Dreamed up to drag shoppers back to Oxford Street, the £2m artificial hill is already suffering in the heat. Will it provide Instagram moments – or a discussion about global heating?
Build a hill and they will come. This, at least, is what Westminster council is betting on, having lavished £2m on a temporary mound. Rearing up at the western end of Oxford Street as a faceted green shell, looking like a landscape from a low-fi video game, the 25-metre high Marble Arch Mound is one of the more unlikely strategies for stimulating our Covid-stricken high streets.
“You have to give people a reason to come to an area,” says Melvyn Caplan, the council’s deputy leader. “They’re not just coming to Oxford Street for the shops any more. People are interested in experiences and destinations.” The pandemic has seen around 17% of stores on London’s most famous shopping street close completely.
