Monument

Blackett Street, adjacent to Metro station

1985

Parsons Polygon’ is primarily a ventilation shaft for the Metro station below and is clad with moulded terracotta tiles made from the same clay used for Eldon Square’s bricks.

The artist used the commission as an opportunity to provide a monument to Sir Charles Parsons (1854-1931) the creator of Turbinia, a steam turbine powered vessel which achieved 35 knots. The designs pressed into the clay are abstracted from Parsons’ engineering drawings creating a work which David Hamilton saw, ‘not as a statue of the man, but a symbol of his stature amongst engineers and the world at large’.