I stood staring at the shiny structure that the whole of New York seemed to know about and had turned out to watch, appreciate and mostly to take a selfie. I had been in the American city for a short weekend in March 2019 and had no idea that this major new landmark had been recently inaugurated.
Awkwardly called the ‘Vessel’, this was supposed to be an interactive public sculpture that offers the public a 1.61 km (one mile) vertical climbing experience and, of course, views! It rises from a more or less circular base 50 feet in diameter. A climber can clock 2,500 steps via 154 interconnecting flights and 80 landings.
It is designed by the British Heatherwick Studio that beat celebrated sculptor artist Anish Kapoor, among others, to win the commission. The Vessel is constructed of a structural steel frame covered by a shiny polished copper-coloured cladding. It was fabricated at an Italian facility and arrived in New York in six shipments that travelled for 15 days at sea followed by a five-hour barge trip upstream the Hudson River.
Secret design
Built at a cost of $150 Million (about ₹1000 crore), the developer Stephan Ross — who owns perhaps this most expensive piece of land not only in New York but also in the world — went to extreme lengths to keep the design a secret.
However, as the structure began to be assembled on the site, word spread and was followed by outrage, with citizens questioning the purpose of the structure and the design. Some called it a beehive, others called it a doner kebab... I thought the most appropriate was ‘a rib cage!’. However, for now, the name ‘Vessel’ seems to have stuck.
Reading up on the inspiration for this crazy sculpture, I found that the designer had been inspired by the Indian step well and exercise! It must have been a lot of exercise to climb down into the step well and then up with pots of water. At the Vessel, however, with the same amount of exercise all one can fetch is a selfie.
