Artist defends London's Olympic tower

LONDON, May 11 (UPI) -- The artist who designed the 377-foot-tall tower for London's Olympic Park compared criticism of the work to early criticism of Paris' Eiffel Tower.

Anish Kapoor, creator of the $36.5 million ArcelorMittal Orbit tower, dismissed critics who have derided the tower as ugly, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

"You know, the Eiffel Tower was hated by everybody for a good many years -- 50 years or something like that -- and now it's a mainstay of how we understand Paris," Kapoor said. "It's controversial and that's a place to start. Discomfort is OK."

"It's not really an image; it's an experience," Kapoor told BBC Radio 4's "Today" program. "We wanted to make something that was a kind of deconstruction of the tower. Towers are almost always symmetrical -- this is an asymmetrical tower. It has a particular refusal, in a way, of a singular image. It's all about walking around it."