Supernature - How Wikinson Eyre made a Hothouse Cool

In 2006, Wilkinson Eyre was part of a British-led team that won the design competition for one of the most ambitious cultural projects of recent years--the masterplan for Singapore's Gardens by the Bay. One of the defining projects of this dynamic world city, the project set out to reinforce a vision of Singapore as a 'City in a Garden, ' delivering a major visitor attraction and destination on the Marina Bay waterfront. The team--led by landscape architects Grant Associates--was subsequently commissioned to deliver the masterplan for the first phase of the gardens at Bay South, with Wilkinson Eyre leading the design of the key built element within them--the cooled conservatory complex.

The conservatories cover an area in excess of 20,000sqm and are among the largest climate controlled glasshouses in the world, comprising a 1.28 hectare cool dry biome (the 'Flower Dome') and a 0.73 hectare cool moist biome (the 'Cloud Forest'). Together they represent a uniquely collaborative approach to design, bringing together scientific and design disciplines to meet the challenge of creating cool growing conditions in a building typology more frequently used to produce a warm environment for plants.