It took husband-and-wife designers 13 years to get this 162m-tall ‘vertical pier’ built in Brighton – but is it a feat of architecture or a corporate branding post?

To some it’s the Brighton Pole, to others it is Sussex’s supersized lollipop. Naughtier minds have dubbed it “the cock and ring”. Before it has even opened, the south coast’s new observation tower has gathered a gaggle of nicknames – and you can see why, when its creators insist on calling it the British Airways i360.

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“The ‘i’ stands for intelligence, innovation and integrity,” says David Marks, one half of Marks Barfield, the husband-and-wife architects behind the London Eye and now creators of the British seaside’s latest surreal spectacle. It might also stand for incredible – that their madcap scheme ever got off the ground.

First imagined in 2003, it has taken the indomitable duo 13 years of planning, fundraising and cajoling to realise their dream, which now stands on the seafront promenade like a great factory chimney, its slender shaft visible for miles around, the tallest structure in the county.

Sited on the very same spot as the famous West Pier, whose burnt-out iron frame still stands out to sea as a rusting wreck, the £46m project has been conceived as a “vertical pier”, whisking 200 visitors a time up to a height of 137 metres in its futuristic glass pod, for £15 a go.

From the top – on a clear day – you can apparently see the tip of the Isle of Wight, 40 miles away. No such luck on my visit. On the hazy afternoon of my 20-minute “flight”, the sparkling white cliffs of the Seven Sisters were a dull grey smudge in the distance, while the rolling Sussex Downs dissolved into a blur. But even on a dull day, the city unfolds beneath you in surprising ways.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest British Airways i360 will open on 4 August. Photograph: British Airways i360

Brighton’s steeply sloping topography becomes ever more apparent as you glide upwards, as does the pattern of buttery Regency terraces, framing squares that open on to the waterfront to capitalise on views of the sea. The merry hotchpotch of the seafront’s bandstands, paddling pools and beach volleyball courts then slowly flattens out into a train-set landscape, until the Palace Pier is reduced to nothing but a spindly finger of twinkling lights.

It makes you wish for the simpler age of balloons and baskets, and a gulp of fresh air

The experience is similar to a tethered hot-air balloon ride, the kind that used to entertain Victorian crowds at the nearby St Ann’s Well Gardens in Hove – except you’re trapped inside a glass capsule, cut off from the sounds and smells of the seaside. With the view partly distorted by ripples and reflections in the double-curved glazing (which might prove more of an issue at night, when the accompanying cocktail bar glows into action), it can make you wish for the simpler age of balloons and baskets, and for a gulp of fresh air.

Like the London Eye, and much of Marks Barfield’s work, there is a consciously hi-tech feel to the whole affair, which doesn’t sit so comfortably with the seaside setting. The effect is most jarring at ground level, where the big metal shaft emerges from a rather clumsy glass and steel box on the beach, which houses catering, retail and corporate entertainment suites. Higher up, an alluring sun deck is sealed off from the street by a big glass fence and set back behind an obligatory row of anti-terror concrete blocks, not very well disguised as benches.

In a more welcome move, the pier’s original toll booths have been lovingly recreated and erected at either corner of the deck, serving as ticket office and cafe, but this touch of charming seaside Victoriana only sets the surrounding security paraphernalia into further relief. The design is more airport than kiss-me-quick seaside fun, replete with British Airways-branded deckchairs, parasols and cabin-crew uniforms.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A drone image of the British Airways i360 on the Brighton seafront. Photograph: Visual Air

This clunkiness might be surprising given the project’s lengthy gestation, but the architects have clearly been focused on other things: they are also the clients for the whole endeavour, and have patented an entirely new mechanism for their ride, based on a cable-car winch (the Heath Robinson world of gears and cranks is pleasingly visible through a window in the floor).

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“After the London Eye, we were inundated with requests for wheels from all over the world,” says Marks. “But there aren’t many places where it makes sense. You need a good view and enough visitors to make it stack up.”

The idea for the i360 came about as a cheaper alternative to a big wheel, costing around a third the price of an Eye. Keen to test the idea at home before exporting it, they looked at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham, before settling on Brighton, which proved most receptive to the idea. As with the Eye, the project was intended to be entirely privately funded. Having sold their stake in the London attraction 10 years ago, the architects ploughed the proceeds into the i360, lined up backers, won planning permission in 2006 – and then the financial crisis hit.

“We had just bought all the steel for the tower,” says Julia Barfield. “Then the sky fell in.”

The following years were spent approaching more than 150 banks and investors in vain, until a couple of pension funds finally showed interest. The council was approached to provide a guarantee but realised if it was shouldering the risk, it should be getting the benefit too. The resulting deal is a £36m loan from the council, borrowed from the Public Works Loan Board, in return for a £1m annual profit from the attraction – if all goes well.

“This is a true public-private partnership,” says Barfield. “The proceeds are going back into the community rather than to a bank or venture capitalist – thanks to the crisis.” Marks estimates the loan should be paid back within 17 years, and the attraction is projected to add between £13m and £25m a year to the city’s economy. The site is leased from the West Pier Trust, providing the charity with £100,000 annual income, inching the long-standing dream of rebuilding the pier closer to reality.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘A sword plunging down from the heavens’ ... the i360 at night. Photograph: British Airways i360

To opponents, it may still be the iSore, a Chernobyl chimney despoiling the beach. It could have been designed to feel less like a corporate entertainment lounge on a stick. But by night, when it glows like a sword plunging down from the heavens, it is hard to resist. Come the Pride festival this weekend, when the i360’s programmable LED lights will form a dazzling rainbow, there might prove to be no better symbol for the city than this great throbbing shaft.

• The British Airways i360 opens on 4 August.