The Marble Arch Mound or Marble Arch Hill was a temporary,

artificial hill A mound is a heaped pile of earth, gravel, sand, rocks, or debris. Most commonly, mounds are earthen formations such as hills and mountains, particularly if they appear artificial. A mound may be any rounded area of topographically higher ele ...

located next to

Marble Arch The Marble Arch is a 19th-century white marble-faced triumphal arch in London, England. The structure was designed by John Nash (architect), John Nash in 1827 to be the state entrance to the cour d'honneur of Buckingham Palace; it stood near th ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, England. It had a viewing platform on the summit and an events space inside. The hill opened to the public on 26 July 2021, with a charge, but shortly afterwards it was briefly closed after complaints from the first visitors. It re-opened in August without an entrance fee. It remained open to the public until 9 January 2022, and was subsequently dismantled.

Description

The hill was located in the north-east corner of Hyde Park, close to Marble Arch, at the western end of London's

Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and as ...

. The high hill was built from scaffolding covered with

sedum ''Sedum'' is a large genus of flowering plants in the family Crassulaceae, members of which are commonly known as stonecrops. The genus has been described as containing up to 600 species, subsequently reduced to 400–500. They are leaf succulen ...

turf and a number of trees, with 130 steps up (or a lift) to a viewing platform at the top and an events space inside. Visitors could only walk on specified walkways and metal steps, and it had a capacity of 1,000 visitors per day, with a limit of 25 at a time. At the time of the planning application, a total of 200,000 visitors were expected. It also had a shop and cafe, with an exhibition titled "Lightfield" by W1 Curates and Anthony James. The project was commissioned by

Westminster City Council Westminster City Council is the local authority for the City of Westminster in Greater London, England. The city is divided into 20 wards, each electing three councillors. The council is currently composed of 31 Labour Party members and 23 Cons ...

, hoping to boost

domestic tourism Domestic tourism is tourism involving residents of one country traveling only within that country. Such a vacation is known as a domestic vacation (British: domestic holiday or holiday at home). For large countries with limited skill in foreign lan ...

; to help speed up the return of shoppers to Oxford Street after the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

lockdown ended; and to offer views across central London, including

Battersea Power Station Battersea Power Station is a decommissioned Grade II* listed coal-fired power station, located on the south bank of the River Thames, in Nine Elms, Battersea, in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It was built by the London Power Company (LPC) ...

and

Canary Wharf Canary Wharf is an area of London, England, located near the Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Canary Wharf is defined by the Greater London Authority as being part of London's central business district, alongside Central Lo ...

The mound was designed by the Rotterdam-based architectural firm

MVRDV MVRDV is a Rotterdam, Netherlands-based architecture and urban design practice founded in 1993. The name is an acronym for the founding members: Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, and Nathalie de Vries. History Maas and Van Rijs worked at OMA, De Vr ...

. MVRDV's original plan was to cover the Marble Arch itself, but this was rejected by conservation experts who were concerned that six months of darkness might weaken the mortar joints and so a corner was removed from the hill to avoid covering the monument. Shrinking the hill also required a change from covering the hill with soil, to using the lighter sedum turf.

Cost

Huge mound going up next to Marble Arch (51240674625)

The hill was announced in February 2021 as part of a £150 million development initiative by Westminster City Council. Planning permission was sought in the same month, and construction began in May. The original forecast cost was £3.3 million; by August 2021 the total cost, including construction, operation and removal, had risen to £6 million. On 13 August 2021, the deputy leader of Westminster City Council and project lead

Melvyn Caplan Melvyn Caplan is a British Conservative politician. He has been a councillor for Little Venice since 1990. He was the leader of Westminster City Council from 1995 to 2000. Until his resignation in 2021, he was the Deputy Leader of the council an ...

resigned in the wake of the cost increase. Council leader Rachel Robathan described the almost doubling in cost as "totally unacceptable" and a review was launched to "understand what went wrong and ensure it never happens again". The review was published on 19 October 2021 and found that the failures in the project's management were "both avoidable and particularly devastating."

Opening

The attraction opened to the public on 26 July 2021. The entrance fee ranged between £4.50 and £8.00. It was described by ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' as " ookingparched and patchy, more like an ensemble of ill-matched carpet tiles than a greensward. The trees were looking skinnier and less luxurious than the computer-generated promotional images had suggested." It was compared to the hill from the children's show ''

Teletubbies ''Teletubbies'' is a British children's television series created by Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport for the BBC. The programme focuses on four differently coloured characters known as the Teletubbies, named after the television screens on th ...

'', and landscapes from computer games such as ''

The Sims ''The Sims'' is a series of life simulation video games developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. The franchise has sold nearly 200 million copies worldwide, and it is one of the best-selling video game series of all time. The games ...

'', ''

Super Mario 64 is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It was released in Japan and North America in 1996 and PAL regions in 1997. It is the first ''Super Mario'' game to feature 3D gameplay, combining traditional ''Su ...

'' and ''

Minecraft ''Minecraft'' is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before being ...

