Client:
Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Location: Kew gardens, London
Project value: £350,000
Project size: 420 sq m
Completion: July 1995
The
300-acre Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew have been
popular since the 19th century for their extraordinary
range of exotic and everyday plants and beautifully-landscaped
gardens. MET Studio were commissioned for the design
and interpretive elements of a permanent, new glass-house
exhibition looking at plant life over 3,500 million
years. As an anchor for the exhibition, we developed
the story of a modern-day Kew botanist looking for
the origins of plant life in today’s world.
Living plants from Kew’s own collections were
incorporated alongside highly-realistic models.
The exhibition culminates in a dark, cave area with
a glass engraving of a magnolia as its centrepiece,
representing the rise of flowering plants.