Project Eden 122
cwernli writes "Project Eden [had to] visually provide a spectacular theater high enough to house the towering trees of the rainforests, wide enough for the sun-baked escarpments of the Mediterranean and, oh yes, become the eighth wonder of the world. Easy!?""
Web site (Score:5, Informative)
builders wanted for Project Babel (Score:5, Funny)
Re:builders wanted for Project Babel (Score:1)
Except that in India, half of the work against the tower would already be done. They are, IIRC, the only country to have multiple national anthems, and they have multiple official languages (11? Something like that).
Dude! (Score:1, Funny)
Why /.? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why /.? (Score:2, Informative)
I know some people complain that "it isn't finished yet", but it never will be in a sense. Certainly a lot of the plants were mature enough to give a sense of the places they're meant to emulate.
Oh, and BTW, they grow tonnes of hemp. Albeit the de-interesting-ingrediented type
Re:Why /.? (Score:2, Interesting)
If I recall correctly, it was £9.50 to get in and all looked very impressive but once you're in, its hard to get over the fact its just a load of plants in a big dome with a heater.
The European section was just plants outside. Then we got to look at some large plastic fruit in a garden shed.
Ohh and when you come out of the large tropical biome sweating because of the heat, they are kind enough to sell you small tubs of ice cream at extremely expensive prices. How kind of them.
/rant off/
Re:Why /.? (Score:4, Interesting)
As for a tropical biome being a bit hot and humid, well that's what the plants need, that's why they're not outside, and thats why you go and see them inside the biome in the correct conditions for their growth. Ice cream too expensive? You tried buying it at the cinema these days? Of course it's a rip off, that's why you take along your own bottle of water. European plants are outside because England is in Europe, so has the right conditions for those plants outdoors, because that's where they are meant to grow!
£9.50 is an extremely reasonable price for any attraction nowadays. It is a good day out for the price of a pizza and coke in a cheap restaurant. I think perhaps you went along with your hopes too high. You expect to see plants, and that's what you got. I for one was really extrememly impressed and have recommended many people to give serious thought to a visit there.
Re:Why /.? (Score:1)
If you wanted to see what they have inside take their broadband friendly virtual tour [edenproject.com]. All i see is plants inside a giant dome, looks like im not going any time soon.
Re:Why /.? (Score:1)
If you go there expecting anamatronic Disney plants and special effects then you're going to be sorely disappointed. It is a tourist attraction, but not a Planty Theme Park.
There is one of these in the US too! (Score:1, Funny)
Re:There is one of these in the US too! (Score:1)
Oh the names they can come up with... (Score:1)
What? they can spend all that money for some stupid glass-balls (called "biomes"(?!)) and they can't find a decent name for the damn thing?
both the names sound as if they were ripped from a really "suck" sci-fi pocket book that you can buy your local grocery store.
Re:Oh the names they can come up with... (Score:2, Insightful)
The project was aiming to bring in tourists from all over the globe (and has) so a simple name that easily translates was probably the best way to go. Not particularly origonal but it doesn't seem to be putting people off visiting.
And maybe we can gain some additional insights too (Score:1)
Anyway, maybe we could even get a few additional insights why loosly "related" projects like Biosphere [biospheres.com] failed.
A sad commentary on our society (Score:1, Interesting)
Why? What is the point?
Real rainforests are being decimated [nasa.gov] at an alarming rate, all in the name of corporate profits.
This 'Eden Project', designed to appeal to arm chair 'environmentalist' yuppies, can only harm the environment. The amount of resources it took to construct must be staggering. The cash (£86 billion, IIRC) should have been put towards conservation efforts. The steel never should have been mined. The petrochemicals for the should have been left in the ground. God knows how much habitat was destroyed to build this monstrosity.
If you want to see a rainforest, go to the real thing. Not if you're just a tourist, though; in that case you have no business disturbing nature. If however, you are an eco-warrior, by all means go to the rainforest and help derail logging efforts.
What is sad, is that within the next century, cheap imitations like this may be all we have left of nature. One hopes the government will soon develop bioweapons that let us wipe out the burgeoning population of ignorant, third-world slash-and-burn farmers, before it's too late.
Re:A sad commentary on our society (Score:1)
Re:A sad commentary on our society (Score:1)
Even if you think plants are the most boring things imaginable you'll be impressed. It wasn't undertaken for monetry gain, half the money came from the UK's Millenium commision, yup the ones that built the dome in London. It's primary aim is to educate people about plants, there uses, and why there are less now than there used to be. If you have to look at it ina cynicle, what is it doing for me way, try this. The biomes are fairly self contained structures that could if needed hold their own atmosphere, sound useful for space exploration?
