The 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron was used for the Olympic flame during the Summer Olympics and Paralympics of London 2012. The cauldron was designed by Thomas Heatherwick and described as "one of the best-kept secrets of the opening ceremony": until it was lit during the Olympics ceremony, neither its design and location, nor who would light it, had been revealed. For the Olympics it consisted of 204 individual 'petals', and for the Paralympics 164, one for each competing nation.
Commission and design
British designer Thomas Heatherwick was chosen by Danny Boyle to design the cauldron for the 2012 London Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games (the same design would serve both). Heatherwick was a highly regarded designer, responsible for the first prize-winning "Seed Cathedral" at the 2010 Shanghai Expo, and the New Routemaster bus introduced in London in February 2012; Boyle was an admirer of his B of the Bang sculpture in Manchester, saying of it 'I loved it so much; it's a tragedy they took it down in 2009 ... These public sculptures breathe life into you.'
The brief was that the cauldron should be something that connected all the nations, with the idea of them each bringing a constituent part of it, and also have a story or narrative. It was to be of a human scale, and to be placed among the people in the stadium rather than towering over it. It was also to be transient, like the coming-together of nations during each Games.
Heatherwick said “When Danny Boyle asked us to do this we felt this huge responsibility. We asked people: ‘Which cauldron do you remember?’ And the answer was: none. Our role was to design a 'moment': how could we make this moment manifest in the object? We didn't just want to make a bowl on a stick.” He was also keen to avoid the competitive aspect of designs for the previous Olympics: "We were aware that cauldrons have been getting bigger, higher and fatter as each Olympics has happened and we felt that we shouldn't try to be even bigger than the last ones." Heatherwick and his team spent two months researching and examining ideas, including a weekend spent looking at all previous Olympic cauldron designs.
Another important part of the brief was "Whatever you do, no moving parts". This was due to the failure of the cauldron at the 2010 Winter Olympics at Vancouver, when one of the four moving parts of the cauldron had failed to work. Heatherwick said “When we proposed the most moving parts ever in an Olympic cauldron, we were nervous and feeling a bit guilty about that. But the same man who’d said that to us was the first person to say yes.”
Heatherwick wanted the cauldron to be a focal point, like an altar in a church, and he described it as symbolising "the coming together in peace of 204 nations for two weeks of sporting competition ... a representation of the extraordinary, albeit transitory, togetherness that the Olympic Games symbolise" The Olympic cauldron comprised 204 separate copper 'petals', and the Paralympic one 164 – one petal from each of the competing nations.
Production
Production began in January 2012 in the workshops of Tockwith, near Harrogate-based firm Stage One. Each 3mm thick petal was unique: designed individually using 3D modelling, hand beaten from copper sheeting, and polished by skilled craftsmen. Each was hand-beaten over its own individual MDF former and took eight hours to produce. The petals were inscribed with the name of the competing country and "The XXX Olympiad – London 2012". Three full sets were made: for Olympic and Paralympic cauldrons, with a third for rehearsals and testing. The work on the cauldron at Stage One took 25,000 man hours.