Those of our readers based in the UK (and many who aren’t) will already know of the Eden Project: an extraordinary sustainable development centre built around massive geodesic domes in a disused clay pit in Cornwall, now one of the top ten tourist attractions in the UK.
This week, the final round of a contest called The People’s £50 million is being held, to choose which of four major projects will received (you guessed it) £50 million of lottery cash. One of the four finalists is a project designed to be Eden’s next stage. It’s called The Edge – there’s a short film about it here. Eden’s creator, Tim Smit, has this to say:
I believe that if we get it right, the Edge could be one of the most important buildings ever built. Not because of its structural form, but because of its ambition to create a setting for asking big questions of interest to all of us: What makes humans content? What lessons from the past can inform the future? And what might great look like? The answers to most of them lie not in the realm of technology, but in the building of healthy, safe and inspired communities drawn together by a narrative for the future they can believe in. In truth it is the theatre for the development of this story that we are wanting to build.
I went to Eden last year to meet Smit and his team, and was awed by their enthusiasm and vision – and totally convinced of the worth of this project, then in a much earlier phase of gestation. Having an iconic space in Britain in which to think about big picture issues and long wave historical trends would be a fantastic prize. So: please vote for it.
