Sir Joseph Banks Building, Kew Gardens
This partially buried museum and reference collection building for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew provided a home for Kew’s collection of irreplaceable dry plants. Our founder, Max, led the design team for this iconic project.
Key information
Architect
Manning Clamp + Partners
Client
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Value
Undisclosed
Year of Completion
1985
Sector
Services
Europe’s largest earth-covered structure
The competition brief specified two large spaces, one for public exhibitions and one for the dry plant material reference collection. At the time of the project, the collection was made up of around 75,000 rare and precious items, including seeds collected from the pyramids.
As both buildings required very stable environmental conditions and low lighting levels, we advised building a cave-like structure with very little uncontrolled light. As a result, much of the single-story building is underground – at the time it was the largest building in Europe covered by earth – with a large glass conservatory roof in the style of Kew’s glasshouses.
Our innovative approach to energy-efficient services included a ground source heat pump, not a common approach at the time, which circulated between a pair of boreholes, with heat added or extracted according to requirements. Heat is distributed by control of water flow, with no need for cooling towers and external heat rejection. The drainage incorporates anti-flood devices, and incoming air passes through fine carbon filters, which remove dust and corrosive sulphur dioxide.
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