View source for Engineering:Skylon (Festival of Britain)

{{Short description|Former public artwork in London}}

[[File:In16695.jpg|thumb|right|The Skylon at the Festival of Britain, 1951]]
[[File:The Skylon at the Festival of Britain, 1951 BW Lee (3).jpg|thumb|right|The Skylon illuminated at night]]
[[File:cmglee Skylon model at Museum of London.jpg|thumb|150px|Skylon model at the Museum of London]]
The '''Skylon''' was a futuristic-looking, slender, vertical, cigar-shaped steel [[Engineering:Tensegrity|tensegrity]] structure located by the Thames in [[Place:London|London]], that gave the illusion of floating above the ground, built in 1951 for the Festival of Britain.

A popular joke of the period was that, like the British economy of 1951, "It had no visible means of support".<ref name="Radio 4, Reunion" >{{cite web
  |title=The Reunion – Festival of Britain
  |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/reunion/reunion5.shtml
  |publisher=BBC Radio 4
}}</ref>

== Construction ==
The Skylon was the "Vertical Feature" that was an abiding symbol of the Festival of Britain. It was designed by Hidalgo Moya, Philip Powell and Felix Samuely, and fabricated by Painter Brothers of Hereford, {{wipe|England}}, on London's South Bank between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge. The Skylon consisted of a steel [[Engineering:Latticework|latticework]] frame, pointed at both ends and supported on cables slung between three steel beams. The partially constructed Skylon was rigged vertically, then grew taller in situ.<ref name="Grant, construction photo">{{cite web
 |title        = The Skylon in construction
 |url          = http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/fob/hgrant.html
 |author       = Henry Grant
 |publisher    = Museum of London
 |format       = photo
 |url-status   = dead
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20130730112543/http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/fob/hgrant.html
 |archive-date = 2013-07-30
 }}</ref> The architects' design was made structurally feasible by the engineer Felix Samuely who, at the time, was a lecturer at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury. The base was nearly 15 metres (50&nbsp;feet) from the ground, with the top nearly 90 metres (300&nbsp;feet) high. The frame was clad in aluminium louvres lit from within at night.
Questions were asked in Parliament regarding the danger to visitors from lightning-strikes to the Skylon, and the papers reported that it was duly roped off at one point, in anticipation of a forecast thunderstorm.<ref>{{cite news | url = https://www.newspapers.com/image/259419030/ | title = Ropes round the Skylon | date = 1951-05-19 | newspaper = {{wipe|The Guardian}} | page = 5 | access-date = 2021-02-01}}{{subscription required|via=newspapers.com}}</ref>

===Name===
Both the name and form of the Skylon most likely referenced the Trylon feature of the 1939 New York World's Fair.<ref>[https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/11/euwb.html The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, Great Britain and Ireland 1900 AD-present, 1951],</ref> The name was suggested by Mrs A. G. S. Fidler, wife of the chief architect of the [[Company:Crawley Development Corporation|Crawley Development Corporation]].<ref>''The Times'', Saturday, Nov 11, 1950</ref> Moya wrote, "We were unimpressed at first but soon came to accept that, by combining the suggestions of Pylon, Sky and Nylon (a fascinating new material in 1951), it was wonderfully descriptive name which has lasted forty years, considerably 
longer than the structure itself."<ref>[http://www.voteforskylon.com/stories/moya.pdf Hidalgo Moya, "Rebuild the Skylon!"]  {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090106191506/http://www.voteforskylon.com/stories/moya.pdf |date=2009-01-06 }}</ref>

===Incidents===
A few days before the King and Queen visited the exhibition in May 1951, Skylon was climbed at midnight by Philip Gurdon, a student at [[Organization:Birkbeck, University of London|Birkbeck College]], who attached a University of London Air Squadron scarf near the top. Police constable Frederick Hicks was sent up to retrieve the scarf the following morning.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/herefordandworcester/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_9407000/9407405.stm "Skylon, Festival of Britain centrepiece, and Hereford", BCC, 25 February 2011]</ref>

