Spirals and spiders loom large in a current show at London's Hayward Gallery featuring Bourgeois's fabric art. The spider is another frequent motif Bourgeois used her monumental steel spider sculpture Maman dominated the Turbine Hall in London's newly opened Tate Modern in May 2000.

I'd do it in my dreams by wringing her neck.' She said she loved the spiral, and it 'represents control and freedom'. As a child, after washing tapestries in the river, I'd turn and twist and wring them… Later I'd dream of my father's mistress. 'The spiral is important to me,' she said in 1994. The late French-American artist recalled how the spiral – as a potent, occasionally violent, symbol – impressed on her from a young age, and her working life in her family's tapestry restoration business in Paris. Meanwhile, Chan Hwee Chong, a contemporary Singapore artist, makes illustrations of famous paintings including Da Vinci's Mona Lisa or Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring using a continuous spiralling line.įor Louise Bourgeois, spirals were more than a symbol to toy with – they were embedded in her psyche, representing the birth, life and rebirth cycle, and sometimes in her work referencing motherhood. Leonardo da Vinci used spirals in many of his drawings, such as those of molluscs, not to mention his double-helix spiral staircase at Chateau de Chambord in France. 'The design will help occupants to find tranquility in a busy environment – and the greenery is there to be calming or provide a little reboot,' says Voelkle.Īrtists across the ages have taken inspiration from spirals. The wellbeing and mental health of occupants were integral to the brief Spiral's biophilic design – which gives access to outdoor space and better indoor air quality – contributes to that.

Open-air garden terraces snake around the building – these double-height atriums on each floor, according to the publicity information, make a 'unique hybrid that intertwines a continuous green pathway' spiralling up.ĭominyka Voelkle, an associate at BIG NYC, the architecture firm behind The Spiral, tells BBC Culture that it has 'a very striking silhouette – modern and recognisable and yet very 'old New York', reminiscent of stepped, setback skyscrapers such as the Rockefeller Centre'. The Spiral is a 66-floor structure that tapers skyward at 66 Hudson Boulevard its build cost, including site purchase, was $3.2 billion, and at just over 1,000-ft tall, it's one of the tallest buildings in the city. They're prevalent in man-made structures in art, design and architecture, both secular and sacred – such as the 9th-Century Great Mosque of Samarra or the Vatican Museum's spiral staircase.Īnd this mesmerising form is having a moment, with the imminent launch of what promises to be an iconic new skyscraper in New York. There are various types, such as the logarithmic spiral, first described by Albrecht Durer in 1525 the Archimedean spiral, so called after the 3rd-Century BC Greek mathematician Fermat's spiral the helix and the vortex, to name a few.

Swirl symbol