Natural History Museum Darwin Centre ‘cocoon’, London
Client: Natural History Museum
Architect:
C. F. Møller
Main Contractor: HBG Construction
The Darwin Centre cocoon creates a new architectural icon for the capital, ground-breaking in scale and breath-taking in its originality and creative brilliance.
The design features a vast free-standing structure taking the form of an enormous cocoon within a glass atrium. The eight storey high cocoon houses a unique collection of 17 million insects and 3 million plants collected over the last 300 years by scientists including Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Sir Hans Sloane. The building completes the Museum’s life science complex, the Darwin Centre, following the first phase opened in 2002.