Tall Dreams!

Tall Dreams is a 6 metre sculpture, designed by Man of Steel sculptor Steve Mehdi, and made from Cort-ten  steel. The commission to create the sculpture came from Moorfield Group PLC, a London based company with a national property portfolio. They were looking for an iconic figurative work of art that would connect with the modern lines of their new building and something which would appeal to their tenants. The sculpture now stands in the courtyard of Velocity Village, a prestigious development in the heart of Sheffield City centre.

Steve had spent a number of years in New York in the ’80s ’90s, and when the call came to produce a new artwork his thoughts turned to the nights he spent looking out over the Manhattan skyline; he would often see people perched on high buildings on warm summer evenings, their feet dangling freely over the ornate rooftop pediments. The scale of the commission called for a new approach to his work, using fabrication rather than casting. The sculpture went through a number of design changes until a strong look began to emerge. Once the design was agreed with the client the drawings and maquette were sent to design engineers Performance Engineered Solutions Ltd . The small maquette model was scanned and its scale increased before the finished cad file was then sent to a fabricator, who began ‘tracing’ the software to identify every panel on the figure for laser cutting. After many months of painstaking work, beating the panels into shape and attaching them to a sub-structure the final artwork emerged from the workshop and was installed in Velocity Village.

The concept of Tall dreams predates the Yorkshire Man of Steel by a number of years but the similarities between them are striking; both figures sit on top of a column, contemplating their surroundings and engaging their audience. Physically they share certain characteristics and style:

The Yorkshire Man of Steel’s design engineers are now using the knowledge gained from creating Tall Dreams and applying it to building the 32 metre Man of Steel. This will involve a group of local companies  pooling their knowledge and resources and using innovative design solutions. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD )software are just part of the revolutionary technologies that will assist design engineers working on the project. The sculpture alone will weigh over 100 tonnes, and be 50% bigger than the Angel of the North. A huge amount of support has allowed the project to flourish as it edges closer to its overall funding target of £4.2 million pounds. You can help, click Heart of Steel   to add your name -or someone you know – to the thousands of people already supporting this wonderful project.