As mentioned previously, Eden is an organic space that will continually evolve and change. On top of that there are plans for more buildings to expand Eden’s horizons for uses of the space as well as a third biome to house a dessert climate to add to the existing Tropic and Mediterranean climates. The most notable of the new builds is ‘The Edge’. This building will house the desert biome, a courtyard garden (designed to celebrate the preciousness of water) and a ‘Trading post’ (a place where people can meet and share ideas, culture and stories). The most interesting part of this space is the underground elements. “Underneath…a series of interlocking underground chambers will provide spaces for some of the great voices of the age – artists, writers, scientists and musicians - to work with communities and families and share the best ideas they have for improving their lives and environments, now and in the future.” (theedge.org)

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Through a series of images, architectural models and sketches, I have learned how the space left by the mining process, an arid and difficult to manoeuvre ‘moonscape’, has been manipulated and intervened by Smit and Grimshaw to produce the space we see today. The original plan for Eden was to produce the largest ‘lean-to’ greenhouse in the world and simply prop it against and wrap it around the contours of the pit. This idea gave way to the Geodesic Dome principle pioneered by Fuller, modelled on a series of large spheres intersected with the land to cleverly use the existing unnatural backdrop as an inner surface to grow the rainforest from. These domes presently stand as the largest examples of Geodesic dome structures in the world at 328 ft x 656 ft (oval).

The domes don’t even tell half the story of Eden, they cover only a fifth of the total area of the pit. The visitors centre at the entrance to the pit is a ’scimitar-shaped building’ nestled in the contours of the edge with the rear wall formed by rammed earth. The centre gives way to a view over the entire space as the tropics biome (the larger of the two) emerges. The entrance to the visitors centre is a ’street’ covered in tensile fabric which gives the indoor impression. The centre was the first building to be completed in the transformation, housing nearly 500,000 visitors who came to watch the biomes under construction and over 2 million visitors in Eden’s first year after opening. The space was primarily used as a cafe, shop and gallery but later was opened up into one large expanse to house an educational experience as well as the existing functions. (Pearman, Hugh. ‘The Architecture of Eden’ 2002)

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’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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Its been a while since I last went to the Eden Project…in fact it was at the start of my first year in Plymouth as part of an architecture field trip to check out the architectural qualities of the ‘domes’. One of the first things that struck me about Eden was how cool it was! The space is amazing…and to think its smack bang in the depths of deepest darkest Cornwall! Apart from looking like some kind of space station that fell out of the sky its amazing to think about the ecosystems that they maintain within the ‘biomes‘. From what I remember you completely forget where you are and get immersed in the environment you are exploring because you are actually walking through a slice of rainforest with tropical birds flying overhead and the accurate humidity of the atmosphere. Until you look up through the clear dome to see you are still in Cornwall!

This got me thinking about the Production of Space module that I am taking this year. This first assignment is to complete a precedent study into a ’space man/woman/thing’ of our choosing. The study should “reveal core principles behind an artist, architects, designers approach to intervening / negotiating space”. I am thinking of taking a trip up to Eden in the next few weeks or so to take it all in and get some more ’stuff’.

I thought that the Eden Project would be a good topic for this study due to the fact it contains 3 different ecosystems from different parts of the world within an old clay pit in south cornwall. Its a bonkers concept and Tim Smit (the father of the eden project) must have been high on something…but its cool and it works.

Image courtesy of wikipedia