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Project Eden 122

Posted by michael from the serpent-not-included dept.
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!?""
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Project Eden More

Project Eden

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  • Web site (Score:5, Informative)

    by doru ( 541245 ) on Sunday June 02, 2002 @04:44AM (#3625597) Homepage
    Here [edenproject.com] is the Eden project page, lest we /. the wrong site...

  • builders wanted for Project Babel (Score:5, Funny)

    by beckett ( 27524 ) on Sunday June 02, 2002 @04:45AM (#3625599) Homepage Journal
    Now it will be EASY to get funding for my giant tower to reach into heaven! I'll be starting IPO in a week. For now, i'll need about a thousand strong men with bricklaying experience that all speak the same language.

  • Dude! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Motheius ( 449386 )
    I wonder if Pauly Shore will be there giving tours?

  • Why /.? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Triskaidekaphobia ( 580254 )
    Project Eden opened a year ago, and won't be worth visiting for at least a year (when all the plants have grown and the ecology is sorted out).

    • Re:Why /.? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Huge Pi Removal ( 188591 )
      It opened more than a year ago... I went there last August (it had been open for some time then) and found that it was fantastic.

      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)

        by paul_clarke ( 582853 )
        OK I went there a few months ago. I was /very/ dissapointed. To think I'd persuaded my Family who I was on Holiday with in Lizard, to drive all the way there instead of Lands End on the last day..

        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)

          by waterbiscuit ( 241198 ) <milly@janeteclar ... m ['rne' in gap]> on Sunday June 02, 2002 @06:16AM (#3625757) Journal
          Dare I say this, but er, what did you expect? Basically all it is, and all in claims to be, is one giant greenhouse. Of all the projects that the UK undertook for the millennium, the Eden project has undoubtedly got to be the most successful, but in terms of innovation and drawing visitors.

          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.
          • i agree with you...

            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.
        • I think you're missing the point of the place. The structures are a tool for growing and exhibiting the "load of plants".

          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)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For those of us that can not go to England, there is one in the US we can visit, we call it Oregon.
  • "project eden"... how so sooo very original...

    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.

    • Those stupid glass balls cost £86 million. In the first 12 months they generated approx £120million of increased spending in the region. Check here [bbc.co.uk] if you don't believe me (sorry couldn't find a geocities link).

      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.
  • Wow, looks like some major feat to build this and even more to keep it running smoothly despide the host of tourists visiting it...
    Anyway, maybe we could even get a few additional insights why loosly "related" projects like Biosphere [biospheres.com] failed.

  • 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.
    • Yes that's a fine idea. Let's start a bit of genocide while we are at it. After all who cares about the "burgeoning population of ignorant, third-world slash-and-burn farmers". We in the safely developed world have absolutely no influence on their course of development. Projects such as "Eden" are often undertaken for direct monetary gain (as in the investors intend to at least in part either make up the money they have paid in or find some tax benifit or similar in such an investment). Money is the root and solution of many problems. Make local forests worth substantial income "as-is" and suddenly no one WANTS the trees cut down. Make endangered animals worth money directly to the villages around them, and suddenly no one helps poachers (who wants to help someone kill your next 12 years income?). If you feel so strongly about this, why don't you sell your terminal and use the money to buy some land, I'm sure you could find very reasonable prices if you looked hard enough. Because that's what it comes down to. Most people need to eat and more than that, feel the need to prosper. Give them an environment in which preserving the environment can help them prosper and you can ensure it will be protected. I personally invest in companies that do just that. What have you done today?
      • I'nm guessing you havn't seen it then. The edan project is, well, huge. The first (and second and third etc) thing you will say if you see it is, Wow.
        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?
      • Give them an environment in which preserving the environment can help them prosper and you can ensure it will be protected.

        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.

    • It was £86 million - not £86 billion. Just a tad over US$125 million.
    • Having lived in the area of the Eden project for a long time I can tell you it wasn't totally done for enviromental reasons. I seem to remember it origonally being represented as more of a large experiment which would attract lots of tourists. It has however generated huge amounts of revenue for the area, £120mil being quoted for the first 12 months. It may not save much of the enviroment but it saves hundreds of businesses and jobs around here, and has paid for itself already. And it's not like we know everything there is to know about biology yet so more research isn't a bad thing.

      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 :) Probably 95% of the land is countryside, we have 2 huge national parks that are protected. We're not in any great danger of running out of natural habitats here yet.
      • You don't know much about the South West of England eh :) Probably 95% of the land is countryside, we have 2 huge national parks that are protected. We're not in any great danger of running out of natural habitats here yet.

        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].

        I've not been to visit despite it only being 20 minutes away

        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.

    • It seems to me that you are saying that in the name of environmentalism we should wipe out the Aracuna Indians, the Maori aborigines, and essentially anyone else who isn't a rich European/American novo-colonialist. I call it novo-colonialism, because all the IMF is, is a perfection of last century's colonialism -- taking the profits unjustly so that we can spend it all on our wasteful living, while keeping the natives enslaved, all without any risk to ourselves [that was the major problem, the last century. Too many boxer-rebellions, too many battles in which we forgot the screwdrivers to the ammo boxes.] Quite frankly, though, if bioweapons are developed, they most likely won't be developed by the 3rd world, and they most likely won't be used on the third world. They'll be aimed by the 2nd place nation at the 1st place nation, or vice versa. I, for one, honestly hope that we don't develop them, that we never use such things, and that we simply start acting a little more responsibly. As a final comment, please don't let a difficult situation drive you despair, and in turn to evil. Murderous thoughts are evil.
    • "The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 53,000 square miles of tropical forests (rain forest and other) were destroyed each year during the 1980s"

      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.
  • I live round the corner from Eaden and you cant even start to imagine the skill and pure engineering feet that it took to build this until you stand at the bottom of the site and look up. It's just HUGE. Ok its full of trees and grass, not a great idea. Respect it for the building and not for what they use it for.

