Y2K’s Ground Zero Rises on the Thames

LONDON — Fortunately, Britain’s $1.2-billion Millennium Dome, constructed to celebrate the passage of time in the cradle of Greenwich Mean Time, will be completed on time.

At least, some people think it is fortunate. Others say it’s a big waste of time.

Still others are waiting to pass judgment until Britain’s millennium centerpiece opens for business.

All in due time.

Once derided as the country’s biggest boondoggle, the Millennium Dome apparently has won grudging acceptance, if not love, from Britons who are buying tickets to get a look under the world’s largest roof.

“Tickets are selling very strongly, ahead of expectations, exceeding weekly targets,” said Riazat Butt, a spokeswoman for the Millennium Experience Co.

The company for experiencing the millennium will not say how many of the $33 adult and $27 child tickets have been purchased, however. It will only say that tickets for Jan. 1 have been sold out and that their goal is to usher 12 million visitors through the dome in the year 2000, about three-quarters of whom are expected to be Britons.

An estimated 35,000 people will fit in the 20-acre space at any given time.

‘Symbol of British Confidence’

About 10,000 guests have been invited to the dome’s inauguration Dec. 31 so that they might greet the New Year in the astronomically correct place to be: the home of the prime meridian at zero degrees longitude and the spot for calibrating clocks in countries using the Gregorian calendar.

The celebrants are to include Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose government inherited the project from its Tory predecessors and happily ran with it. Blair has called the dome a “beacon to the world” and a “symbol of British confidence.”

The dome also has been called a lot of other less flattering things in the press: A “mushroom-like Thames-side eruption.” A “lump of Play-doh with 12 matchsticks stuck in by an idle child.” And the damning praise “jolly big.”

“It’s rather better on the inside, as most tents are,” Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover wrote last month.

The problem with the dome is that, despite all the creative hype and genuine creativity that have gone into it, it lacks a certain “wow factor.” The dome is huge. It has a taut white skin made of Teflon-coated fiberglass panels, and 100-foot yellow steel masts holding it up. It is oddly futuristic and interesting to look at in the way that, say, erector sets are. But nothing about it impels you forward, inside the dome. Nothing provokes broad grins or causes the jaw to drop in awe as does another British millennium project on the Thames--a giant Ferris wheel.

The London Eye, looming over Westminster and the city skyline at 450 feet, will be open to the public for rides after Jan. 1. It offers what Evening Standard newspaper columnist Rowan Moore called “the most simple and direct satisfaction, less anticlimactic than the eclipse and more spontaneous than the dome.” It is, he added, “something graspable and instantly comprehensible. Which the dome is not.” And which is why people are lining the banks of the Thames for a look at the wheel, but no such queues have formed outside the dome.

In fairness, the dome is farther from central London, and it is not finished. The structure is there but not the guts. The soul of the dome should be in its interior, in the 14 pavilions arranged like pieces of pie around a central arena for an audience of 10,000. None of this will be on view or possible to review until opening day.

But while the British public is reserving judgment on the Millennium Dome, corporate Britain has voted with its pocketbook. More than $250 million in private sponsorship funds needed to complete the dome has been raised, and construction may be finished ahead of time. The rest of the cost is being financed through a national lottery and ticket and merchandise sales.

Most of the pavilions are being assembled elsewhere and will be installed in the dome when they are completed. Still, a hard-hat tour of the dome yields a few clues among the cranes, scaffolding and construction crews.

Acrobats and trapeze artists can be seen practicing for the main musical and multimedia show, directed by Mark Fisher and composed by rock musician Peter Gabriel. The show, to be performed three times a day with a cast of 60, is said to portray a family traveling through time, taking inspiration from ancient mythology, the Bible and William Shakespeare.

A Body of Theme Pavilions

The theme pavilions, with New Age-sounding names such as Body, Faith, Mind, Shared Ground, Home Planet and Self-Portrait, are still skeletal.

The Body pavilion, a huge sculpture of half a man and half a woman in embrace, will offer 4,000 visitors an hour the chance to walk through a “human body” (enter through the elbow, out through the leg) and examine a beating heart.

The bodies are still wrapped in paper against the construction dust, but eventually the pink-and-gold- tile skin is supposed to shimmer in the light.

Shared Ground, meanwhile, claims to be the world’s largest structure made of recycled cardboard. There are no obvious reasons to doubt that claim.

“Observe British interior scenes: the garden shed, lounge and teenager’s bedroom,” says the Millennium Dome pamphlet. “Behind closed doors, we stamp our personalities on our spaces. In public, we’re more reserved. Experience what we could do with our communities . . . if we really joined together.”

It is tempting to imagine a bedroom decorated by the world’s teenagers, an international bedlam of discarded clothes, unfinished homework and competing music. But presumably the pavilion will offer something more enlightening.

The Faith zone, the most controversial so far, is designed like a steel spider. It will commemorate the year 2000 as a Christian anniversary and show how the religion has shaped Britain while exploring nine other major religions.

The zone will allow visitors to “pause and reflect on what faith is all about,” Adam Liversage, a Millennium Dome spokesman, said. “It is not going to be a load of patronizing lectures about what people should do. It will show how religion has shaped the last 2,000 years in conflict and peace. After all, this is why we’re all here [in the dome] 2,000 years since the birth of Christ. It would be madness not to recognize that.”

But the Millennium Dome is, primarily, about having a good time. Robots will be available to play with in the Mind zone, and a zone called Money will offer the chance to go on a million-pound spending spree without actually having to pay the bills. Self-Portrait will give the world a glimpse of how Britons see themselves, with a 300-foot-long photographic collage assembled by Scottish-born artist David Mach.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

About The Millennium Dome

It’s big: 20 acres inside, twice the size of the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, organizers say.

It’s sturdy: Uses a million square feet of fabric and could support the weight of a jumbo jet.

Ticket prices: 20 pounds (about $33) for adults and 18.50 pounds ($27) for kids.

After 2000: The dome was to be torn down after a year. Now British Prime Minister Tony Blair says that it should remain and that the government will find a use for it.