Re:A sad commentary on our society (Score:1)
but preserving the environment WILL help them prosper.
I can feel sympathy for their need to prosper, but slash and burn farming/grazing doesn't seem to be helping much. People are still hungry, their countries are still in debt, soil is eroding, and their ecosystem is being quickly shredded into desert. Surely there's an alternative.
Why do they even bother with a capitalistic economy? The rain forest natives cope with their environment amazingly well, and they're happy, content. They're stomachs aren't full, but they sure aren't starving-- that is, they weren't until the foresters and farmers showed up.
Re:A sad commentary on our society (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:A sad commentary on our society (Score:2)
And compared to the millenium dome or wembley mark 2....
Re: the point is largely the local area. (Score:3, Interesting)
I totally agree with your arguments, I've not been to visit despite it only being 20 minutes away, but it's impossible to ignore the good it has done. Also don't forget the average slashdot reader probably isn't particularly interested in horticulture but this doesn't represent the population as a whole. I've met many people here who go up there regularly.
What is sad, is that within the next century, cheap imitations like this may be all we have left of nature.
You don't know much about the South West of England eh
Re: the point is largely the local area. (Score:1)
In a related, though hardly usefull, point it's interesting to note the size of the United Kingdom 244,820 sq km [cia.gov] and the size of Canada's national Parks 244,540.0 sq km [pch.gc.ca].
That being said I live in Alberta which, among others has bits of Jasper, Banff & Wood Buffalo National Parks and of the three I've only visited 2. Well Banff, which is only a 3 hour drive, I've only driven through.
Third world is *our* fault, not theirs (Score:1)
New Math (Score:2)
Ok, given the amount of current rainforest coverage from this page [ran.org] (totalling up to approx. 733594 Square miles; converted from kilometers), we should actually run out of rainforest in 50 years ^__^ Of course, everybody I talk to seems to have a different number and it's always changing and or highly exaggerated. Speaking of which, weren't we supposed to have run out of forest already? And finally, to the ire of all the tree hugging weenies out there, the rainforests as we know them are pretty young geologically. What entitles you to one? Hell, it probably the only source of income a lot of these families have over there. It's that whole trees/animals over people that just rubs me the wrong way. the same mentality that says it's OK to abort a child but you'll get slapped with a lawsuit and jail time for poaching a condor egg. Yeah, you go there Eco-warrior boy.
I know I'm ranting now and I would like to see the rainforest conserved, but there's more than just trees and frogs to consider here, Ok? It's not as cut and dry as everybody would make it out to be.
Eaden? its in my back garden (Score:1)
Grass on the roof? (Score:3, Funny)
US Version - completed in 1967 (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, I realize it's not quite the same as PE but I thought everyone should know that we yanks have our own big plastic plant house thingies too.
Link (Score:1)
Re:US Version - completed in 1967 (Score:1)
Project Eden seems to be the same thing but on an even grander scale.
Re:US Version - completed in 1967 (Score:2)
Apple's for sale? (Score:2)
Some uninformed comments (Score:5, Informative)
The relevance to computing is that the geodesic domes were actually designed and the parts built by CIM - all the way from the CAD files to setting up and cutting the metal. As they fit onto a non-level site against the side of a quarry, this is a great demonstration of what can be done with state of the art engineering.
One big function of Eden is education - to explain to kids reared on fast food and television why different habitats are important and why the preservation of rain forests thousands of miles away actually matters to them. At a cost of less than $150 million (not the ludicrous £86 billion one dumbskull suggested) that's less than Hollywood can spend on a film about an adolescent fantasy, and is a fraction of what Disney spends on a theme park intended to give a ludicrously false impression of, say, Europe or of US history.
But perhaps some correspondents are really incensed because the Eden project refers to the way in which some US drug companies have been allowed to patent medicines used by indigenous peoples for years.
Having said that, I was pretty incensed during my visit by a set of untrue statistics quoted above the entrance about world distribution of wealth. It's that kind of carelessness that provides ammunition to the Armalites-and-SUVS-are-in-the-Constitution brigade.
