Statue of Unity Case Study: Structure, Bronze Cladding and Construction

The Statue of Unity is a 182 m bronze-clad statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on Sadhu Bet, a rock island in the Narmada river downstream of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat. The sculptor Ram V Sutar designed the figure, a team including Michael Graves & Associates, Meinhardt, Turner and Arup designed and engineered it, and Larsen & Toubro (L&T) built it. It was inaugurated on 31 October 2018. This case study explains how a sculpture this tall is made to stand: two concrete cores, a steel frame and a bronze skin, designed for wind and earthquakes like a tall building.

Statue of Unity: the facts

Sculptor: Ram V Sutar, working with his son Anil Sutar on the models.

Design and project management (selected 2011): Turner Project Management India, Michael Graves & Associates (architect) and Meinhardt India (engineer).

Contractor and its team: Larsen & Toubro (design and construction), Woods Bagot (executing architect), Arup (engineer of record). Also RWDI (wind tunnel), GERB (dampers), Eversendai (steel), TQ Art Foundry, China (bronze), a Tata Egis joint venture (proof consultant).

Client: Government of Gujarat, through Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd (SSNNL). CTBUH lists the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Rashtriya Ekta Trust as owner.

Location: Sadhu Bet island, about 3.2 km (L&T) or 3.5 km (Michael Graves; Trimble) downstream of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, Kevadia, Narmada district, Gujarat.

Years: announced 2010; EPC work order 21 October 2014; inaugurated 31 October 2018.

Size: statue 182 m (CTBUH: 181.9 m, 597 ft, to tip); viewing gallery at chest level, given as about 135 m (L&T, CTBUH) or 153 m (Ministry of Tourism).

Status: open to visitors, with a museum in the podium.

Where to see the real drawings. Arup's project page shows the structure, and the design team's 2015 CTBUH paper by William Howell, Jairam Panch, Mandar Nadkarni and James Wisniewski has core wall elevations (members only; excerpt on ArchitectureLive). Our guide on how to do an architecture case study shows how to turn them into sheets.

The brief and the client

Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, announced the plan in 2010 (Prakhar Gupta, Swarajya, 31 October 2018). It was a Gujarat government project, implemented by SSNNL, a state undertaking.

The brief was bigger than the statue. Michael Graves' office described a 2,200-acre preserve along the Narmada, with the statue as its first phase, a bridge to the mainland, a visitors' centre and a hotel and convention centre (Michael Graves, 7 July 2015). L&T lists a museum, memorial garden, bridge, 5 km road and administrative complex among what it built (L&T release, 28 May 2019).

Procurement ran in two steps. A joint venture of Turner, Michael Graves & Associates and Meinhardt was selected in 2011 for design, project management and construction management (CTBUH 2015 paper, excerpt). Rakesh Kaul writes that this team produced a "basis of design" for an EPC contractor to develop and build; Karen Nichols of Michael Graves Architecture & Design described the aim as a concept detailed enough for an EPC team to execute (Swarajya, 27 February 2019). SSNNL invited the EPC tender on 2 August 2013 and issued the work order to L&T on 21 October 2014, according to a Rajya Sabha written reply of 30 November 2016 (PIB).

Statue of Unity architect, sculptor and builder: who did what

"Who is the architect" has more than one answer, because different people designed the figure and the structure.

The figure: Ram V Sutar and his son Anil modelled it, taking Sutar's statue of Patel at Ahmedabad airport as the prototype (Kaul). Gupta reports an 18 ft bronze model shown at Karamsad for public reaction, then a 30 ft model, then a full-size digital model. Kaul adds that Michael Graves' office brought in the US digital sculptor Joseph Menna, and that the face and clothing were adjusted to read well from far away.
The concept and basis of design: Michael Graves & Associates (architect) and Meinhardt (engineer), under Turner as project manager.
The design as built: L&T, with Woods Bagot as executing architect and Arup as structural and mechanical engineer (Kaul). CTBUH lists Michael Graves & Associates and Sutar as design architect, Meinhardt for structural design and Arup as engineer of record (CTBUH Skyscraper Center).
Construction: L&T's Buildings and Factories business (L&T release, 28 October 2014), with Turner International providing construction management (The Construction Index, 31 October 2018).

