One of the most amazing buildings to be built in Canberra has moved a step nearer to realisation as the federal government seeks builders to construct it.
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The 'Hovering Cube' as it's been dubbed is a new conservatory for tropical plants at the Australian National Botanic Gardens. The federal government has asked for expressions of interest from builders.
It gets its name because it will look like a block of shimmering glass.
It will hold some of the rarest plants from the Tropics around northern Queensland, Kakadu and Christmas Island.
The Ian Potter National Conservatory, as it will be called after Sir Ian Potter, the financier whose foundation put up $1.5 million. The other $7.5 million comes from public funds.
The plan is not only for the conservatory to contain exotic plants but also to have a "sound-scape" of their habitats.
Visitors will enter the glass and concrete structure and not only see the plants but get a smell and sense of what it's like to be in a tropical forest.
"It's exciting. It's going to be amazing," Peter Byron, the general manager of the Botanic Gardens, said.
He said that conservatories in botanic gardens were often very conventional and unexciting in design but this was very different.
A team of Sydney architects won the design competition. According to the company, CHROFI, the quality of light would shift according to where a person was inside the structure.
"This outermost layer changes from transparent to translucent according to its orientation, creating a unique visual expression through this shimmering and ephemeral veil."
It would also use energy efficiently: "This is a conservatory that is symbolic not through its form, but rather through it's world-leading environmental performance and its uniquely sublime spatial experiences."
The federal minister for the environment, Sussan Ley, said the building would allow around half a million visitors each year to "immerse themselves in the sights and scents of the tropics".
"The unique approach has gained worldwide interest," she said.
"Numerous plants have already been collected and propagated in preparation for the construction of the conservatory with some species never having been cultivated or displayed to the public before.
"The Conservatory will allow the Australian National Botanic Gardens to increase the number and diversity of Australian plants on display in its unique living collection of thousands of native plant species."
It will also provide a safe haven for numerous threatened species.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