  • Grass on the roof? (Score:3, Funny)

    by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Sunday June 02, 2002 @05:21AM (#3625668) Journal
    So grass on the roof [architectureweek.com] is the latest rage in architecture? There's a house in my neighborhood that has grass growing on the roof, but my roommate and I just figured it was because no one lived there for a a few years. We thought it was an abandoned dump, but apparently the grassy-knoll-on-the-roof feature has made it too expensive for prospective buyers.

  • US Version - completed in 1967 (Score:3, Informative)

    by CoreyGH ( 246060 ) on Sunday June 02, 2002 @05:21AM (#3625669) Homepage
    In Milwaukee, WI there is a place known as "The Domes" (The actual name is the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory) They are 3 beehive (not geodesic) shaped domes that house 3 separate climates (arid, tropical, and something called "Floral Show") that are 85' tall. Construction on them was completed in 1967 for a measly 4.5 million.

    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.
  • I'm assuming no candy apple stands in there?

  • Some uninformed comments (Score:5, Informative)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Sunday June 02, 2002 @05:30AM (#3625685)
    From some people who might actually try visiting, if they're not afraid of Europe being hit by Pakistani or Indian missiles

    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.

    • $150 million? Really? Knowing a thing or two about the benfits of geodesic domes (for example, the low surface area to volume ratio makes them ideal for climate control), I figured this thing would come out cheap on the construction costs, but $150 mil? Compare that to what it takes to build a major sports staduim these days, or how much it would cost to buld an enclosure of that size by traditional methods.

      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?
    • Forget missiles; what they should really be worried about is Kei and Yuri [animearchive.org].
    • OY! What did Mickey Mouse ever do to you! Erm.. wait... Euro Disney... sorry. :)

  • Candidates for 8th Wonder... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, this Eden project looks really cool, but there are definitely other candidates for the 8th wonder of the (modern) world: The Baha'i Gardens:
    http://www.tour-haifa.co.il/BahaiShrine/indexEng.h tml [tour-haifa.co.il]
    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/ban aue.html [usf.edu]
    http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/mm-cn.htm [twnside.org.sg]
  • http://www.bio2.edu/

    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)

    by blowdart ( 31458 ) on Sunday June 02, 2002 @05:48AM (#3625718) Homepage

    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)

    by SwellJoe ( 100612 ) on Sunday June 02, 2002 @05:53AM (#3625730) Homepage
    It isn't quite the same concept or as big but has a lot of the same elements and is wonderful to behold (I think I probably enjoy the pyramid architecture by I.M. Pei at Moody Gardens better than I would like the domes of Eden--and I'm pretty sure Galveston has better weather outside of the buildings). When I was living in Houston I made it a regular summer trip. The butterflies are lovely, and they have very interesting tropical rainforest 'rooms'.

    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].

  • I can see Attack Of The Clones the way George Lucas meant it to be!
  • Ok, where the hell is the monorail. I'm sure there's some kind of global zoning ordinance that requires geodesic domes to have a monorail...
  • I have been recently and despite many plants being small (in comparison to those a Kew) its still impressive whith a few WTF? moments, especially in the tropical biome. But it is HUGE! and there is 2 of them. As for the name, I think someones been playing CivCTP. Perhaps someone in R&D is working on a prototype Eco Ranger.

  • First-Hand View (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BSDevil ( 301159 ) on Sunday June 02, 2002 @08:20AM (#3625970) Journal
    I was down in Cornwall about nine months ago (last September) and spent a day at Eden. It was cool then, and the longer one waits before going the better it will seem - I suspect that it will reach it's highlight (and design parameters) in about five years or so, maybe more for the Mediteranian biome. Even then it was a fairly spectactular entrance, but once all the site had matured it will be quite a sight coming over the hill and droping down into the complex (it's in an empty old quarry so it's fairly far down).

    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, baby!
  • Is this related to the shitty game from Eidos?
  • my company is the "usa division" of the company that put the roofing on there website is www.foiltec.com in case some one else would like to build a bio-dome got some acreage and a few million perhaps you two could own your own bid doe. LOL
  • " Eden's Origins: The Eden Project was the brainchild of Tim Smit, now the chief executive of Eden."

    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.
  • seems the slot for the eight wonder of the world is already taken by Coral Castle [coralcastle.com] but hey seeing how slash dot has posted two wrong urls in stories lately.....:)
  • I was expecting someone to comment on the statement in the story that said that the panels of the roof were constructed so exactly it was done with "zero tolerance". If that passed muster with the writers on the web site and /., what else can't be believed about the story??
  • Am I the only one who things these domes would make a great place to play paintball?
  • The author of the article was a real idiot. His statement:


    "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.

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