Site and context: a rock island below a dam

Sadhu Bet is a small rocky island in the Narmada riverbed facing the dam (Ishita Mishra, Governance Now, 6 October 2017). Arup names two main constraints: soft, flood-prone ground and high winds from the dam. Gupta notes the island was reachable by land for about eight months a year; a rock bridge crossed the shallow water and a temporary Bailey bridge served when the river ran high.

The setting also shaped the wind design. RWDI, which ran the wind tunnel tests, cites the statue's slenderness, its complex shape and its windy, mountainous terrain as the main challenges (RWDI, 10 December 2018).

Concept: a statue that is structured like a tower

A bronze statue of normal size can be a self-supporting shell. At 182 m the design separates the image from the structure: the figure is a skin, and inside it is a structure much like a tall building's, with concrete cores, a steel frame and lifts. CTBUH classes it as a tower, not a building.

The pose made this harder. Patel is shown walking, and the stride leaves a gap of about 6.4 m (Swarajya) or 6.5 m (Trimble, 28 October 2021) between the feet, so everything comes down through two legs. Kaul notes the figure is thinner at the base than higher up, the reverse of a normal tower, and L&T says its width-to-height ratio went beyond what existing technical norms provided for.

Plan and section: concrete cores, steel frame, bronze skin

Arup describes the structure in three parts:

Twin oval reinforced concrete cores rise from the foundations, through the feet, to the shoulders. They stabilise the statue and carry the lifts to the viewing gallery at the chest. Gupta gives the towers as 127 m high, rising to chest level; Arup says to the shoulders.
A three-dimensional steel framework connects the cores to the bronze façade modules. Trimble describes tertiary members that support the bronze cladding, fixed to the main steel structure.
The bronze skin, about 600 large panels in 27 rings, on flexible joints so the statue can move with temperature and wind.

Schematic section of the Statue of Unity: a simplified standing figure on a podium, with two tall concrete cores rising from the foundations through the legs to the shoulders, lifts inside the cores, a viewing gallery band at chest level, a tuned mass damper at the top of each core, steel framework filling the space between cores and the outer bronze skin, and a gap between the feet; a plan cut through the torso showing two oval cores, radiating steel trusses and the bronze skin; and four steps of cladding: cast, weld into macro panels, test-fit in rings, lift and fix — The statue works like a tall building with a sculpted skin: concrete cores carry it, steel frames hold the bronze. Diagram: MOA

L&T describes a star-shaped base covering Sadhu Hill; the Ministry of Tourism says the museum in it covers Patel's life and the making of the statue (Incredible India).

The viewing gallery height: two figures

L&T and Trimble give 135 m, and CTBUH an observatory height of 134.9 m; the Ministry of Tourism gives 153 m. All put it at chest level, for up to 200 people. No source we found explains the difference, so quote the source with the number.

Structure: wind, earthquakes and the dampers

Wind. RWDI tested the design in its Canadian wind tunnel and in its tunnel in Thiruvananthapuram. It first tested a model of the surrounding topography, then models of the statue for structural and cladding wind loads, and checked pedestrian comfort at the visitors' centre. The work covered gusts up to 180 km/h. Other accounts give different figures (Gupta reports almost 220 km/h); we use 180 km/h because it comes from the wind engineer.

Earthquakes. Trimble reports design for an earthquake of magnitude 6.5 at a depth of 10 km within a 12 km radius; L&T and the Ministry of Tourism also give magnitude 6.5.

Damping. Arup fitted two tuned mass dampers, one on each core, to reduce vibration and limit the effects of seismic activity; Kaul places them above chest height. The Ministry of Tourism and Gupta give each as 250 tonnes, and CTBUH credits GERB Vibration Control Systems for damping. A heavy mass tuned to the structure's own frequency moves against its sway; our Taipei 101 case study shows a damper that visitors can see.

