How The World's Tallest Statue Was Built

Wrote James Coleman in Scope of Work:

I recently became aware of the Statue of Unity in Gujarat, India.

Completed in 2018, it is the world's largest statue, standing at 182 meters tall (excluding its 58 m base).

This is more than quadruple the size of the Statue of Liberty (42 m) and 50 m taller than the previous record holder, the Spring Temple Buddha in Henan, China (128 m).

The Statue of Unity honors Vallabhbhai Patel, the first Deputy Prime Minister of India and an important leader in the nation’s independence efforts.

This video gives a good overview of the statue's construction. It is basically a skyscraper shaped like a person, featuring two massive cores made from 210,000 m3 of concrete and a skeleton made from 27,000 metric tons of steel. The monument is so tall that it has two tuned mass dampers (which you can see in this video) to help mitigate wind and seismic activity in the area.

Indian sculptor Ram V Sutar meticulously crafted a 10 m reference design, which was 3D scanned and cast into 12,000 bronze panels by Chinese firm Jiangxi Tongqing Metal Handicrafts (whose foundry you can see here). This sourcing choice was not without controversy, as the monument was in part created to support a "Make In India" campaign.

The statue is made of melted-down old farm equipment.