg architects.
Painter Brothers is a major British fabricator of structural steelwork and one of the leading producers of bolted lattice steelwork in the world.
George Cohen, Sons and Company was a scrap metal merchant with offices in Commercial Road, London. The company was founded by George Henry Cohen (d.1890) as Messrs. George Cohen & Co. in 1834 and changed its name to George Cohen, Sons and Co. in 1883 on the appointment of Michael Cohen, son of the founder. After the First World War the company won a number of large contracts to dispose of surplus munitions including "400,000 tons of high explosives and other shells". The company also engaged in demolition work, with projects including the towers of Crystal Palace, which had survived the great fire, the Dome of Discovery and Skylon at the Festival of Britain, and London's tram system. In 1940 the company moved its head offices to Hammersmith.
John Bulmer is a photographer, notable for his early use of colour in photojournalism, and a filmmaker.
Keith Godard was a British born graphic artist and designer who practiced in New York City. He was the principal artist at StudioWorks.
Laurence Scarfe (1914-1993) was a British artist and designer, active in the twentieth century.
Media related to Skylon, London at Wikimedia Commons