It is sometimes overlooked when you visit Eden that due to its organic nature, the space is constantly changing with plants growing and rainforest changing, along with the constant planning of new builds and additions to the space. People see it as a finished article, as a static exhibit of botanical excellence. Many people overlook the opportunities for further transformation of the space and the potential that the project presents.

“Some people used to ask why the Eden Project continued to be so named, long after it was completed and opened. Should it not become the Eden Center? But that would be to suggest that it was a finite object, which was never the intention. There is no once-and-for-all version.”

“If you regard it as science fiction turned fact, in the service of nature, then 2001 was a singularly appropriate time for its opening, being the year of Kubrick’s Space Odyssey. Like that film, it is an open-ended proposition.” (Pearman, Hugh. ‘The Architecture of Eden’ 2002)

I have derived a cycle that can be applied to the transformation of the Bodelva pit from Foucault’s ‘Dispositif’ Theory.
Foucault uses 3 points to explore complex situations:
1 - Establish and ‘emergency’ or ’situation’
2 - Establish ‘rules’, ‘plan’ or ’strategy’
3 - Develop a ‘pattern’
These can be mapped to the cycles I have demonstrated below in that the ’situation’ is the decay or lack of use of the space, the ‘rules’ are the plans for the redevelopment and the ‘pattern’ is the cycle itself which restarts itself. This could also be applied to the redevelopment of many spaces.

During my recent visit to Eden I had chance to explore the transformation of the space from the clay pit it once was. There was a series of images documenting the transformation from the day the pit was first acquired to the grand opening right the way through to present day.

Below are the photos from my recent visit to Eden. I tried to take photos that emphasised the transformation of the space from clay pit to multiple thriving environments, things that you wouldnt expect to find within a clay pit…and there are some random ones thrown in for good measure.
You can check all my photos out on flickr.

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I had a go at exploring the space in google earth, I hoped, somewhat naively, that there would be some glorious 3D models of the domes and some in depth mapping of the space. Sadly this was not the case, although when I started playing with the terrain functions I could get a detailed view of the pit and the terrain around it. This allowed me to explore the space from a completely different angle to what is possible from a normal visit to Eden. You can see how the pit has affected the land around it and how Eden’s space is confined by the rim of the pit.

It is a question that has crossed my mind each time I have visited Eden and while conducting research. Why place what is arguably one of the modern wonders of the world in a forgotten valley of Cornwall? Well according to Sir Nicholas Grimshaw (the lead architect of Eden) there are many valid reasons for this choice. The first reason is due to the climate, as Cornwall is the most southerly county in the UK it is therefore the warmest and this can amount to “considerable energy savings” (The Architecture of Eden, 2002). Another is due to Cornwall’s history as a county of ports. Many 18th and 19th century sea voyages brought many new botanical species to England, with the first ‘port of call’ (no pun intended) being Cornwall. This culminated in these exotic plant samples finding their way into the gardens of country houses in and around Cornwall. The third and possibly the most obvious reason is due to Cornwall’s tourism industry. Every year thousands of people descend on Cornwall from all over Britain for summer breaks offering a guaranteed revenue to successful tourist attractions.

I have just finished building and uploaded the homepage for the spotjam website…looks good. There will be a few odd tweeks here and there and obvioulsy the rest of the site will follow but for now its here

After our meeting today we decided on a final logo for the company. Everyone is pleased with it…which is nice!

Adam and I are now cracking on with the website branding and should hopefully have a live company site by the end of next week, fingers crossed!

Just a quick update on progress…

So the games project is steaming ahead with some pace now. We have done so much in so little time its scary how organised we are with this! Aside from the group work such as brainstorming, decision making and the like, I have been working on the branding of the company for the website and any print materials. I am nearly finished with the logo and have got some colour schemes ready for a team meeting tomorrow to discuss. The potential logo is below.

I’ve been reading ‘Eden’ by Tim Smit so to get a glimpse of what eden is about and its history etc. There are some interesting points about the geology of the Bodelva site where Eden is situated. The Eden project is sited within a disused china clay mine near St Blazey which produced fine white clay for the porcelain industry and then later for the paper industry. The refinement process for the clay involved filtering out all the sand and hardcore that was mined with the raw clay. This produced 17 tonnes of sand per 1 tonne of white clay which then presented a problem for the mining companies. This was literally piled up around cornwall on land that was aquired by the company, these formed pyramid shaped hills that form some of cornwall’s topography that we see today.
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