Ill-fated structure is put up for sale

Apr 15 2009 by Amy Hunt, The Journal

Rob and his colleagues have never even seen Hotel Monument fully assembled. Now they want to know if anyone might have a use for it. They’ve suggested that the organisers of the Glastonbury Festival could use it as a lighting rig or that a TV company might like to use it on which to mount their cameras at sporting events. Rob said: “Everyone was very proud of it and was looking forward to seeing it put up. It would be a real injustice if it just went to the scrapyard. We’ve even thought about putting an advert in the classifieds.”

Last week we told how NGI, along with Newcastle City Council, spent nearly £200,000 on Hotel Monument. The artwork was supposed to go on show in 2008 but hit the buffers after problems finalising the details.

The plans for Hotel Monument, including a hotel bedroom with bathroom built on scaffolding 150ft up Grey’s Monument, were put before members of the city council’s development control committee last week after a row over the handling of a decision to grant planning permission via delegated powers last year.

This year councillors were invited to make the decision and voted nine to one against granting planning permission, on the grounds that the structure would not fit into its surroundings.

Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi and Newcastle architects Ryder and structural engineers Faber Maunsell, were behind the designs for Hotel Monument. The scaffolding built by ASL includes a number of tapered, lattice steel columns set out in a square grid and connected with diagonal beams. Each column is more than 36m tall and weighs in at close to eight tonnes.