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. 

A black-and-white photograph of the exterior of the Sir Joseph Banks Building, showing a glasshouse structure

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.

An original black and white drawing of a birds-eye-view of kew gardens.