Londoners Magazine

The shortlist for a new Kent hilltop landmark, being dubbed by people with no imagination as the “Angel of the south”, was revealed yesterday. Check out the designs here.

Five artists are competing to use their designs for the structure, which is due to be constructed by 2010. It will overlook Kent’s Ebbsfleet valley, which is currently undergoing massive regeneration (read: urbanisation).

Here’s a breakdown of the designs that are in the running to preside over Ebbsfleet:

Mark Wallinger, a Turner Prize winner, plans to build a huge white horse, 33 times life size. It is intended to hark back to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of carving chalk horses into the countryside. However, Wallinger’s model is considerably more realistic than the Anglo-Saxons’ version, and risks terrifying small children and convincing the infirm that they’ve become trapped in some sick version of Gulliver’s Travels.

Another Turner Prize winner, Richard Deacon, is proposing a nest of steel latticework outlining 26 interconnecting polyhedrons. In other words, it looks like a chunk of a giant metal beehive, which obviously is the first thing that would spring to mind when considering a hilltop landmark in Kent. But it’s art, so you’re obliged to like it.

Sculptor Christopher Le Brun’s idea is to build a massive white wing, surrounded by a halo-like disc. It’s both a reference to Mercury (or Hermes, if you’re more into the Greek pantheon), the ancient God of messengers and trade, and the closest design that could be described as angelic.

French artist Daniel Buren has gone all futuristic and designed an impressive-looking “signal” tower, with a single beam of light shooting up into the sky.

Finally, yet another Turner Prize winner (how many of these do they give out?), Rachel Whiteread, has designed a mountain of rubble with a little white house on top. Well, we say designed, but can you really design rubble? Experts agree that this is the kind of question that makes a news story great.

Whatever you think of the idea, and whoever emerges victorious when the winner is announced later this year, we can all agree it’s nice that finally something interesting is happening in Kent.

Check out the BBC’s video report on the shortlist here.