''. Some visitors complained that the hill did not match the marketing photos, with one visitor describing it as "the worst thing I’ve ever done in London", and commenting that it is not possible to view the park from the hill due to trees in the way — but it was possible to view a rubble pile. Days after opening, and following several complaints from disappointed visitors, Westminster City Council acknowledged that advertised elements of the Mound were "not yet ready for visitors", and closed ticket booking until August so that "teething problems" could be resolved, and plants could bed in and grow. MVRDV said that "working with plants is unpredictable, especially in challenging weather conditions". The first visitors to the hill were offered refunds and a free return ticket. The hill reopened on 9 August, with an announcement that entry would be free of charge for the rest of the month. In September, free entry was extended for the full duration of the hill's presence at Marble Arch. The mound drew around 250,000 visitors in total, according to Westminster Council.

Dismantling

The Mound remained open to the public until 9 January 2022, after which time a four-month dismantling process was begun at a cost of £660,000. It is intended that the trees will be distributed around Westminster and to local schools, and that other greenery will be recycled.

References

{{Reflist, refs= {{cite news , title=Mound zero: what is Marble Arch's new landmark all about? , url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jul/23/marble-arch-hill-mound-london-oxford-street , access-date=27 July 2021 , work=

, date=23 July 2021 , language=en {{Cite web, url=http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jul/24/why-the-marble-arch-mound-is-a-slippery-slope-to-nowhere, title=Why the Marble Arch Mound is a slippery slope to nowhere, date=24 July 2021, website=

{{Cite web, url=https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/marble-arch-2m-pounds-mound-open-summer-b941964.html, title=Marble Arch's £2m mound is mounting up for summer, first=Jonathan, last=Prynn, date=24 June 2021, website=

Evening Standard The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format. In October 2009, after be ...

{{cite news , last1=Burford , first1=Rachael , title=Marble Arch Mound branded London's 'worst attraction' , url=https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/visitors-marble-arch-mound-westminster-council-refunds-london-worst-attraction-b947846.html , access-date=27 July 2021 , work=

, date=27 July 2021 , language=en {{cite news , title=Man-made £2m 'Marble Arch Mound' opens to public at £8 a visit , url=https://uk.news.yahoo.com/visitors-hyde-park-man-made-mountain-tickets-143507474.html , access-date=27 July 2021 , work=

Yahoo! News Yahoo! News is a news website that originated as an internet-based news aggregator by Yahoo!. The site was created by a Yahoo! software engineer named Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such as the Associate ...

{{cite news, url=https://www.indy100.com/news/marble-arch-mound-opening-reaction-b1891273, title=Hyped £2m Marble Arch Mound opens to the public but the public are unimpressed, work=

Indy100 ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publishe ...

, date=27 July 2021, accessdate=27 July 2021 {{cite news , author=Julia Buckley , title=Marble Arch Mound: London's newest attraction is a heap of earth , url=https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/london-mound-marble-arch/index.html , access-date=30 July 2021 , work=CNN , language=en {{cite web , title=The Marble Arch Mound – Oxford Street District , url=https://osd.london/project/marble-arch-mound/ , access-date=30 July 2021 {{cite web , title=Marble Arch Mound – Oxford Street District , url=https://themarblearchmound.com/ , access-date=30 July 2021 {{cite news , title=Marble Arch Mound has a "serious message" says MVRDV in defence of attraction , url=https://www.dezeen.com/2021/07/30/marble-arch-mound-mvrdv-defence/ , access-date=30 July 2021 , work=Dezeen , date=30 July 2021 , language=en {{cite news , last1=Waywell , first1=Chris , title=Work has started on the big artificial hill at Marble Arch , url=https://www.timeout.com/london/news/work-has-started-on-the-big-artificial-hill-at-marble-arch-051321 , date=13 May 2021 , work=Time Out London {{cite news , title=Marble Arch ‘mound’ plan to lure visitors back to West End with 25m-high hill set to provide sweeping views , url=https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newslondon/marble-arch-mound-plan-to-lure-visitors-back-to-west-end-with-25m-high-hill-set-to-provide-sweeping-views/ar-BB1dIk3U , access-date=30 July 2021 , work=www.msn.com , date=16 February 2021 {{cite news , last1=Burford , first1=Rachael , title=Marble Arch Mound to open as free attraction after ‘spectacular flop’ , url=https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/marble-arch-mound-free-tickets-labour-inquiry-b949268.html , access-date=8 August 2021 , work=www.standard.co.uk , date=6 August 2021 , language=en {{cite news , title=Marble Arch Mound: Deputy leader resigns amid spiralling costs , url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-58197626 , access-date=13 August 2021 , work=BBC News , date=13 August 2021 {{cite news , last1=Edmonds , first1=Lizzie , title=Marble Arch Mound: Westminister City Council deputy resigns after cost blows out to £6m , url=https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/marble-arch-mound-westminster-city-council-deputy-melvyn-caplan-resigns-b950461.html , access-date=13 August 2021 , work=Evening Standard , date=13 August 2021 {{cite news , last1=Phillips , first1=Jacob , title=Marble Arch Mound finally torn down six months after £6 million flop opened , url=https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/marble-arch-mound-finally-torn-22780784 , access-date=18 January 2022 , work=MyLondon , date=18 January 2022 , language=en 2021 in London Artificial hills Oxford Street Tourist attractions in the City of Westminster Buildings and structures completed in 2021 History of the City of Westminster 2021 establishments in England 2022 disestablishments in England Defunct tourist attractions in London Mounds