The Ebbsfleet Landmark

This proposal for Ebbsfleet creates a highly visible landmark.
Its manufacture entirely on site has spectacular potential - particularly in the raising of the wing and the disc into position from the casting pit. It is highly likely both as an art and as an engineering event, to attract continuing national if not international attention at all stages, such is the scale involved.
As a form the sculpture has the benefit of being seen clearly from a great distance and yet is impressive and vertiginous from close up. Its sculptural language is innovative and clear.

A view of the area with its visually complicated activity, demands something calm and complete in itself, which has the best chance of standing out from the background, being distinct and understandable from a distance, and being a contrast to the nearby pylons and predominantly horizontal signage.

The Wing and the Disc have all these qualities. Furthermore the sculpture with its capacity to create strong shadows will be a source of continually renewable interest as the disc in relation to the wing works as a place for the shadow to be cast.
For the many people travelling on road or rail throughout the year the passage of the light and the seasons will be dramatised. The sculpture will be always changing, whether backlit in the morning or reflecting the warm glow of the western evening sky against the deep blue in the east. Even in the rain or grey of a typical English day the elements will soften or mysteriously disappear as the tones converge.

The Wing is an aerial image that is a link and a conduit between the Sky and the Earth. The wheel or silver disc is an attribute of the Celtic sky-gods. The Roman winged messenger god Mercury is associated with movement and the traveller. Finally, it seemed appropriate that his symbol should preside again over one of the most important and ancient routes in the country.

At a distance the image of the disc deliberately recalls the visionary landscape paintings of Samuel Palmer, particularly from his stay in Shoreham in Kent where he frequently depicted a bright moon amongst the hills. William Blake, Palmers great predecessor, in his archetypal versions of English pastoral, whether in his paintings or his illustrated poems, also characteristically depicted winged beings, angels, flaming Suns and Moons. Another reference is to Paul Nash’s painting Landscape of the Vernal Equinox. His landscapes of the southern counties often show quiet chalk downland as Ebbsfleet was formerly. In English landscape art it is unusual for the moon or sun not to have a redemptive or spiritual quality. The great disc of this sculpture lightly touching the horizon may influence benignly or somehow compose the surrounding landscape.

See also Ebbsfleet Landmark in Texts.