14 December 2021, Michael Bleby, The Australian Financial Review - Life & Leisure Spiderman is coming to Rozelle. Well, if not the Marvel action hero himself, a web-like sculpted steel framework, weaving and twisting around three giant ventilation towers above inner-western Sydney’s new WestConnex interchange.
The metal tendrils, along with panels of vertical greenery and zinc patterns perforating the shell of 30-metre-high chimneys, are intended to break up their bulk and soften the structures channelling fumes out of the underground highway network below.
“The idea is to create an interweaving sculptural framework like an organic growth, where nature is taking over the built form as though an old ruin has now been consumed by this new natural system,” says Chris Fox, the artist behind the work.
The towers will stand over a nine-hectare public parkland that will be created adjacent to Rozelle Bay light rail stop and above the underground interchange, a network of roads connecting Sydney’s extended M4 and the New M5 to the Anzac Bridge and Victoria Road.
Fox, also known for the Interloop artwork of suspended 1930s wooden escalator treads in the York Street escalator hall of Sydney’s Wynyard railway station, has been working with contractors John Holland and CPB and says the extra cost created by the artwork is miniscule.
