For Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu the Palm House at Kew Gardens is a reminder that solutions to contemporary problems depend on an understanding of the inter-connected systems of the natural world.
Each era writes its own story. Incidents, observations, riddles, quests, battles, ethos, victories, each recreates the myths of its times.
Here In 2022, What do we want our story to be? Not the threat of nuclear war, not the fear of the pandemic, but the story of making much needed change for the climate crisis.
Our era’s story should be the time that we looked up and listened, to find a rational poetry through a better relationship with nature. The Palm House in Kew Gardens is a work of rational poetry, supremely practical and fantastical in equal measures. Structure, construction, heating, ventilation, all integrate in a holistic entity. It is an architectural exemplar of beauty, economy, and technical innovation.
Juxtaposing the epic scale of nature with the miniature scale of humans, the delicate ironworks and curvilinear beams create expansive voluminous spaces, a spatial monumentality that does not preclude a sense of intimacy. Human beings nestle in isles infused with mist, amongst lush planting and single leaves cantilevering as far as 3 metres. Above the nave, a narrow-raised walkway lifts us close to the roof, like children perched in the canopy of the trees. In the morning, shimmering sunlight reflecting off the lake flickers across the arching glass walls. In the evening, the setting sun beams through the building’s delicate ironworks, transforming the structure into a gossamer white web, draped over a jungle.
From an era of scientific exploration and conquest, of nature and of other worlds, this grand house of nature was designed to collect, archive, observe, experience, nurture, and learn from nature. A cathedral, a curiosity cabinet, a shipping vessel all in one, the Palm House is an expressive civic symbol of its era, made tangible by the grand myths of its time.
Digital, post-industrial, post-colonial, our era must forge its own myth. Digital tools have made legible, visible, quantifiable, nature’s inter-connected systems and the scale of the devastating impact we’ve had on the planet. We now also hold a vast quarry of newfound intelligence on nature’s ingenuity. This knowledge should amplify our responsibility and our determination, inspire us to create solutions for the shared environmental crisis.
Lessons from nature tell us to care for the many rather than the few, to care for each other, for nature’s cycles, and for all its species.
When we are ready to re-tune with nature, we will regain a sense of our future. Let this moment, in the light and mist, sound a clarion call, not to look back, but to strive forward, for nature informed, nature inspired, nature driven, architectural innovation.
Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu
London WC1
Source: Architecture Today