What the Statue of Unity is made of: materials and quantities

L&T's 2019 release gives these quantities:

Material	Quantity (L&T)	Where it went
Concrete	210,000 m³	Foundations, podium and the two cores
Reinforcing steel	18,500 t	The concrete work
Structural steel	6,500 t	The frame between cores and skin
Bronze cladding	1,700 t	The skin, about 6,500 panels

Other published figures differ (Gupta also lists about 1,850 t of bronze cladding), so treat any single number as approximate. Gupta gives the bronze plate as 8 mm thick.

The Statue of Unity seen from the approach walkway: a bronze-clad standing figure of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in a long shawl and dhoti, on a red stone podium with a patterned facade, between two rows of tall white light poles, with a few visitors small at the bottom of the frame — The bronze skin reads as a grid of panels; the podium below houses the museum. Photo: Snehrashmi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why the panel counts differ

The counts describe two stages. Gupta reports about 7,000 plates consolidated into 550 pieces; Arup describes 2 m by 2 m panels welded to light steel trusses to make about 600 panels of about 6 m by 5.5 m. Thousands of small cast plates became a few hundred large panels before lifting.

Construction: how it was built

Casting the bronze. Gupta reports that 15 major Indian bronze foundries were surveyed and found unable to take the job, so the cladding was cast in China using 3D scanning and CNC machining. Governance Now names it as the TQ Art Foundry of Jiangxi Tongqing in Nanchang.

Steel. Eversendai fabricated and erected the steelwork, modelled in Tekla. Trimble says about 70 clashes between the main steel and the tertiary members were resolved before fabrication, and every assembly had to fit the galvanising bath.

Assembly. Kaul describes panels assembled and test-fitted on the ground in rings, then craned into place; the double curvature of every segment was the hardest part. Arup says the face, hands and feet were assembled in situ, and that off-site prefabrication cut installation time by more than half against traditional methods. L&T says every bronze panel was RFID-tagged to ease assembly.

Time and people. L&T says 33 months; Trimble says 34. Gupta dates the start to May 2015, with over 3,000 workers including 300 L&T engineers. In October 2017 Governance Now reported the structure at about knee height.

Timeline of the Statue of Unity from 2010 to 2022: plan announced in 2010, design and project management team chosen in 2011, EPC tender invited on 2 August 2013, work order to L&T on 21 October 2014, work on site from May 2015, the bronze skin at about knee height in October 2017, inauguration on 31 October 2018 and a CTBUH award in 2022; below, five steps of work on the island: access, base, cores, steel, bronze — Key dates as official and named sources give them, and the order in which the island site was built. Diagram: MOA

Statue of Unity cost in rupees: the official figures

Two figures are on the record from the client and the contractor:

Rs 2,989 crore: the value of the EPC order L&T announced on 28 October 2014 for the design and construction of the statue (L&T).
Rs 3,060.88 crore: the total "likely to be spent on the project", given in the Rajya Sabha on 30 November 2016 by Dr Mahesh Sharma, Minister of State for Culture and Tourism, on information from SSNNL. Of this, Rs 2,332 crore was for construction of the statue and Rs 657 crore for operation and maintenance for 15 years after completion, both awarded to L&T. Project management consultancy (Rs 55.63 crore) went to a consortium of foreign firms and proof consultancy (Rs 16.25 crore) to a joint venture including Tata Egis (PIB; text as reproduced by IndianBureaucracy, 3 December 2016).

The construction and maintenance parts add up to L&T's Rs 2,989 crore. Press totals such as "over Rs 3,050 crore" are not official figures.

Reception

The statue received an Award of Excellence for Best Tall Non-Building in the 2022 CTBUH Awards (Arup; CTBUH).

The project has also been debated. On the day of the inauguration, Rahul Bedi reported in The Irish Times (31 October 2018) that local farmers protested that they had not been paid adequately for land acquired by the state, and that tribal communities who said they had been displaced by the project called the spending wasteful. That report carried no government response to those claims. The casting of the bronze in China was also reported while the work was under way (Governance Now, October 2017). We record these as dated reports and take no position.

What designers in India can take from it today

This is our reading, not the design team's.

