The famous biomes, the work of Grimshaw Architects, are a template for Eden attractions in China
T
he Eden Project was a badly needed shot in the arm for the tourism industry in Cornwall, UK, when it opened in 2001. It gave the southwest county new vigour and found it a fresh audience.
Now, the ideas behind the project are being exported to an international market. In New Zealand, where an earthquake hit Christchurch in 2011, proposals for an Eden-like attraction suggest it would also bring tourists and boost the economy. Projects are under way in China, where Eden’s green credentials and ability to educate could make a major difference in the world’s most populous country. To date, more than 16 million people
have visited the original Eden Project and many local businesses have benefi tted from the knock-on effects of having a high-profi le attraction on their doorstep. Eden – conceived by Sir Tim Smit and designed and built by architects Nicholas Grimshaw and engineering fi rm Anthony Hunt and Associates – has thus far contributed more than £1.2bn ($2bn, €1.5bn) to the Cornish economy. It’s a story of transformation: of bringing an opencast mine pit, left like a derelict lunar landscape by the china clay industry, back to life. Its two transparent domes – steel and ETFE plastic biomes housing plants from the Mediterranean and the tropics – have iconic status globally. However, it hasn’t always been easy.
As a consequence of the recession, poor weather and the Olympic effect, there
AM 4 2014 ©cybertrek 2014
“WE HAVE TWO AMBITIONS: TO CREATE A GLOBAL CHAIN OF MAJOR EDEN-TYPE PROJECTS; AND, TO INFLUENCE PEOPLE THAT THERE’S ANOTHER WAY TO RUN THE PLANET”
have been some tough years. Visits were down by around 20 per cent in 2012, with prospects of further public funding weak, and for the fi rst time, Eden was forced to make redundancies – a diffi cult move in a rural location, which led to local criticism. Sixty-eight jobs were cut and 50 people left voluntarily and were not replaced. The attraction bounced back with two
good years, and the low points sparked changes which will help it weather future storms. “It’s now on a sound fi nancial footing and I think it’s well run. Visitors are voting with their feet to come and we’re making ourselves more secure with different revenue streams,” says Smit, executive chairman of Eden Regeneration and co-founder of the Eden Project. “If there’s another summer like the Olympic year, when everyone stays glued to their televisions, we’ll be able to take the pain.” Today, with an exciting development pipeline both locally and overseas, the Eden Project has got its mojo back.
HOME DEVELOPMENTS One of the diffi culties with Eden is the seasonality of the attraction, combined with the pressure from funding bodies to provide year-round employment. To counteract this, Eden is this winter scheduled to open 58 modern en-suite bedrooms – made from repurposed shipping containers – capable of sleeping up to 228 people. These developments are in partnership with the Youth Hostel Association and Snoozebox. A campsite opened in summer 2014 and is expected to run next year, and Eden is talking to German sustainable house- building company LiWood about creating accommodation to cater for conferences. “Organisations don’t want delegates
staying in different hotels. On-site accommodation is going to help us develop Eden quite a lot,” says Smit. An initiative with Cornwall College
involves Eden developing apprenticeships and foundation degrees with various partners, including Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall’s “real food” and cookery venture River Cottage, and Jamie Oliver’s social enterprise restaurant Fifteen. “The courses will cover holistic
horticulture and holistic cookery, and include historic landscapes, entrepreneurship and food production,” says Smit. “We’re really excited about it. We’ll be partnering with Tresco in the Isles of Scilly, the Lost Gardens of Heligan and some of the other world-class gardens in Cornwall, so
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PHOTO: THE EDEN PROJECT
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