EUROPE	MARCH 9, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 10
	Doubts About The Dome Madonna and Child? A Dreamscape zone? What's Britain's controversial millennial edifice all about? By HELEN GIBSON /LONDON nlike the French, who tend to embrace grandiose public projects with enthusiasm, Britons take a long time to accept any new big idea. Everything from the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the 1951 Festival of Britain to the Channel Tunnel has aroused a skeptical chorus: It will never work, we don't need it, it's too expensive. But when the plans finally come to fruition, Britons often change their views--gradually, at least--and end up being rather proud of the thing after all. Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government is hoping the same will hold true for London's planned Millennium Dome, much maligned for its $1.25 billion price tag and the spacey, Disneyland-style designs for its interior. As Peter Mandelson, the minister in charge of the Dome project, said wryly last week: "If it's a success, it will never be forgotten. If it's a failure, we'll never be forgiven." For Labour, the Dome has a significance deeper than a mere celebration of the millennium: by the year 2000 another general election will be imminent, and Whitehall doesn't want to be attacked for building a white elephant. Labour is nervous about public indifference (one poll found that 77% of those surveyed intended to stay away from the Dome) and a torrent of criticism (even the project's consultative creative director, who resigned in a huff in January, said the exhibition might turn out to be "crap"). At the Dome's official launch ceremony last week, an embattled Blair begged Britons to stop trashing the project and to get behind what he said would be "the envy of the world." Now slowly rising out of the mud flats of Greenwich in east London--precisely astride the prime meridian--the structure will look something like a vast circus tent. Its 50-m-high roof is to cover eight hectares of shows and exhibits, but despite its size will weigh less than the air it contains. So far the construction consists of 12 100-m masts joined by a web of steel cables that will support the American-made, Teflon-coated, glass fiber roof to be fitted this month. No one denies that architect Richard Rogers' overall design is exciting, but critics object that the structure may be only temporary. Although renewable, the roof has a basic 25-year lifespan, and as yet there is no obvious future full-time use for the Dome. Another target of derision is what will be beneath it. In Alice-in-Wonderland style, the building was given the go-ahead in June before anyone had decided what to put in it. For months afterwards Mandelson dodged parliamentary questions on the subject, schemes were leaked and then disappeared, and arguments raged about whether a celebration of the Christian millennium should include Christian content. Last week, Britons finally found out what their $1.25 billion will buy: a little bit of everything. A show with live performers and visual effects designed by Mark Fisher, creator of sets for the Rolling Stones and U-2, will take the center of the Dome, with 13 exhibition zones around. Towering over all of it will be a naked, 45-m-high hollow human figure. A diapered infant the size of an elementary school and five stories high will be crawling close by. The sex of both is still undecided despite calls on some sides for a Madonna and Child as fitting to the anniversary. Their function, however, is hardly religious: visitors will be able to move through the adult, taking in interactive displays on human anatomy and physiology, before exiting through the right heel. Elsewhere, the Dreamscape zone will offer water rides on "beds" floating through surreal dream sequences. A nod to spirituality will be given in the Spirit Level zone featuring a glass pyramid built for contemplation. Blair's pitch and the display of models of some of the proposed zones were aimed both at the public and at corporate sponsors, who have so far pledged about half the $250 million asked of the private sector as a top-up to the $650 million coming from National Lottery funds. While it's too soon to tell whether business leaders were tempted, the unveiling did mollify a number of doubting newspaper editors who decided, if sometimes grudgingly, to support the project. But others remain unpersuaded. Architect Rogers expressed concern over the lack of a ringmaster to pull the whole thing together, and Sir Roy Strong, former director of London's Victoria and Albert Museum, complained of the failure to celebrate "things which set us apart and are dear to us," such as Dickens and Britons' love of gardens. American-born art critic Richard Dorment called for a boycott, writing in the Daily Telegraph that "I've developed an almost pathological hatred of the Dome and the whole phoney marketing culture it stands for." So will the Dome help or hinder Labour? Politicians would do well to remember that Mandelson's grandfather was the mastermind behind the 1951 Festival of Britain which, despite doubts, turned out to be immensely popular--and that Labour lost the 1951 election anyway.
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