Ian
priscilla 1Millennium Dome - London
October 18th 2006 05:13
The O2, still generally referred to by its former name, the Millennium Dome, is a large dome shaped building on the Greenwich peninsula in south east London.
The name was officially changed when O2 plc purchased the naming rights from the developers.
The Millennium Dome is the largest single-roofed structure in the world. Externally it appears as a large white marquee with 100 m-high yellow support towers, one for each month of the year, or each hour of the clock face, representing the role played by Greenwich Mean Time. In plan view it is circular, 365 m in diameter — one metre for each day of the year — with scalloped edges. It has become one of the United Kingdom's most recognisable landmarks.
The dome was constructed in order to hold a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millennium. This exhibition opened to the public on January 1, 2000 and ran until December 31, 2000; however the project and exhibition was the subject of considerable political controversy and never quite achieved its objectives.
The Millennium Dome is now normally closed. Since the closure of the original exhibition, several possible ways of reusing the building have been proposed and then rejected. The renaming of the dome on May 31, 2005 gave publicity to the Dome's transition into an indoor sporting arena. In this role the plan is to host the 2009 World Gymnastics Championships and the artistic gymnastics and trampolining events of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. The sports area will be complemented by a proposed substantial entertainments complex, the contents of which are still the subject of political decision and some major controversy.
*This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation Licence. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Millennium Dome.
**The first photo has been released into the public domain by its author.
***The second and third photos are licenced under the Creative Commons
Attribution ShareAlike License v. 2.5. All three photos came from the Wikipedia page for Millennium Dome.
The name was officially changed when O2 plc purchased the naming rights from the developers.
The Millennium Dome, with the Canary Wharf complex in the background, seen from the River Thames.
Aerial view of the Millennium Dome.
The dome was constructed in order to hold a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millennium. This exhibition opened to the public on January 1, 2000 and ran until December 31, 2000; however the project and exhibition was the subject of considerable political controversy and never quite achieved its objectives.
The Millennium Dome, seen from the Isle of Dogs.
The Millennium Dome is now normally closed. Since the closure of the original exhibition, several possible ways of reusing the building have been proposed and then rejected. The renaming of the dome on May 31, 2005 gave publicity to the Dome's transition into an indoor sporting arena. In this role the plan is to host the 2009 World Gymnastics Championships and the artistic gymnastics and trampolining events of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. The sports area will be complemented by a proposed substantial entertainments complex, the contents of which are still the subject of political decision and some major controversy.
*This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation Licence. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Millennium Dome.
**The first photo has been released into the public domain by its author.
***The second and third photos are licenced under the Creative Commons
Attribution ShareAlike License v. 2.5. All three photos came from the Wikipedia page for Millennium Dome.
| 57 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
Comment by Anonymous