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millennium dome inside

The body zone would allow visitors to walk through the inside of a human body, complete with moving organs and animatronic pubic lice.

“But the Dome was the property of the nation,” Falconer told me. It was the failure of the politician, he said, pointing to himself, not the failure of the people working in the Dome.

Perhaps the most recognisable element of the Millennium Experience, the outer shell of the body zone, was too big to be sold in its entirety, although tiles from its surface were used as the bidding paddles at the auction. They carried on. Simon Jenkins, who was on the Millennium Commission, said it was “dull”. The hat did not pass muster, and the final design that the UKs religious leaders agreed to was all but disavowed by Jiin by the end.

“This is a chance to demonstrate that Britain will be a breeding ground for the most successful businesses of the 21st century,” Blair told the audience. All the participants wore hi-vis jackets and hard hats. Gerbeau’s main job was damage limitation. By 7pm in Greenwich, it was apparent that there was a problem. Since it was a government project, the government kept tight controls on what those involved could and could not say. In the weeks before the event, because of a logistical cock-up, hundreds of guests had not received their tickets through the post. • Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, and sign up to the long read weekly email here. Informations sur votre appareil et sur votre connexion Internet, y compris votre adresse IP, Navigation et recherche lors de l’utilisation des sites Web et applications Verizon Media. Most say that the dome itself, the structure of masts and its fabric covering, is what Falconer calls an “inspirational building”. As with any big project, the final weeks were chaotic. Please come out and attend the “Bitter Ball” May 14th . The creators of the Dome set out to provide an experience that would unite the country. Some of those people are now Cirque du Soleils top troubleshooting clowns. Tim Pyne recalls the pressure from sponsors: his living island zone, on the theme of the environment, had the misfortune to be sited next to the transport-themed zone, sponsored by Ford, who “started to attack me for a negative story we were telling about car emissions”. Jiins solution was simple: I put a plastic blob hat on it, she told me. The Millennium Dome project or Millennium Dome was born with the need to restore the attractiveness of the Greenwich Peninsula and revive its potential cultural, tourist and commercial. Many remember being frightened of the body zones beating heart. In certain parts of the Dome, though, the problem was too many visitors at once.

Today, that great sweeping view is partially obscured by an Intercontinental hotel, several new blocks of flats and Ravensbourne University, which relocated to Greenwich peninsula in 2010. He told me that his zone ended up reflecting the sponsor’s very particular idea of what an exhibit about the future of work should be: “No job security, zero-hours contracts and moving from job to job as an agency worker.” Pyne’s initial plans for the zone had involved visitors “getting sacked” at the beginning, but Labour party advisers instructed him to scrap the idea because it was thought a recession might be coming.

They carried on.

We discussed its designer, Paul Smith, and the shop he had just opened in Notting Hill.
Some didn’t enjoy themselves, of course. “We had billions of pounds to spend,” says Simon Jenkins, journalist and a member of the commission, “and why? Although there had been a Labour minister on the Millennium Commission, this was a Conservative government project, and Labour looked likely to win the general election in May 1997. The Dome closed, with relatively little fanfare, at 6pm on 31 December 2000. Regeneration was one of the Millennium Commissions key considerations when choosing the site. Matt Costain, who played the lead role of Sky Boy in the Domes central show, told me that the performers training programme created an entire industry of circus and acrobatics in the UK.

Soon reports were emerging that turnout was low. When the prime minister, Tony Blair, arrived two hours later while fireworks illuminated more than 1 million people gathered in Moscows Red Square angry invitees, including many of the UKs newspaper editors, were still no closer to boarding a train to Greenwich. Most, though, want to say that the show that was eventually put on wasn’t all bad. It is remembered as a white elephant, a cautionary tale.

It will be a monumental cock-up, had been one narrative; the Daily Telegraph columnist Boris Johnson had said he would eat his hat if it wasn’t a triumph. The main engineer was Ian Liddell which came from the engineering firm Buro Happold. There were to be two enormous branches of McDonald’s, as well as a YO!


And 6.5 million people came, making it the most visited paying attraction in Britain. But on the other hand, she said, Without the politics, it would never have happened. Small wonder, then, that most of those involved now describe the contents as “ultimately unsatisfactory”, as Evans puts it. The concept fit the bill perfectly, and was phenomenally cheap at 42m.

(Nicolson quotes Robert Warner, the head of the Dome’s live events, as saying at the time that they didn’t want “a three-hour opera about Grimsby”.)

On the December afternoon when I visited, as part of an Up at the O2 tour, I climbed on to the roof of Dome, just as the sun was setting. Sheer panic?”. “It involved 42 horses,” she told me, shaking her head.

Even before it opened, the Dome had become a byword for failure. It is remembered as a white elephant, a cautionary tale. Its going well.

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