This Other Eden

In the dark of a mild Cornish September evening, on the floor of a former china clay pit, an alien form gradually emerges from the gloaming. As coloured lighting, fireworks and dry ice reveal more of its mystical shape - part giant sleeping armadillo, part Starship Enterprise - those watching can begin to make out the lines and curves of what is possibly one of the most unusual structures ever built.

There is something of the organic about this building, dominated by a sweeping roof that grows from a central axis and spirals outwards and downwards, at some points even touching the ground. Viewed from above, as its location at the base of the pit demands, its copper clad canopy resembles the scales of some vast fallen pine cone or a half submerged pineapple.

For this is Eden - and they do things differently here. The building is the Core, the Project's long awaited new education resource centre and a sibling for the site's two world famous "biomes", a pair of record breaking gigantic greenhouses that are home to over 5,000 plant species from all over the globe. Education is, of course, an integral part of Cornwall's landmark visitor attraction - the guiding principle behind Eden is education with a small "e" and the whole site is a thought provoking patchwork of exhibitions - but the new £15m (US$26m) centre is to be a base for its innovative schools and public education programme, whilst at the same time offering open house to all of the project's annual 1.5 million visitors.