Atomium

About

The Atomium is a monument in the Heyselpark in the north of Brussels. It was delivered in 1958 as part of the Expo 58. The structure is a steel construction consisting of nine spheres with a diameter of 18 meters each.

The spheres together form the cubic spatial centered crystal structure of iron, enlarged 165 billion times. The building was designed by engineer André Waterkeyn. After a restoration in 2004, it is coated with stainless steel plates.

Five of the nine bulbs are open to the public with in the upper sphere a restaurant with panorama over the city. The structure is counted among the modernist architecture. One of the reasons why the structure of an atom was chosen is that the world was under the spell of emerging nuclear power.

The uranium won at the time in Belgian Congo played a crucial role in this. The pictured crystal structure is tilted positioned. It is a cube that balances on one of the vertices.

Each sphere has to represent an iron atom that actually makes the building a molecule. The name is a porte-manteau word in which the terms atom and aluminum are combined. In...