Darwin Centre Phase Two
A Cocoon for the world’s largest collection of plant and insect specimens.
Darwin Centre Phase Two is an extension to the Natural History Museum in London, housing the world’s largest collection of plant and insect specimens.
The Centre forms a link between the historic Waterhouse building, the Darwin Centre Phase One, and the Museum’s Gardens.
Housing the collection within the curving surfaces of a “Cocoon,” which in turn is encased within a transparent outer structure, creates an icon representative of preservation, protection and nature. Because of its massive scale and volume the Cocoon cannot be seen in its entirety from any single angle, its curves betray its unseen dimensions as the mind completes its geometry.
Entering through the Waterhouse the public space opens into a dramatic eight-story atrium, filled with daylight, overlooking the Wildlife Garden.
The atrium is the starting point of a journey through the fantastic world of Darwin.
Moving around and through the upper floors visitors will experience the Darwin Centre as a scientific workshop, observing the tools of science in operation, without interrupting scientific work in progress.
The Darwin Centra Phase Two’s facade elements are designed to eliminate the sense of floor partitions at regular intervals, providing views of the Cocoon and the flow of visitors from outside the building.
The Cocoon of the Darwin Centre Phase Two, constructed of over half a metre thick walls of defined geometric shapes, is based on mathematical equations. By identified environmental control needs the team devised a building form that addresses three degrees of tolerance: low tolerance for artefacts in the collection, medium tolerance for the permanent staff, and high tolerance in transient or optional visitor areas.
The Cocoon is the protected inner zone, with its own skin designed to provide a second level of environmental protection. The atrium is a buffer zone, which has been modelled using computational fluid dynamics in order to understand the resultant internal conditions. Its interaction with the sun path has been assessed though both physical and computational modelling.
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