Re:Some uninformed comments (Score:1)
I'm hoping this will make people begin to realize the real benefits of computer aided design, both in practical aspects and aesthetics (well, I like the aesthetics, and they certainly work for the purpose of the site). Boxes are easy, but does that mean every single building has to be a box?
Re:Some uninformed comments (Score:1)
Re:Some uninformed comments (Score:2)
Re:Some uninformed comments (Score:2)
+3 (insightful) (Score:1)
Candidates for 8th Wonder... (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.tour-haifa.co.il/BahaiShrine/indexEng.
http://www.bahaiworldnews.org/terraces/ [bahaiworldnews.org] And as for the ancient world here is a candidate eighth wonder: Banaue Rice Terraces:
http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/wonders/forgotten/ba
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/mm-cn.htm [twnside.org.sg]
Is that all...? (Score:1)
Smoking Gun (Score:2)
Kinda what we do when we Slashdot a site to death?
and no mention of biosphere 2 project? (Score:1)
a heck of a lot of research and experience
was gained here on how to create outdoor
self-sustaining environments indoors.
Kew Gardens (Score:3, Informative)
Kew Gardens [rbgkew.org.uk], in the centre of London, is probably the Victorian version of this. It has glass houses [rbgkew.org.uk] for tropical, hothouse and desert landscapes, and even managed to get a titan arum [kew.org] flowering last month for the second time. (I went to see it, damn it was huge)
Not as big a scale of course, but the Millenium Seed Bank [rbgkew.org.uk] project gives it a well defined purpose other than a simple tourist attraction; to collect and conserve 10%, over 24,000 species, of the world's seed-bearing flora, principally from the drylands by 2010 and to collect and conserve seeds of the entire UK native seed-bearing flora by 2000.
Moody Gardens in Galveston (Score:3, Interesting)
Well worth a trip, if the UK isn't in the travel plans anytime soon, and Texas isn't too far out of the way for you (Galveston is a nice destination for a lot of reasons). I've always enjoyed myself, and always find something new, even though I've been several times.
Read more about them here (and forgive them for hiding the pyramids deep into the site--they are the most striking thing as you approach from any direction): The Moody Gardens Website [moodygardens.com].
At last! (Score:1)
Looks like it's missing something (Score:2)
The Eden Project (Score:1)
Re:The Eden Project (Score:1)
First-Hand View (Score:4, Interesting)
As for the biomes themselves, I much preferred the Tropical (left-side) one. Not only was it significantly more mature, but it was also better landscaped and had more interesting (to me) and exotic plants in it, along with a huge waterfall and stream down the middle of it. You could see lillies that looked like frying pans, manilla trees (and you thought manilla envelopes were made of normal paper), and little mini-pinapples growing. And aside from a design-your-own-banana exhibit that didn't really work, they didn't chintz it up like you'd expect. The climate inside was also amazing; it was cold outside, and within ten minutes inside and starting to walk up to the top of the waterfall I was down to a t-shirt and had rolled up my pants.
The Mediteranien (smaller right-hand) biome was kinda weak and undeveloped, but as guess that's to be as expected, especially comparing it against the tropical one. For it's benefit, it did accurately reproduce a Med feeling (even down to the hordes of loud Brits), but things just don't grow as fast there as they do in the other biome. Give it a few years and it'll rock though.
Is this place cool? Hells yeah. Is this the eighth wonder of the world? No. Will it be in five years? No doubt.
Ina Gada Da Vida (Score:1)
Is this related to... (Score:1, Offtopic)
my company foiltec (Score:1)
No points for originality (Score:2)
No, Project Eden's origins were here [bio2.edu] with Biosphere 2. Great. Just what the world needs; Another Disney Land with trees instead of mice and rides.
Uh...ninth wonder of the world. (Score:1)
Re:Uh...ninth wonder of the world. (Score:1)
Re:Uh...ninth wonder of the world. (Score:1)
for something to be considered a "wonder of the world" there needs to be a "wonder" part to it.
:)
Re:Uh...ninth wonder of the world. (Score:1)
zero tolerance (Score:1)
Painball (Score:1)
The article was bad. (Score:2, Informative)
"The biomes were erected with a combination of cranes (static and mobile) and scaffolding. The scaffolding made the Guinness Book of Records. At 192 feet (58.5 meters), it was the highest freestanding structure in the world.
Is really, really, wrong. Maybe he means that it was the highest scaffolding in the world. But whatever he meant by it, you would think that an architecture magazine would deliver more accurate information.
Not true... (Score:1)