Project Eden

cwernli writes "Project Eden [had to] visually provide a spectacular theater high enough to house the towering trees of the rainforests, wide enough for the sun-baked escarpments of the Mediterranean and, oh yes, become the eighth wonder of the world. Easy!?""

Comments

Web site

[doru]

Here is the Eden project page, lest we /. the wrong site...

builders wanted for Project Babel

[beckett]

Now it will be EASY to get funding for my giant tower to reach into heaven! I'll be starting IPO in a week. For now, i'll need about a thousand strong men with bricklaying experience that all speak the same language.

Some uninformed comments

[panurge]

From some people who might actually try visiting, if they're not afraid of Europe being hit by Pakistani or Indian missiles

The relevance to computing is that the geodesic domes were actually designed and the parts built by CIM - all the way from the CAD files to setting up and cutting the metal. As they fit onto a non-level site against the side of a quarry, this is a great demonstration of what can be done with state of the art engineering.

One big function of Eden is education - to explain to kids reared on fast food and television why different habitats are important and why the preservation of rain forests thousands of miles away actually matters to them. At a cost of less than $150 million (not the ludicrous £86 billion one dumbskull suggested) that's less than Hollywood can spend on a film about an adolescent fantasy, and is a fraction of what Disney spends on a theme park intended to give a ludicrously false impression of, say, Europe or of US history.

But perhaps some correspondents are really incensed because the Eden project refers to the way in which some US drug companies have been allowed to patent medicines used by indigenous peoples for years.

Having said that, I was pretty incensed during my visit by a set of untrue statistics quoted above the entrance about world distribution of wealth. It's that kind of carelessness that provides ammunition to the Armalites-and-SUVS-are-in-the-Constitution brigade.

Re:Why /.?

[waterbiscuit]

Dare I say this, but er, what did you expect? Basically all it is, and all in claims to be, is one giant greenhouse. Of all the projects that the UK undertook for the millennium, the Eden project has undoubtedly got to be the most successful, but in terms of innovation and drawing visitors.

As for a tropical biome being a bit hot and humid, well that's what the plants need, that's why they're not outside, and thats why you go and see them inside the biome in the correct conditions for their growth. Ice cream too expensive? You tried buying it at the cinema these days? Of course it's a rip off, that's why you take along your own bottle of water. European plants are outside because England is in Europe, so has the right conditions for those plants outdoors, because that's where they are meant to grow!

£9.50 is an extremely reasonable price for any attraction nowadays. It is a good day out for the price of a pizza and coke in a cheap restaurant. I think perhaps you went along with your hopes too high. You expect to see plants, and that's what you got. I for one was really extrememly impressed and have recommended many people to give serious thought to a visit there.

First-Hand View

[BSDevil]

I was down in Cornwall about nine months ago (last September) and spent a day at Eden. It was cool then, and the longer one waits before going the better it will seem - I suspect that it will reach it's highlight (and design parameters) in about five years or so, maybe more for the Mediteranian biome. Even then it was a fairly spectactular entrance, but once all the site had matured it will be quite a sight coming over the hill and droping down into the complex (it's in an empty old quarry so it's fairly far down).

As for the biomes themselves, I much preferred the Tropical (left-side) one. Not only was it significantly more mature, but it was also better landscaped and had more interesting (to me) and exotic plants in it, along with a huge waterfall and stream down the middle of it. You could see lillies that looked like frying pans, manilla trees (and you thought manilla envelopes were made of normal paper), and little mini-pinapples growing. And aside from a design-your-own-banana exhibit that didn't really work, they didn't chintz it up like you'd expect. The climate inside was also amazing; it was cold outside, and within ten minutes inside and starting to walk up to the top of the waterfall I was down to a t-shirt and had rolled up my pants.

The Mediteranien (smaller right-hand) biome was kinda weak and undeveloped, but as guess that's to be as expected, especially comparing it against the tropical one. For it's benefit, it did accurately reproduce a Med feeling (even down to the hordes of loud Brits), but things just don't grow as fast there as they do in the other biome. Give it a few years and it'll rock though.

Is this place cool? Hells yeah. Is this the eighth wonder of the world? No. Will it be in five years? No doubt.