Separate the image from the structure. The figure is a cladding problem and the cores are a tower problem. The same split helps on any sculpted or free-form façade: fix the structure first, then hang the shape on secondary and tertiary steel.
Test the skin, not only the frame. RWDI measured cladding wind loads as well as structural ones. On a tall or exposed site, ask for cladding pressures from a wind study rather than code values for a simple box.
Design for fabrication limits. A galvanising bath set the size of steel assemblies. Find the limits of the shop, truck and crane before you fix a panel grid.
Plan site access around the monsoon. A rock bridge and a temporary Bailey bridge kept an island site working; river and hill sites need that thinking at tender stage. For wind on a much taller structure, see our Burj Khalifa case study.

Visiting the Statue of Unity

The Ministry of Tourism's Incredible India page lists opening hours of 8:00 am to 6:00 pm and says the statue is closed on Mondays. The nearest major airport is Vadodara and the nearest railway station is Kevadia (KDCY). Check before you travel, as hours can change for events.

Studying a structure like this for a thesis or a competition? Find architects and engineers on MOA who work on large public projects.

FAQ

Who is the architect of the Statue of Unity?

The figure was designed by the sculptor Ram V Sutar. The concept and basis of design came from a team of Michael Graves & Associates (architect), Meinhardt (engineer) and Turner (project manager). L&T designed and built it as EPC contractor, with Woods Bagot as executing architect and Arup as engineer of record.

Who built the Statue of Unity and in which year?

Larsen & Toubro built it. The work order was issued on 21 October 2014 and the statue was inaugurated on 31 October 2018. L&T says it took 33 months to build.

What is the Statue of Unity made of?

Two reinforced concrete cores carry the load, a structural steel frame ties them to the surface, and the surface is bronze cladding. L&T gives 210,000 m³ of concrete, 18,500 t of reinforcing steel, 6,500 t of structural steel and 1,700 t of bronze cladding.

What is the height of the Statue of Unity in metres and feet?

182 m. CTBUH gives 181.9 m, or 597 ft, to the tip. The viewing gallery is given as about 135 m by L&T and CTBUH, and 153 m by the Ministry of Tourism.

What was the cost of the Statue of Unity in rupees?

L&T's EPC order was worth Rs 2,989 crore (October 2014). A Rajya Sabha reply of 30 November 2016 put the total likely spend on the project at Rs 3,060.88 crore, including Rs 2,332 crore for construction and Rs 657 crore for 15 years of operation and maintenance.

On which river is the Statue of Unity?

The Narmada. It stands on Sadhu Bet island, downstream of the Sardar Sarovar Dam near Kevadia in Narmada district, Gujarat.

Sources

Arup: Statue of Unity (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
CTBUH Skyscraper Center: Statue of Unity (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Larsen & Toubro: L&T Construction to build Statue of Unity, 28 October 2014 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
DeshGujarat: L&T-built Statue of Unity enters the 2019 World Architecture News Awards (L&T release), 28 May 2019 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Press Information Bureau: Construction of Statue of Unity (Rajya Sabha written reply, 30 November 2016) (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
IndianBureaucracy: Construction of Statue of Unity, 3 December 2016 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Swarajya, Prakhar Gupta: How the Statue of Unity overcame design and engineering challenges, 31 October 2018 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Swarajya, Rakesh Kaul: The making of the Statue of Unity: an untold story, 27 February 2019 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
ArchitectureLive: Statue of Unity, Gujarat, India (excerpt of the CTBUH 2015 paper by Howell, Panch, Nadkarni and Wisniewski), 1 November 2018 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Michael Graves Architecture & Design: Statue of Unity design moves forward, 7 July 2015 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
RWDI: World's tallest statue tested in RWDI's wind tunnel, 10 December 2018 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Trimble, Swata Sarkar: Statue of Unity stands tall with Tekla, 28 October 2021 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Governance Now, Ishita Mishra: The tall leader, 6 October 2017 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
The Construction Index: L&T celebrates inauguration of record-breaking statue, 31 October 2018 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Ministry of Tourism, Incredible India: Statue of Unity (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
The Irish Times, Rahul Bedi: India unveils world's biggest statue amid protests, 31 October 2018 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)