Tower of Now: Audio Description

Welcome to Tower of Now, a sculpture by Saad Quereshi.

This audio description is written and spoken by Martha Picken from Bradford 2025’s community trainee audio description team.

Standing at around 15 metres tall – approximately the same as three double decker buses on top of each other – this impressive sculpture showcasing a variety of architectural styles reaches up into the sky.

The entire tower is finished an industrial grey colour so in some ways the sculpture blends into its urban surroundings – but the intricate design is what makes it stand out. From a distance it is unclear what material the tower is made from, and even when up close it doesn’t become apparent until you reach out and touch it that you realise it’s carved wood painted grey.

The artist was keen for the sculpture to stand in dialogue with the architecture connecting Bradford Interchange – the arrival point of so many into the city – to the Victorian-era civic centre, and regenerated public realm connecting the two.

Many aspects of the design of the tower are reminiscent of other familiar architecture including what you might find on a mosque, such as a dome, or reflect traditional church designs, such as a church spire and patterns similar to church windows.

At the very top, the tower comes to a point, and below that there are several different sections and each one has a different design and texture. The level of detail on each section is amazing. Each archway, pattern and column has been intricately carved out of wood and the overall effect is spectacular.

The section below the point at the top balloons out into a dome with a repeated pattern of a wavy line with raised bumps along the bottom edge. Below this, a canopy reaches out in points in all directions which wouldn’t be out of place on a traditional Chinese or Japanese temple. This shelters a section below with large arched window shapes which are curved at the top and surrounded by a lace pattern. Below this is another canopy over a cylindrical section with arched windows, then underneath a further section which is made up of detailed columns surrounding what appears to be upside-down arched windows encompassed by a detailed pattern of zig zagged lines.

So far the sculpture has remained symmetrical, but the section below changes this, as a pattern of what appear to be upside-down archways sit on a spiral moving downwards, the structure getting narrower nearer the bottom.

The bottom section below this spiral is what makes the sculpture especially unique. It resembles an upside-down church spire, with the point apparently buried in the ground. The pattern carved onto this church spire is symmetrical all the way round and includes triangles with shapes in them pointing to circles with a flower pattern.

The fact that the sculpture’s base is so narrow makes it seem like it should be physically impossible for the tower to stand up which creates a really impressive overall effect.

The artist, Saad Quereshi says,

“Memory and place are central themes in my work… architecture is central to anchoring our sense of place. The process by which we identify or recall a geographical location by its built vernacular fascinates me; particularly how certain motifs such as columns and domes are common across the world, yet find such varied and distinct expression from region to region.”

Saad was born in Pakistan and moved to Bradford with his family at the age of nine. He then studied fine art in Oxford before moving to London. He comments on the way his cultural background inspired his work:

“I live across cultures, and my work examines and celebrates this diversity of experience and belief systems. I share this with thousands of British citizens, whose identity has been formed by the extraordinary variety of cultural experience that life in Britain today presents.

“Taking its architectural influences locally and from across the globe, the sculpture combines a world of visual cues and associations, inviting interpretation, yet functioning allusively to evoke a sense of place beyond itself.”

Thank you for listening to this audio description of Tower of Now.