Marble Arch Mound is a £2m temporary installation commissioned by Westminster Council, designed to give visitors a "unique opportunity to look out over the area".Īfter its opening earlier this week, paying customers who arrived to visit the 25 metres-high attraction, constructed by Dutch firm MVDRV, were reportedly underwhelmed and managed to receive refunds from the council.
When the installation reaches the end of its run, any materials used “will be recycled where possible to provide a lasting legacy” and the trees and landscape “will be relocated to other parts of the District and local community”, according to the Oxford Street District website.The latest addition to London's cultural offer has come in the form of a rather uninspiring man-made hill. The Marble Arch Mound will be open to visitors until early January 2022. “We’ll continue to adapt and improve London’s newest outdoor attraction,” says the council’s statement.
Marble arch mound free#
Westminster City Council admitted there were “teething problems” and has offered free return tickets to anybody who booked a visit during the first week. As long as you go with that expectation it is ok – just a shame it cost £2 million.”
“More as you might enjoy a bad statue of Cristiano Ronaldo, or a car park Santa's Grotto, with dogs pretending to be reindeer, than as a dazzling spectacle. On Twitter, one visitor joked that it cost 5p to climb each step and that introducing fast-track tickets seemed “odd” as “even nearing sunset on launch day” it was “very quiet”. The hill has been likened “to a level from Nintendo game Super Mario 64, the Teletubbies’ home, or worse still ‘seven minutes of work on Minecraft’”, reports MailOnline. There have also been questions about why “something so artificial-looking has been built next to the great natural expanse of green land that is Hyde Park”, the site adds. “Instead they were treated to sights of rubble, building works and scaffolding” from a viewing platform which was “covered in brown turf”. On its disappointing launch day, tourists “did not see the ‘soaring views across central London and Hyde Park’ from the lush landscape they were promised”, says the London Evening Standard. “The site’s bare and sparse appearance is a sharp contrast to the lush green landscape envisioned in the project’s planning proposals,” says The Telegraph. It is hoped to be “the kind of novelty experience that will lure people back to the West End”, the paper adds, “providing an opportunity for highly shareable Instagram moments, beyond selfies with armfuls of Selfridges bags”.īut after opening its doors to the general public on Monday, the mound has faced a barrage of criticism from visitors and ridicule on social media, primarily for looking nothing like its glossy artist’s impression. The artificial mountain is located on the western end of Oxford Street, where around 17% of shops have closed completely during the pandemic, says The Guardian. Tickets start from £4.50 with a “fast-track” weekend ticket costing £8. The Oxford Street District website describes the mound, which has 134 steps, as being “a park-like landscape of grass and trees” which “gives visitors striking views of London and the park, and a new perspective of Marble Arch itself”. The 25-metre-tall Marble Arch Mound is a temporary installation commissioned by Westminster City Council and designed by the Rotterdam-based architecture studio MVRDV. Repurposing empty shops: the future of the British high street.Radical plans unveiled to pedestrianise Oxford Street - in pictures.
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