Then Britain's tallest sculpture, Thomas Heatherwick's monument to the 2002 Commonwealth games, B of the Bang, was always designed to make headlines. Today's announcement that it will be dismantled is a sad end to a project that consistently found itself on front pages for all the wrong reasons.
Wed 11 Feb 2009 12.22 EST First published on Wed 11 Feb 2009 12.22 EST
It was British sprinter Linford Christie who coined the phrase "B of the Bang", that inspired artist Thomas Heatherwick. The sculpture was commissioned as a monument to the 2002 Commonwealth games
An early computer-generated image of B of the Bang. The sculpture was Britain's tallest at the moment of its construction: standing higher and at a greater angle than the Leaning Tower of Pisa
An engineer working on B of the Bang at the AK Heavy Engineering factory in Sheffield in 2004. The project quickly fell behind schedule and costs began to spiral
A crane hoists part of B of the Bang into position outside the City of Manchester Stadium. The various sections of the sculpture were driven to the site under police escort
Scaffolding supports the half-completed B of the Bang. The sculpture eventually came in two years behind schedule and at a cost of £1.42m - twice as much as originally planned
Photograph: Paul Burrows/Manchester Evening News Syndication
Thomas Heatherwick stands in front of the completed B of the Bang on 9 December 2004, the night the floodlights were turned on for the first time. His studio would eventually pay Manchester city council £1.7m in an out-of-court settlement over the subsequent safety problems
The installation came to be known locally as KerPlunk after its resemblance to the children's game. In May 2006, nine more spikes were removed for safety tests amid fears that the sculpture might pose a risk to passersby
