[2] The statue rests on a Portland stone pedestal, with flanking screens and benches, by the architect Richard Norman Shaw.

[3] The 8 ft (2.4 m) 2.45m bronze statue portrays Brunel standing casually, bareheaded, with his left leg slightly forward.

The figure wears contemporary Victorian dress of frock coat, waistcoat, shirt, bow tie, and trousers, with a pair of dividers in his hands, but without the characteristic top hat or cigar in the widely recognised 1857 photograph.

The tall square Portland stone pedestal has flanking walls topped with scrolls incorporating benches below was commissioned from Shaw, and bears the inscription "ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL/ CIVIL ENGINEER/ BORN 1806 DIED 1859".

A bronze resin copy of Marochetti's statue was unveiled in 1973 in Havelock Square, Swindon, mounted on a tall cylindrical granite plinth with wider rim, resembling a smokestack or top hat, on the opening of the first stage of the Brunel shopping centre.