Visit to the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum
On 13 and 14 January 2009 ADS members went to see the exciting Cocoon, the unfinished phase 2 of the Darwin Centre, which will house the Museum's collection of 17 million insects and 3 million plants, as well as working laboratories for 220 scientists. The Danish architects C F Moeller were chosen to build the Cocoon in 2001 and it will be open to the public in September 2009. It is the most amazing and unique concept and construction, there is nothing quite like it anywhere else!
We didn't quite know what to expect when we arrived - in fact, the first surprise was that we had to don boots, helmets and yellow construction site jackets, the next probably was that it is still very much a building site.
Nonetheless, Chris Hay, the site architect, was very welcoming and insisted that he was just so pleased to, at last, be showing off the Cocoon.
The painstaking way that the new building abuts the old was impressive. The rows and rows of racks where the trays of insects and plants will be housed were mesmerizing.
The open-plan laboratories with daylight flooding in from all sides were vast and also something of an innovation. The present Museum arrangements are for scientists to each work in separate little rooms - so together with new housing for the insects and plants, the scientists will also have to come to terms with their new open-plan arrangements. A compensation for them, though, must be their own new rooftop coffee shop and terrace, as opposed to their present basement cafeteria.
The Cocoon is housed inside a 5 or 6 storey high glass case, about the length of a football pitch. From close-up we couldn't really see it, only when we got back to the road could we glimpse the shape of the cocoon. Chris told us the secret is to come back at night when it is illuminated, and then, from the road, you can see it quite clearly.
We all agreed that the Cocoon is an award winning construction, and that we could not wait for the September opening!