== Demolition ==
In spite of its popularity with the public, the £30,000 cost of dismantling and re-erecting the Skylon elsewhere (equivalent to £{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK-GDP|30000|1952|2016|r=-5}}}} as of {{Inflation-year|UK}}){{Inflation-fn|UK}} was deemed too much for a government<ref>The Labour Party who had been in government since July 1945, lost the general election in October 1951.</ref> struggling with post-war [[Finance:Austerity|austerity]]. Skylon was removed in 1952 when the rest of the exhibition was dismantled, on the orders of Winston Churchill, who saw the Festival and its architectural structures as a symbol of the preceding Labour Government's vision of a new socialist Britain.<ref>[http://www.skyscrapernews.com/buildings.php?id=3805 Skyscraper news],</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Skylon: is there a point in rebuilding it?|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/artblog/2008/jul/09/skylonwhatsthepointofrebu|work=The Guardian|accessdate=16 September 2012|location=London|first=Jonathan|last=Glancey|date=9 July 2008}}</ref>

Speculation as to the Skylon's fate included theories from Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, that it was thrown into the River Lea in east London, dumped into the Thames, buried under Jubilee Gardens,<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jan/19/festival-of-britain-anniversary-skylon | location=London | work=The Guardian | first=Mark | last=Brown | title=Skylon's the limit for Festival of Britain rerun | date=19 January 2011}}</ref> made into souvenirs or sold as scrap. The base is preserved in the Museum of London and the wind cups are held in a private collection.<ref>{{cite news|last=Singh|first=Anita|title=Festival of Britain: divers to search for missing Skylon|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/8270118/Festival-of-Britain-divers-to-search-for-missing-Skylon.html#|accessdate=8 March 2011|newspaper=The Telegraph|date=20 January 2011|location=London}}</ref> An investigation was carried out by the ''Front Row'' programme on BBC Radio 4 and the result was broadcast on 8 March 2011. It was revealed that the Skylon and the roof of the Dome of Discovery had been sold to George Cohen, Sons and Company scrap metal dealers of Wood Lane, Hammersmith, and dismantled at their works in Bidder Street, Canning Town, on the banks of the River Lea. Some of the metal fragments were then made into a series of commemorative [[Engineering:Paper knife|paper-knives]] and other artefacts. The inscriptions on the paper-knives read "600"<ref group="Note">. George Cohen and Sons changed its name to 'The 600 Group' when it moved its head-office to 600 Commercial Road, Stepney, the Wood Lane site having been sold to the BBC.</ref> and "Made from the aluminium alloy roof sheets which covered the Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain, South Bank. The Dome, Skylon and 10 other buildings on the site, were dismantled by George Cohen and Sons and Company Ltd during six months of 1952."<ref name="Radio4">[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z6dvq BBC Radio 4, Front Row, Skylon investigation]</ref>

The former location of the Skylon is the riverside promenade between the London Eye and Hungerford Bridge, alongside the Jubilee Gardens (the former site of the Dome of Discovery).

==2007 Skylon restaurant==
In May 2007 D&D London (formerly Conran Restaurants) opened a new restaurant named Skylon on the third floor of the Royal Festival Hall. This restaurant had previously been named The Peoples Palace.

==See also==
* Dome of Discovery
* [[Engineering:Skylon (spacecraft)|Skylon (spacecraft)]]
* [[Company:Blaw-Knox tower|Blaw-Knox tower]]

==Notes==
{{Reflist|group=Note}}

==References==
* Articles from ''The Times'' between 1951 and 1952
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/mar/31/urbandesign.arts Skylon spire may return to London skyline] (''{{wipe|The Guardian}}'')
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20050210121645/http://whitstablepier.com/fob/skylon.htm The Skylon]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110608185150/http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/festival/list_details.asp?key=546995&rtn=ob%3D&ob_s=any&pr=&pr_s=any&de=Skylon&de_s=any&num=10&firstob=1&sortby=1 Museum of London] colour photo of the Skylon


{{Coord |51|30|17|N|0|7|7|W|type:landmark_region:GB|display=title}} <!-- approximate - can anyone refine? -->

{{DEFAULTSORT:Skylon}}
[[Category:Tensile architecture]]

{{Sourceattribution|Skylon (Festival of Britain)}}