TYNESIDE has the Angel of the North, Manchester has its giant B of the Bang sculpture. But for drivers entering Britain’s capital, the nearest they get to a welcome is Gateway services on the M1.

Now Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, wants to proclaim to visitors the boundaries of his territory with as many as six new landmark sculptures.

A project team headed by Nicky Gavron, Livingstone’s deputy, is being set up and will be advised by Lord Rogers, designer of the Lloyd’s building and the Millennium Dome. Sir Terry Farrell, architect of the MI6 headquarters, has also discussed the plan with Gavron.

Although ideas are at an early stage, those so far suggested include giant arches or ring-like sculptures on the theme of the 2012 Olympics.

Farrell said: “It’s hard to know when you are actually in London. It might be there in the subconscious and drivers will think that a particular building or hill means they are now in London. But people do want to feel they have arrived.”

Even if an idea such as an arch is used, Livingstone’s officials are keen to avoid comparisons with bombastic monuments such as Saddam Hussein’s arch of crossed scimitars in Baghdad.

Antony Gormley, designer of the Angel of the North, said ringing the city with monuments would be outdated and suggested a light and sound display might be more “of our time”.

Transport for London, which runs the capital’s roads, has begun identifying potential sites. Sources said they were likely to be close to where the Greater London boundary intersects major routes such as the M1 in the north, the M11 to Cam-bridge, the M4 and M40 in the west and the A2 from Kent.

The ring could be completed by an “Angel of the South” suggested by planners in the borough of Croydon to rival Gormley’s northern original on the A1 at Gateshead.

The strategy emerged after officials grew concerned that routes into the capital from the rest of the country lacked drama, with the clearest indication on most arterial routes being signs showing the distance from London’s congestion charging zone.

One of London’s only attempts to create an entrance was the decision in 1999 to redesignate Scratchwood on the M1 as London Gateway.

Manchester, by contrast, has two landmarks at its approaches — the Hulme Arch from the south, and to the east the B of the Bang, a steel sculpture of an explosion as high as Nelson’s column built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

Officials said that the boundaries could be marked by anything from new signs of welcome to sculptures, depending on the funds available.

Gavron said: “London has no perimeter signage marking where it begins and ends. I am interested in looking at the potential for a visually imaginative and exciting way to change this.”

News of the mayor’s latest ambition has sparked a debate among leading designers about the form the gateways could take, with Gormley warning that the era of gateways and monumental way markers was over.

“It is the syndrome of the victory arch and smacks of totalitari-anism,” he said. “I would be worried about making a belt or a defining edge. I would rather the city were contained by the green belt than contained by a wall of monuments.”

A programme of landmarks in London’s outer limits should be “of our time”, he added, and could include light or sound installations which would “delight, intrigue and perplex” rather than traditional stone and metal monuments and sculptures. Designers should reflect London’s status as a multicul-tural “world city”, he suggested.

Farrell warned against aping “some terribly naff urban landmarks around the world”.

He said: “In Baghdad the huge cutlass swords are really quite kitsch — and pretty menacing, too.”

His idea is to use the London Olympics in 2012 as a theme for the “gateways” landmarks, with designers asked to interpret the Olympic rings and the numbers 2012.

Anish Kapoor, the artist who designed the Cloud Gate in Chicago, and Marsyas, the largest sculpture to be shown at Tate Modern, said: “Symbolically, you would find a kind of language that denotes entry. Anything from a tree-lined avenue to an arch. They are the traditional ways which one could reinvigorate in a contemporary way.”

Rogers, chairman of the mayor’s Design for London advisory group which is working on the plan, said the capital’s suburbs had for too long lacked the structures that give the city centre its identity.

“I strongly believe that art lifts the social conscience and the spirit,” he said. “We in the centre have Nelson’s column — a classic marker which says you’ve arrived.

“Now the suburbs should have their own identity. The obvious gateways are the transportation hubs which should be really great places to be. Part of that is having some really good art.”

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