Dirty Corner

Dirty Corner is a monumental site-specific installation by Anish Kapoor, originally created for the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan. Occupying the venue’s vast Cathedral space, the work consisted of a 60-meter-long steel structure with an entrance approximately 8 meters high. Visitors could enter the sculpture and move through its increasingly dark interior, gradually losing their visual perception of the surrounding space and relying on their other senses to navigate the work.

The entrance was conceived as a large, curved, goblet-like form that transitioned into the elongated tunnel. During the exhibition, approximately 160 cubic meters of red soil was progressively deposited around the structure, transforming its appearance and creating the impression of the steel form passing through a growing mountain of earth.

CIG was responsible for the engineering and production of the steel structure. The sculpture was constructed from 8 mm Grade A steel plate, with approximately 620 square meters of shell surface and a total weight of around 49 tonnes. CIG’s work included development of the shell plates and workshop drawings, data processing, cutting and 3D forming, fabrication and welding of the sections, sandblasting, and production of assembly templates.

Due to its scale, the sculpture was divided into sections for fabrication and assembly. The complete structure was pre-assembled at CIG’s facility in the Netherlands, allowing the individual sections and connections to be checked before the sculpture was prepared for its installation in Milan.