Conrad Shawcross’s Paradigm, a 14-metre-tall, 26-tonne stack of geometrically shaped weathered steel, forms an impressive addition to London’s streetscape. Unveiled today, 25 February, the monumental sculpture was inspired by the way scientific thinking often shifts radically as long-held theories are challenged, an appropriate idea for its setting in front of a huge new biomedical research centre that is nearing completion off the Euston Road.
Shawcross’s colossal sculpture, his most ambitious work so far, stands in a plaza outside the research centre, which is named after the Nobel prize-winning scientist Francis Crick. Across the street there is an entrance to St Pancras International Station.
Like the railway station opposite, Paradigm is feat of engineering. The young artist, in 2014 he became the youngest living Royal Academician, has created a geometric column that is less than a metre wide at its base but each tetrahedral shape grows in volume. The uppermost section is “the height of a double-decker bus,” Shawcross said.
He hopes people will be excited by its combination of height and apparent instability. The daring, gravity-defying work required 30-metre-deep foundations. The artist was speaking the day after the sculpture’s remarkably smooth arrival and erection, an operation that took less than a day to complete. He paid tribute to the project team, in particular his longstanding collaborator the engineer Peter Laidler of Structure Workshop, for helping to make sure the installation of the sculpture went without a hitch.
The director of the Francis Crick Institute, Paul Nurse, played a key role in commissioning such an ambitious work of art for the new centre. Shawcross revealed that when he won the international competition to create a new work of art he originally intended Paradigm to be somewhat smaller. “I was trying to make it as big as it could be for the budget but Paul said that it should be ‘twice the size’.” The project budget remained fixed at £500,000, however.
Funded by the Wellcome Trust and organised by the curatorial team at Artwise, few can doubt that Paradigm provides value for money. The piece has the daring of a work by Richard Serra and more than holds its own alongside the HOK- and PLP Architect-designed behemoth of a building. Paradigm recalls but does not mimic the double-stranded helix shape of DNA, the modelling of which earned Francis Crick and James Watson their Nobel awards. In time the work’s faceted surfaces will weather and acquire a darker patina, a process assisted by its site alongside one of London’s busiest railway stations. As well as the exhaust fumes from passing cars and buses, there is a taxi rank opposite. “Pollution will make it more interesting,” Shawcross said.