Eden project

From CollabLandWiki

• The Eden Project was established as part of the millennium celebrations of year 2000 in the UK.

• The Eden Project was designed by Nicolas Grimshaw with the concept of "mans responsibility for the ethical use, management and conservation of plants across the globe, regardless of climate or continent"

• The site was reclaimed from an existing vast china quarry, baldelva pit at st Austell on the Cornish coast England and gets up to 14000 visitors a day.

• The project not only provides thousands of visitors to the region and pumps millions into the local economy but has also become a gallery of sought for local artists work.

• The design was derived from the existing quarry its curved slopes and its haulage routes.

• Although major earth works took place in its construction not much earth was taken away or added to the site but the existing mounds were used to fill the base to create a plateau.

• The main purpose of the design was educational where the designer believed that within the future 20 years almost all materials will be made out of waist products of plants we will feed most of the world with plants and we will learn lessons such as efficient photovoltaic from studying plants.

• The old quarries existing shape is ideal for what can only be described as a horticultural theatre an exercise in horticultural and ecological expertise.

• Facing south the footprint of the site covers some 50 hectares the bowl of the quarry itself is 34 acres/15 hectares and is 60m deep.

• The site had many construction and technical problems because china clay is loose and unstable but they tried to use natural stabilization methods with the use of planting and coconut matting.

• Because of the unique shape of the quarry it created its own microclimate but also geodesic domes were used for the lush tropical and temperate planting.

• The tropical geodesic is the world’s largest greenhouse. These Biomes are among the most efficient structures ever seen, using minimal materials that are long-lived and easily recyclable.

• Water from the rainfall also was a stability and drainage problem on the site but this is collected in swales and reused for irrigation.

• Part of the design and one of the objectives is to deal with the issues of waste, water, energy and the overall impact of the day-to-day running of the whole Project and solve them in an open way that makes our buildings and our organization part of the education.