Masterplan, Planet Earth Gallery, Living Machine + Solar Canopy

1991 to 2000

The Earth Centre was one of the Millennium Projects, designed as a National Centre of Sustainable Development. The Projects had its genesis in the mid 1990's when a site was found on an old coal mine near Doncaster. Phase I was completed in 2000 in time for the Millennium celebrations

The buildings at the Earth Centre were designed to be exemplars of Low Energy and Sustainable design principles, indeed the whole operation is run as an exemplar for sustainable development and living. Phase I included the Planet Earth Gallery (Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects LLP) - a 6500 m2 black box gallery space that is conditioned through an underground thermal store called the Labyrinth - a shop and cafe area, a Living Machine - an 'organic' sewage treatment plant within an ETFE foil building designed by Will Alsop - and a 1000 m2 entrance canopy clad with Photovoltaic cells, which generate the renewable power to run the systems and the galleries.

Thermal Performance of Labyrinth

Energy targeting was the key to the design development of the Earth Centre. The impetus for the development of the Labyrinth was derived from the need to provide comfort conditions in hot weather for thousands of visitors per day without resorting to air-conditioning, which would not have been within the energy targets. The graph illustrates the targets that were set and our analysis of the resultant energy consumption.

The Labyrinth design was, of necessity, fully integrated with the Architectural, Exhibition and Structural schemes for the project. It was comprehensively modelled using dynamic simulation techniques using a grant from EDAS to take the analysis further than would have otherwise been possible. The simulations allowed the unusual design of the Labyrinth to be assessed in detail and optimised to ensure that system and control parameters were correctly specified.

The building opened in the winter 1999 and it's performance is being monitored as part of the living exhibition that is the Earth Centre.

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Links

http://www.earthcentre.org.uk

http://www.feildenclegg.com - Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects LLP

Profile in RIBA Website - http://www.architecture.com/go/Architecture/Debate/
Sustainable_2801.html?q=doncaster