Urban Nature Project, Natural History Museum

Project Info

Transforming the underused gardens of the Natural History Museum into an oasis of urban nature, this scheme sensitively integrates a new café and education building into the surrounding landscaping.

Conceived as brother and sister buildings, the two spaces share a simple, timeless material language of expressed timber frame and load-bearing stone. Locally sourced, low-impact, natural materials – including UK-grown Douglas fir and British limestone – were carefully selected to reduce embodied carbon and support local supply chains and vernacular craft.

The Nature Activity Centre is a single-storey education building that houses a classroom, science lab and support areas for garden staff. The structure is defined by an asymmetric pitched roof formed from solid and glulam Douglas fir and clad in western red cedar shingles, which dramatically overhangs to provide shaded outdoor space for learning.

Functioning as a café, events space and seasonal storage for exotic plants, the Garden Kitchen blends a solid and glulam timber frame with a load-bearing masonry façade. With daylight entering from three sides, the space can also be naturally ventilated by opening the large bespoke timber sliding doors and high-level timber shutters.

The timber structures have been detailed with future reuse in mind, with connections allowing for disassembly and reconstruction. Each building is designed to meet or exceed RIBA Climate Challenge targets for embodied carbon.

Additional credits

Specialist Timber Design and Sub-Contractor: Xylotek

3D Design: Gitta Gschwendtner