Building an urban Eden

In an exclusive interview, Tim Smit CBE, founder of the Eden Project, describes to Host City his vision of a more community-based way of living and playing

Tim Smit CBE, founder of the Eden Project

It appears unlikely that a platinum disc selling songwriter should change career path and go on to mastermind the world’s largest greenhouse. It would also seem improbable for such a nature enthusiast to then become a leading figure in the field of urban regeneration.

Yet this is exactly what Tim Smit has achieved – and more. Since launching the hugely successful Eden Project in 2001, he was awarded the CBE in 2002, an honorary Doctor of Design degree in 2006 and declared a Morgan Stanley “Great Briton” in the Environment category in 2008. He has also recently been appointed by the British Government as a Social Enterprise Ambassador.

By focusing on the human relationship with nature, the entrepreneur has been a step ahead of urban planners who are now paying great attention to such concerns. No longer simply a fascinating and educational botanical site, the Eden Project is now involved in urban development partnerships around the world.

Speaking exclusively to Host City at the Ecobuild conference in London, Smit explains the relevance to city development of the Eden Project, which is situated on a former China clay mine in rural Cornwall. “We’re delighted to be involved in this conference, because we are interested not just in our own pit – a very derelict site which is a symbol of regeneration – but we are also working on other projects to help people develop sustainable solutions to things. We are doing a regeneration scheme for the City of Brisbane and looking at their sustainability. And we are about to look at the old airport site in Toronto.”

The Eden Project has also been in talks with the organisers of London 2012. “We would like to be involved. I have been very impressed with the people I met at LOCOG [the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games] and I am really optimistic that the Olympics will be a benchmark moment for Britain in focusing on these things,” Smit says.

Intelligent design in a material world
The Eden Project employs progressive building techniques in all of its buildings. “We are really interested in the cutting edge of construction, from the glass roofs of the operational headquarters and the ventilation systems of our office buildings to the materials used in the conservatory, which make it the lightest conservatory ever built.”

The biomes in the Eden Project site use advanced building materials to control climate and improve efficiency. “We use ethylene tetrafluoroethylene – a sort of cling film with attitude – as our roofing. It’s triple glazed and its insulatory capacity is extraordinary. The big biomes cost less to heat than a domestic greenhouse – they are that well insulated. The granite back wall acts as a heat sink, so it has been very effective.”

Smit is convinced that environmental technologies and materials will be employed more extensively in the cities of the future. “In city building, the potential for water capture, for geothermic heating and combinations of decentralised energy solutions to housing – it’s got to be the future. You’re going to find ‘networked’ buildings where the entire framework of the building itself is part of the water collection and electricity generation infrastructure. People think that’s kind of sci-fi – I don’t think so. I think within five years it’s going to be like that.”

“They are going to be working with a lot of interesting composite materials, flexible materials; materials that can take temperature change without cracking – I think we’re going to see a real change away from the materials that we are currently using in terms of the concrete and the block framework.”

Host City suggests that the UK’s Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED) already fulfils some of these aims. “The BedZED project is a very good example, but overall I think Britain is incredibly conservative. We have a generation opportunity for all that land around the Millennium Dome to really set new standards in modern construction. I am still hopeful that you will see some of that, but I rather suspect you are going to see it happening outside of the current cityscapes.”

The concept of sustainability itself needs re-evaluating, he says. “Energy and resource efficient construction is something which shouldn’t even have the title sustainability – it should actually just be good practice full stop, because you are working with the grain of nature rather than against it. I think we will see a radical shift over the next 30 years as the economics of sustainability hit in.”

Creating fearless, playful communities
What is now most important to Smit is society itself. “I think the real issue is communities: the intellectual and social attitudes to citizenship and the spaces required in which to operate and to build successful communities, and, by implication, cityscapes and townscapes. Many of our communities are infected by fear. There is a fear of isolation – and the fear of being attacked, that things are less safe than you would like them to be.”

Work is already underway to develop spaces that are far more community-focused. “I like the work that Wayne Hemingway has been doing, where he took a Wimpey housing estate in Gateshead and gave it a bespoke design so it felt like a real community.”

The key to generating a successful community is creating the right living environment. “One thing that is going to make communities feel part of one another is an aesthetic that binds them all together. So we are going to see much more use of public art; we are also going to see a huge increase in ‘play’ infrastructure, as our generation realises how much we have lost by making each other live in chicken hutches watching television.”

These play sites will not be restricted to children, Smit says. He gives the example of Conkers in Leicestershire, an outdoor woodland playground in which children are only allowed if they have adults accompanying them. “I am talking about revolutionary playthings, ranging from extraordinary climbing frames and ropes to treehouses – all the stuff that make boys and girls boys and girls, which is far more important than the word ‘play’ indicates. Educationally they are hugely important to stimulate the mind.”

This interview took place at Ecobuild 2008 in London.